Mt Liberty

[rbhayes]

#46927 |

Bob, Geri, Julie, Danette, and Emily, along with our 4 legged friends Kerri, Kinsale, and Dugan will be heading up the Liberty Springs trail at 8 AM. :flag:

All are welcome to join us! Email us at bobandgeri@rbhayes.net

We will be camping at the Broken Branch KOA campground in Woodstock Fri and Sat nights.

See you all at the Mooseland Grill! :beer:

[rbhayes]

#50107

I want to share with you the note that Geri sent too her friends at work this morning regarding our experience Saturday.

I was sorry for missing the picnic/party on Friday. But wanted to share my very amazing weekend with you to explain my absence.

You all know we’ve been doing alot of hiking.The last 2 years we’ve taken part of an hiking-community event that honors the anniversary of Sept 11th by flying a flag on top of all 4,000 foot mountain peaks in NH. (48 peaks) THis year every peak was ‘signed up’ and different individuals or teams carried a flag to the top of their peak and flew it from noon – 2pm.

6 months ago Bob decided he’d like to do Mt Liberty – appropriate peak name for the event. He designed a 20 foot flag pole of 1.5 inch pvc pipe, 2 inch support, and many supporting lines. We ‘cut’ the pole in 4 five-foot sections to make it hikable. We have a 6×10 flag that had to be carried up. We also brought a log book for people to sign their names and write down their thoughts. Bob and I had the 2 dogs, and 2 good hiking buddies with us.

Obviously the weather was beyond perfect and Liberty has utterly amazing views. But that was just icing on the cake.

Bob had contacted a man who had a posting asking if his daughter Emma could join anyone on their hikes. He had done it with her last year, but could not make it this year. Bob gave him our schedule and said we’d certainly like to have her join our group. His excuse this year is that he is in Iraq helping train / organize the Iraqi military. It was such a pleasure to have this very mature 17 year old with us and to hear about her father. And itbrought the whole experience much closer to us.

As our group headed up the trail at 8am, we reached the peak approx 10:45 to see another flag already flying! 2 men had hiked up in the dark, to see
the sunrise from Liberty. They were flying their flag until the ‘official’ flag made it up. What a beautiful surprise for us. Our peak ended up having
a flag from 6am until 3pm.

We met a ton of people. We’re guessing 150 people hit our peak — maybe more. From 2 young boys (11 & 12) from a local church group to others that had to be in their 60’s or older. Many knew of the event, other hikers were just very pleasantly surprised. We got some wonderful comments and thoughts in our log book. Many people were very touched and found it a good way to remember the event, those that were lost, and also the wonderful freedom and privledges we have here in this country.

From our peak we could see flags on about 8-10 other peaks (mostly with binocullars). Bob’s work buddy Andy (who did this event with us last year) had Mt Flume, our closest peak and we could see his flag very cleary. Andy is 63 and hiked this very tough climb with many family members.

We ended the night at a get together in Twin Mountain where a number of other hikers planned to meet. It was great to hear stories from the
other peaks and meet some people that are active in the hiking bulletin board that we follow.

Sorry for rambling and I would not normally throw so much personal stuff at you all at work. But it was so amazing I really wanted to share this with you all.

Here is a link to the photos Bob took. He put many comments from our log book into the photo descriptions too. He really did a great job getting
ourgroup organized.

http://rbhayes.net/flags.html

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