Episode 18 - So You Wanna - Mt. Waumbek and Mt. Starr King

[00:00:08] Here is the latest Higher Summits forecast brought to you by our friends at the Mount Washington Observatory. The above treeline in the White Mountains is often wildly different than at our trailheads. Before you hike, check the Higher Summits forecast at MtWashington.org.

[00:00:31] Weather Observers working at the non-profit Mt. Washington Observatory write this elevation-based forecast every morning and afternoon. Search and Rescue teams, avalanche experts, and backcountry guides all rely on the Higher Summits forecast to anticipate weather conditions above treeline.

[00:00:51] You should too. Go to Mt. Washington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. Hello listeners! Nick here with your forecast for 4th of July weekend, 2026.

[00:01:16] Friday. Mostly in the clouds early, trending mostly in the clear under partly cloudy skies. Slight chance of afternoon rain showers and thunderstorms. A few thunderstorms could become severe and produce strong winds and small hail. High in the lower 60s. Wind northwest at 45-60 mph with gusts up to 70 mph early, 40-55 mph with gusts up to 65 mph midday, and 45-60 mph with gusts up to 70 mph later.

[00:01:43] Higher gusts could be higher. Higher gusts possible with thunderstorm activity. Friday night. Mostly in the clear under the clouds. High in the clear under the clouds.

[00:02:16] High in the cold, the clouds with gusts to 60 mph early, coming to the clouds with gusts up to 20 mph during midday. so looking quite toasty definitely make sure you stay hydrated if you're getting out try to do things earlier or later in the day carry plenty of water know your water sources stay safe out

[00:02:38] there happy fourth of july go crush some peaks broadcasting from the woodpecker studio in the

[00:03:13] great state of new hampshire welcome to the sounds like a search and rescue podcast so you want a video series where we share post-hike reflections challenges lessons learned and essential insights to prepare you for your next adventure in the white mountains so let's get

[00:03:36] started so you want to hike my um Mount Star King and Mount Wombat nick sure let's do it all right

[00:04:37] all right so we've been uh we've been chit-chatting ahead of time folks we've been breaking down our recent adventures so nick was on bond cliff i was on progress you'll listen to those you listen to those in a future episode but um this one here we're going to talk about um starking which is a delisted 52 with a view summit and then Wombat which is a 4 000 footer known as one of the easier 4 000 footers nick yes uh everything being comparatively speaking i guess but yeah it's definitely one of the easier ones it falls towards the easier range for sure right right so people

[00:05:05] will say what what's the easier where should you start with the 4 000 footers and i'll typically go to like pierce or tecumseh and uh sometimes i'll throw in wambach or but a lot of times i hesitate just because the one re and we'll talk about this in more detail but the one reason i hesitate and i will say tecumseh and pierce over wambach as far as your first easy 4 000 footers won the distance wambach's a little farther north and then two the views aren't as spectacular as pierce or tecumseh

[00:05:34] no for sure and as difficulty wise i think like by stats it's like a little bit more mileage and a little bit more elevation gain than pierce but it's it's kind of in in line with the way the hike feels i feel like it's pretty in line with pierce in terms of like the grade and everything like that right fun foliage hike fun winter hike uh if i was going to pick to bring somebody on their first 4 000 footer i would probably rank it like um pierce tecumseh and uh wambach i would be probably be in

[00:06:03] the top five but like at five i would think there'd probably be a couple of other ones that i would put above it too maybe musalok that would be another one i would say yeah for sure i will and we'll talk a little bit more about this uh later but i would say it's one of the best ones i think if you just want to get out for the winter for the first time i think it's a really good one for that and that's kind of where it fell for me and ash our first time up there and our it was our first winter peak we ever did because you're never really like at the mercy of the elements even if it's really cold and

[00:06:28] windy like you're you're never really fully exposed yeah it's kind of nice good point good point so um i did a little bit of research nick ahead of time and i know you did some research too but there's a couple of episodes of the regular slasher podcast if you want to check out what we do we taught we we don't necessarily do a deep dive on wambach and star king but we typically when it's come up on the the regular show it's come up in relation to one of us doing like the kilkenny ridge

