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Web Resources
White Mountain National Forest information
The WMNF home page is a good place to look for official information on rules, campsites etc. There is important information on forest road status, the parking fee program and the Forest Service camping rules.
An unofficial, but very informative, site is the former White Mountain Info Server maintained by Dave Metsky and now renamed Hike the Whites!. Lots of pictures, and even some movies!
Maps
A good source of online topographic maps of the entire USA is Topozone.com, which has an easy to use search mechanism and allows you to see maps in various scales.
A good locator for places is the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). It will give you the name of the USGS quad that covers that feature, and will lead you to an online map on the Microsoft Encarta TerraServer. The latter can, of course, be used directly without passing through the GNIS site.
Another map server, that I have not used much, is Maptech.
Outdoors Clubs
The main hiking club of New England is the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). Most of the hiking activity is run through its local chapters, the most active ones in the peakbagging areas are the Boston, New Hampshire and Maine Chapters. The Boston Chapter (the largest in the Club) is organized by Activity Committees, the group of most interest to peakbaggers is the Hiking and Backpacking (H/B) Committee. In addition to running trips year round most Chapters have a variety of workshops.
In the White Mountains of N.H. and Mahoosuc Mountains of Maine, the AMC maintains 14 popular backcountry campsites, some with shelters.
The AMC also operates eight huts in the WMNF. Check here for a schematic map of the hut system, together with the schedule for the shuttle that runs between them.
The Randolph Mountain Club is very active in the Randolph area, which includes the Northern Presidentials. They maintain four shelters on the northern slopes of the Presidentials: Gray Knob, Log Cabin, The Perch and Crag Camp. Dave Metsky has descriptions and photos of them, plus a map showing their locations.
The corresponding club in Vermont is the Green Mountain Club, which maintains the Long Trail. If your interests start moving towards the Adirondacks you may be interested in the Adirondack Mountain Club and in the unrelated Adirondack Forty-Sixers.
Online Communities
There are many outdoors oriented online forums, but I use only two families:
- The AMC operates several discussion
groups on its web site. The ones I find most useful are:
- Hiker's Journal, for discussions of hiking in the Northeast, mainly in New England. A good place for queries about trail conditions, choice of trails and similar topics.
- The Trail Conditions board is meant for more specific discussion of trail conditions, there is much overlap with the Hiker's Journal.
- Gear Talk, which is where you ask about gear.
- Mountains and Molehills, for discussions of current "hot issues". The discussions often get heated, and I have long ago stopped reading this forum.
- The Views from the
Top (VFTT) site, which has two very useful boards:
- Northeast Q & A Forum covers the entire Northeast, so it is the better place for queries and discussions of the Adirondacks.
- Current Northeast Trail Conditions where hikers report on trail conditions, it is divided by state, and the New Hampshire section has the most posts.
There is a lot of overlap of contributors and topics between these two boards, most regulars use both. If you have any questions about anything on this site, you will get an answer at one or the other of those boards. Since most regulars visit both it is considered bad form to post the same query to both (unfortunately many people do so).
There are two other bulletin boards that contain much useful information, though I visit them much less frequently:
- AlpineZone.com has a bulletin board with several different forums related to skiing and hiking.
- Backpacker.com has many hiking related forums, the only one I visit (occasionally) is the Destinations: Northeast forum.
In early 2009 a new French language forum for hiking in the Northeast (Quebec, Adirondacks, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine) was started: FousDeRando.com. Many of the posters are regulars on the English language forums, so I hope and expect it to be an additional valuable resource.
All forums have regular contributors who will be happy to answer questions.
Safety
This site assumes that you know how to hike safely and are seeking information on getting to specific peaks. The White Mountain Guide has good introductory material on clothing, equipment, trail following, and the special concerns on the higher summits. The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department (who are responsible for search and rescue missions) has some Tips for Safe Hiking in New Hampshire, which include a list of recommended clothing and equipment. More recetly they have developed, in association with the White Mountain National Forest, an entire web site devoted to safe hiking.
An excellent book dealing with safety in the mountains is Dan Allen's aptly titled book Don't Die on the Mountain.
The AMC and its chapters give a large variety of courses on basic hiking, backpacking, and specific skills such as navigation with map and compass and wilderness first aid. While intended for members they are also open to non members.