The Peregrination

Fishing the Mascoma River

Josh Hurd — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:28:45 +0000

I had never caught anything on the Mascoma River before, and I didn’t expect to have that streak broken tonight. But on the second cast with a bead-head nymph on the end of the line, a small rainbow struck. What was going to be a two hour casting practice jaunt on the Mascoma River turned into a rather productive evening of fishing, with one rainbow and three browns by the end. Perhaps I’ll start fishing the Mascoma more instead of the Sugar. Save on gas money.

Fishing the Sugar

Josh Hurd — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:36:28 +0000

I’ve never had much luck fishing out east. I should qualify that. I’ve never had uch luck fishing in rivers out east. Thankfully, as tends to happen from time to time, that bout of bad luck ended yesterday evening on the Sugar River. I’ve fished the Sugar River a few times before – it’s an absolutely beautiful river with a gorgeous stretch of fly-fishing only waters around Newport, NH. After getting fed up with being in the library all day, yesterday I headed out at 3pm to see if I could finally catch something. With a bead-head Prince and strike indicator on the end of the line, I set out, and caught fish I did. I didn’t fish for too long – maybe just a couple hours – and didn’t catch tons of fish – only four – but what a joyous four those fish were. All rainbows, between 10 and 14 inches. Let them all go to be caught another day. (Hopefully that day will be sometime soon)

Spring Break in New Mexico

Josh Hurd — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:48:06 +0000

A little over a month ago now I was on a spring break adventure in southern New Mexico. Needless to say there were many adventures, including some of the most horribly maintained trails I’ve ever hiked on, many trout for dinner, snow, sun, swimming, getting lost, finding cool rocks, fording streams, climbing to the top of cliffs, etc etc. I’m too lazy now to write up a full account, but hopefully some pictures will suffice.

Slacklining

Josh Hurd — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:24:52 +0000

I live at a house called Grandma’s House. It is a house usually occupied by climbers, and as such they like to play with ropes and webbing. A certain concoction of such is the slackline. A slackline is basically a piece if webbing tied quite tightly between two trees. The objective of the slackline is to walk on it, kinda like a balance beam. I was skeptical at the beginning of this past fall, but now I am a convert. A few pictures are below.

A Bike Ride to Flooded Country

Josh Hurd — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:18:39 +0000

New Hampshire has a tendency to flood now and then. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, it is quite spectacular. I went up on a bike ride up to the Ompompanoosuc River – a river that is usually nice and low and time. The flood-control dam provides a nice place to bike to, and usually from the top of the earthen dam you can see the river meandering below. Well, right now it is a lake.

Maple Sugaring

Josh Hurd — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:23:06 +0000

Dartmouth College has owned its own organic farm for just over ten years now. It truly is encouraging to know that an Ivy League institution cares enough about the wants of its students to invest money both in infrastructure and manpower to maintain the farm. The farm has been running maple sugar operations for quite a while now, just on a very small scale. This past year, however, the farm made a serious upgrade, building a sugarhouse and installing a brand-new arch (sap evaporating thingy). The Dartmouth Vox recently wrote an article on it – read it here. I wish I had gone sugaring before this year, but my first time sugaring was only this past week.

It’s nice to live in an area that has humble connections to the land. Maple sugaring really does bring you back to the land and represent what I believe to be a sustainable and productive use of the natural world. If only more people went sugaring, perhaps the world would be a more sustainable place…

Simon Pearce

Josh Hurd — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:08:07 +0000

Every now and then it is nice to splurge. And what better way to splurge than go to a gorgeous local restaurant perched over a waterfall in an old mill building in Vermont? Indeed. Don’t have too many pictures to share, but the place really is amazing. Simon Pearce is a company the primarily makes fancy glass-ware for upscale homes. The whole glass-blowing process is open to the public, though. Before dinner Rachel and I went downstairs and watched the glass-blowers make some drinking cups. Quite the process. Alas, no pictures of that, though.

Katahdin

Josh Hurd — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:12:26 +0000

Every year the DOC Winter Sports Club goes on a big trip up to Katahdin – the end of the Appalachian Trail and a big mountain in Maine. The trip was pretty grand. We skied in ten miles the first day, then four miles of snowshoeing the second. The third day we summitted, but that night had to build-up our shelter in order so that we wouldn’t freeze in the sub-20-below temperatures. Out we skied the fifth day, and then back to Hanover we went. A good trip overall, although I didn’t take nearly enough pictures. But I did take panorama above, which turned out pretty well. A friend of mine did take plenty of pictures though – check out his site.

Ice Climbing Smuggler’s Notch

Josh Hurd — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:42:47 +0000

I don’t get out climbing all that often, but when an opportunity presented itself to go climbing over in Vermont at the very beginning of finals week, I decided to put the books down and head out climbing. We went up a place called Elephant’s Throat up Smuggler’s Notch – pretty close to the Stowe Ski Resort. It was quite a bushwhack to get there through lots of snow, but the climb was worth it. Two pitches or gully ice and then we were at the top. A nice day to be outside.

Harris Thanksgiving

Josh Hurd — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:05:03 +0000

Harris Cabin is almost done. Well, it’s been almost done for quite a while now. But now it’s even higher level of almost being done. For Thanksgiving break this year, a hearty troupe of DOC people decided to stick around and help work on Harris cabin. We worked on windows, floors, stoves, and just about anything else that needs to get done, which is quite a bit. My pride and joy was building a couple doors from scratch, which was fun indeed. Then for Thanksgiving dinner we went up to Billings cabin, and had a big ol’ turkey with all the fixins. Good times.