[00:06:54] traverse which is like a longer traverse from um jennings peak all the way down to wambach and star king so in episode 203 our friends uh who have been on the you know so you want us and they've been on uh the regular uh show a few times is on peter and jake so peter finished his red line um on the kilkenny ridge so we talked about wambach and star king a little bit that was

[00:07:17] episode 203 so check that out and then we also had dave dylan on episode 49 and he talked about the kilkenny ridge uh traverse or the kilkenny ridge yeah i think he did the out and back as well yeah the 50 miles that yeah i'll be doing the the 25k but that's just from cabot on to uh rogers ledge this year to south pond so that'll be that'll be an experience and i did want to mention

[00:07:42] too um in the so you wanna vein uh on the cabot one we were like really nerded out about the geology of like the kilkenny range as a whole so i tried not to include like about it being a ring dyke and other things like that like i think we really went into depth on that so we're not going to dive in as much on that if you if you want to hear more about the geology of the kilkenny range as a whole you can refer back to the so you want to mount cabot right right and this one will have a little bit more history on it and it'll have a little bit of um we're gonna talk a little bit about yosemite

[00:08:10] because star king thomas star king is one of the founders so we'll touch on that but yeah maybe a little bit more history um going back to like the 1960s this place used to was targeted for a ski resort so we'll talk about that and uh some other fun stuff but yeah anything you need to know about hiking wombeck and star king well we've got you covered here but check out episodes 203 and episodes 49 if you're interested but nick why don't you start off give an introduction to mount star king to start

[00:08:37] with sure so mount star king is the western neighbor of mount Wombat it stands at 3907 feet it was named in 1861 in honor of reverend thomas star king a unitarian minister from boston who was also an author most notably of the 1859 book not 1959 he wasn't around then 1859 book the white hills their legends landscape and poetry and uh this introduced thousands of readers to the beauty

[00:09:02] of the white mountains and this name of star king to that mountain to that hill was donned by innkeeper benjamin h plasted hopefully i'm pronouncing that correctly who built the wombeck house at the mountain's base in in 1860 at the urge of uh star king so that's where it was named from right and then uh looks like you've got some more details on star king here that i didn't know about so this is cool yeah yeah i'll talk a little bit about his connection to yosemite but like you said

[00:09:30] he's a unitarian minister uh he really became obsessed with the white mountains in like the 1840s i feel like he would be if he was alive today he would have like started a podcast before i think yeah instead of uh he had a he had a newspaper too right he had a newspaper newsletter yeah yeah i think so i was sort of like the appalachia journal before appalachia existed and then he wrote that book

[00:09:53] the white hills their legends landscape and poetry which was like an early precursor to um appalachia and then the white mountain guides that like the osgur guide that came out i think a little bit later but if you look at his book the white hills it's sort of laid out similarly he sort of like defined the different um notches and sections of the white mountains that the osgur guide later kind of added to which was pretty cool um he wasn't really like a guy that was out there cutting trails but he was

[00:10:21] doing a lot of the documentation around it so this is pre-amc um but he was the one that sort of got the word out about um the white mountains he probably had a lot of connections with the boston academic uh community that eventually i think got up there but he he romanticized it and um like i say they they recognized that of his his impact so they named one of the one of the summits for him

[00:10:48] eventually though he did move out to the interesting thing about him is that he was so impactful in the white mountains then he moved out to the west and he moved out to california and he became he first of all he was a significant like political player back in the day because he he was a a big advocate for um giving speeches in support of the union soldiers during the civil war so he really helped to keep california alive with the north um which was difficult because they're sort of separated and i guess

[00:11:17] abraham lincoln accredited him as one of the most effective union voices in california in the west so kind of interesting but he this might be a stupid state was californ was californ a stupid question is was Californiaia a state when the civil war was going on because i wouldn't i wouldn't have even thought about california being a thing during the civil war yeah i would imagine that it probably wasn't a state i don't know we'll have to do a little research on that nick as i'm talking and uh

