skug

[kirkcudbright]

Kylie starts middle school next week, and they always start the year with a 4-day hiking retreat in the White Mountains. Today we test-drove her new hiking boots with a short hike in the Skug River Reservation in Andover. I've driven and biked past the trail head hundreds of times, but this is the first time I've actually been in there.

The mighty Skug River:


And then there's this glacial erratic, "an enormous stone monolith that climbers use to practice elementary climbing techniques." Francie and Kylie are both climbers, but didn't bring their climbing shoes, and ordinary hiking/walking shoes aren't up to it.

Comments

[veek.livejournal.com]

Your kid's school regularly takes her hiking? That's unspeakably cool.

[kirkcudbright.livejournal.com]

To be more specific, the middle school goes on a hiking retreat at the beginning of the year - troop bonding? There are only 13 kids in the middle school class (7th-8th grades) this year, so it's quite manageable.

Upper Elementary (4th-6th grades) goes to Nature's Classroom in Groton for a week every spring.

They used to go hiking in the woods behind the school, but that hasn't happened for a while. I don't know if there were liability worries (for one thing, the school doesn't own that land), or what. But they do get to do schoolwork outside when the weather's good.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

idle factoids: "skug" means "skunk", and martins pond is actually a widening in the skug river.

[kirkcudbright.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skug_River) has an 1893 USGS map of the area.

[ceo]

Do you know about the Historical USGS Maps Archive at UNH? They have topos for most of New England and NY going back to the late 1800s.

[kirkcudbright.livejournal.com]

Cool! I mean, uh, no, I didn't. Thanks for pointing that out. This is clearly the same scan that was ganked on Wikipedia.