It all began with the Belknap Range peaks patch in 2018. As mentioned in my bio here on my blog, I knew about that patch years earlier, but the opportunity to pursue it didn’t happen until I met Hawk. Once I earned that, I had the hiking patch bug, and started chasing others. The Ossipees, 52 Hike Challenge, Belknap Redlining, and so on. I kept finding more challenges to do. I enjoy how they give me a goal to focus on and keep me hiking.
The Belknaps are ideal for me. They offer a mix of terrain and difficulty levels, but all are attainable for my physical abilities. They’re also basically in my backyard, so I appreciate not having more than a half hour drive to any of the trailheads.
In early 2023, I started hearing chatter about a Belknap Grid challenge being organized. I knew about the NH 48 Grid, and knew it’s kind of a crazy pursuit. Every peak in every month of the year. They’re called “gridiots” for a reason. LOL Obviously the Belknap Range is less intense than the White Mts., but it’s still a very ambitious goal. Plus not all of the range is great. Did I really want to hike the annoying sections 11 more times?! (Cough, cough, Rand.)
But since Hummingbird and I were still redlining, we started keeping track. “Just in case.” Simply through our normal Belknap hiking we checked off 30% of the grid. We weren’t committed to it for most of the year, despite dutifully putting checkmarks down when we hit any missing peaks for the month. I definitely kept denying that I was seriously pursuing it. But eventually I had to give in. In October of 2023, I officially admitted to going for the grid.
Honestly, the patch that was eventually created was the clincher. It’s just sooo pretty. We couldn’t resist.
Once committing to gridding, we kind of went at it full force. Hummingbird pushed us to finish the entire months of October & November. Winter was tougher, so we missed those months in our first go, but over most of 2024, gridding became all encompassing. We didn’t do much else for hiking, beyond some short local trails when we just needed quick nature therapy.
While this was productive, it also started feeling obligatory. That’s one danger of hiking challenges like this — you start hiking because you “have” to and less for fun. Sure, some of the trails are ones we’d never choose for enjoyment, but on occasion, there were trails we normally like that became less exciting because we needed them. Sometimes this was because conditions made them less pleasant and/or we just would have preferred to hike somewhere different. At the same time, we didn’t want to stretch out this challenge over too many years, and we were always satisfied with getting checkmarks and feeling productive. In the end, I’m glad we did it, and as I wrote in my first IG post, I would do it all again… just not literally.
On the plus side, experiencing all of the peaks and trails in every season provided interesting variety. We discovered that some trails are fantastic in one season and rather terrible in others. We also found that given absolutely perfect conditions, sometimes even our most hated trails aren’t all that awful. Enjoyment was very subjective and dependent on so many factors, both external and internal.
We faced brutal heat, bitter cold, mud, bugs, treacherous wet rock slabs, and physical limits. We soaked in the beauty of nature, sunshine, peaceful spring rain showers, lush moss, wildflowers, huggable trees, awesome boulders, girl hikes (including helping my sister earn her Belknap peaks patch), expansive views, beautiful birdsongs, dragonfly swarms, pristine snow-covered mountains, and trails that just feel like home.
If we had planned better, we would have ended with a more exciting hike. As it happened, by the time we reached the end of our grid, all we had left was Mack and Rowe for February. We certainly didn’t want to end on Mack, so Rowe it was. There’s some irony to that, as Rowe was what Hawk & I finished the peaks patch on back in 2019. It’s was around 90 degrees that day and we didn’t know about the viewpoint just beyond the summit, so it was a very anticlimactic finish. At least this time we knew there was something pretty around the corner. And instead of heat, we “only” had to worry about snow.
Our original plan was to make it a sunrise hike and hope for an epic show like on Thanksgiving, but Hawk insisted on being there for our big finish, so I invited my sister and brother-in-law to join for a regular family hike. This had the benefit of making it a bigger celebration, and gave Hawk the ability to hang out with Parched while us girls hiked at our own pace, which just sounded less frustrating for both sides.
We ended up pushing to our backup date due to a storm, but thankfully the weather cooperated then and we had fairly ideal conditions for our hike. My sister got to see the view, which was completely socked in the first time she hiked Rowe. And they set up a “tunnel” (aka “the thing” with poles - a hiker tradition) for Hummingbird and I to walk through at the summit. We had officially finished our grid! It may not have been an epic final hike, but the overall accomplishment kind of was, and it was fun to do it with family.
Now what? I joked that our lives are meaningless now that we’re done gridding, and admittedly finishing felt a little bittersweet, but truthfully we look forward to doing more “just for fun” hiking. Of course, I still have some other goals I want to hit, like finally finishing the Forest Reservation Challenge and checking off more Seacoast Hikes, so there will be “productive” hikes as well. Plus we do need to get back to work on the Squam Range. For now though, personally, my primary focus is on finishing college and figuring out where my life is actually going. But with all the craziness coming to a head this year, I will still need plenty of nature therapy!
💗 I am grateful for having my cousin to do all these hikes with, for my sister & brother-in-law for driving from CT to join in our grid finish, and for my fiancé’s continual support. Hummingbird wrote a great post about our finish that you can check out on Instagram. Hawk also wrote a blog entry from his point of view about the day.
As usual, I will continue to post regularly about my hiking adventures on social media, and write about the noteworthy ones here. Stay tuned to see where we go next!
2/22 Mt. Rowe, 2.27 mi, 774 ft, 1:30
Belknap Grid 144/144
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