From our resident geologist/hiking app creator/data geek, Rick Allmendinger:

The intrepid Katherine Loring in 1923, just a couple of years after her long hike. Painting by Charles G. Loring (Katherine’s husband). *Painting courtesy of Chris Hadden.*

I was fascinated by the description in the CLC Fall 2021 Newsletter of Katherine Loring’s hike across the Sandwich Range 100 years ago. What she did was no small feat but perhaps is emblematic of a group of intrepid women hikers in the early twentieth century who could easily out-walk most recreational hikers today. To illustrate her achievement, I reconstructed her route in one of my own hiking apps for the White Mountains that allow me accurately to measure distance and elevation gain/loss. In the image below, her route is shown by the heavy yellow line; modern trails are in green, magenta, and red, and a few key roads in white. In the base map, the colors grade from dark green at the lowest elevations, through brown, to white at the highest elevations.

Katherine Loring’s route is shown in yellow. *Image courtesy of Rick Allmendinger.*

The modern equivalent of the route she took is 18.8 miles long with a cumulative uphill elevation gain of a bit more than 9,700 feet! The route was probably a bit longer and with more elevation gain, because it appears that her group went to the top of Paugus (not easy, and not on the modern trail, today). In terms of elevation gain, this is equivalent to climbing Chocorua via the Piper Trail three times in a twelve hour period. In terms of length, it is about two and a half times the round trip distance up and down the Piper Trail. The topographic cross-section of her hike, at 2.5X vertical exaggeration, is shown below:

Although there are “only” two 4,000 footers on this hike, these trails, especially the Brook/Beeline/Old Paugus Trail and the Walden Trail (named after the founder of the famous Chinook Kennels), are seriously steep and rough trails, as are parts of the Lawrence Trail and the top of the Blueberry Ledge Trail. The latter, as well as the top of the Brook Trail on Chocorua, are infamous enough that they appear on the so-called “Terrifying 25” (elective) list for the White Mountains. We do love our hiking lists in the Whites!

Thought not as long as the “Pemi Loop”—30 miles, 11,350 ft. of cumulative uphill, seven 4,000 and two 5,000 footers(!)—that elite speed hikers and trail runners today try to complete in one day, the average slope of Katherine Loring’s hike was actually steeper and her achievement remarkable. My mother used to tell the story of staying at the Chocorua Inn in the 1920s when a male guest staying there climbed Chocorua three times in one day. Undoubtedly, Katherine Loring could have given him a run for his money. No wonder her descendants decided not to repeat her hike but instead toast her at cocktail hour!

Note: To create the map and topo profile of Katherine Loring’s hike, Rick used one of the apps in his new suite of hiking apps, now joining the Chocorua Map app that he created in 2019. The White Mtn Hiker series includes three free hiking apps for iOS devices (iPhones and iPads): Presi covers from Crawford Notch to the NH-ME Border, and from the northern end of the Presidentials to the south side of the Sandwich Range (Including Chocorua). Pemi covers from Franconia to Crawford Notch and from the north side of the Pemigewasset Wilderness to the south side of the Sandwich Range. Finally, Moosi covers the area west of Franconia Notch from north of Cannon Mt. to South of Stinson Mountain. Includes all of Mt. Moosilauke and the Kinsman Ridge. Rick says: “I wrote these apps for my own hiking but if they’re useful to others, so much the better.” The apps prioritize two things of interest to serious hikers: offline access to data about their hike (base maps, topography, trails, and POIs) and privacy. With an internet connection, one can get a weather forecast for any point on the map and see NWS radar plotted right on the hiking base map. A complete description can be found at: https://www.rickallmendinger.net/wmhapps

Banner image: The path of Katherine Loring’s 1921 hike. Image courtesy of Rick Allmendinger