[00:11:45] see what you come up with as far as when they were uh admitted into the union but he was in he was out there around the 1860 obviously the the civil war was early 1860 so um sometime around there it was a state during the civil war it was the 31st state in september 9th 1850 okay the compromise of 1850 yeah i wouldn't i think it just doesn't you don't think about it again because you were saying how separated it was from the bulk of the action kind of happening on the east

[00:12:12] coast right right and and star king so he was he played in san francisco but he went out to yosemite valley at that point it was like barely no this guy this guy's got a big mall this guy would be the guy that would give away all the secret spots nick yeah if he was around he'd tell us where pump heli cave is on monad lock and he'd tell us all all the good camping sites uh but yeah he had a big mouth so he was the one that helped write um and elevate yosemite as a place of national significance

[00:12:40] and um he has a a mountain in yosemite named after him so he was like the early influencer he connected the east and the west mountain culture so he probably brought a lot of ideas that he he learned in the whites out to yosemite and uh he had a some good political influence there and i'd say nick one thing that was kind of cool about this is when me and my friend tom camped out in

[00:13:05] mono meadow which is in yosemite um we went from mono meadow to little yosemite as you're going along that we camped out under mount star king so oh that's cool as i'm talking i'm like looking at a picture of my view in the morning when i woke up and star king is like this like it looks like a steeper narrower version of half dome so it's not really climbed very frequently you need ropes

[00:13:32] basically it's it's like half dome but uh it has no cable system so you have to um i guess rely on there's some fixed ropes that people leave up there and then if you don't have fixed ropes you just have to have very grippy rock climbing shoes and hope for the best very very different from the 52th of you uh or x52th of you star king here in new hampshire it sounds like that's that's pretty cool though it's like yeah it's kind of like a small world sort of moment yeah it was cool and like when we

[00:13:59] when we slept when we camped out at mono meadow we woke up and had one view of it and then as we approached little yosemite campground which is probably i don't know 15 miles away we had oh maybe 12 miles away we had a day hike we basically encircled mount star king so we went from the uh the south over to the uh the northwest of it and had different views but yeah it's very prominent in in

[00:14:24] that area which is cool neat all right so on to um talking about our 52 with a view peak so what else do we know about star king nick so and it is uh as of june 2025 it's actually a former 52 with a view peak um the one thing that you could still refer to it as a 52 with a view peak i did want to clarify and note for people is that the way that the over the hill hikers who are the establishers and maintainers of the 52 with a view list um the way that they count peaks you can actually hike any

[00:14:54] peak that's ever been on the 52 of the view list and count it so you can hike any delisted peak and count it um so i was saying like if you're gonna hike wombeck you're gonna end up hiking star king so just know that you can count it as a peak if you uh choose to do so with your uh with your uh 52 of the view list there so it was removed because tree growth had diminished views over time um and this is even after views had actually been cut out again which we'll find out in our little uh sort of

[00:15:19] history run through later um but yeah removed from the list in 2025 still counts um if you do want to go see it with good snowpack um and some poking around you definitely could get some views the classic view that you could see and i'd know from even the first time i was up there in 20 i believe it was like 2018 we did it you have a stunning view of the presidential range um directly in front of you basically like washington kind of looking north with adams madison jefferson like that whole kind of area and it's it's really impressive you don't really get that vantage point similar to like

[00:15:48] what kind of what you get probably from the horn and roger's ledge but you're a bit closer um so it's very very impressive um so looks like mike uh in there you have a little story behind the wood stove and hearth that sits on star king so if you when you get to star king nowadays there's a little clearing and there's this pretty big like i don't know if it's like a 10 15 foot stone hearth that actually still exists up there so you want to give us a little info on that yeah yeah it's kind of

[00:16:13] cool so they're um most people that hike this they'll go you know the there's no getting around it like you have to pass star king in order to get to wombeck and um you'll see this like stove that's just it's like a brick chimney that's just sitting in the middle of a field small field and then there's there's nice rock formation that you sit on that typically you can get a little bit of that view out to the presidential range like nick was talking about um but the the the the hearth or the stove is a

[00:16:40] little bit of an oddity so the story behind that is that there was a shelter on the summit of star king that had been there i don't know what year they built it but i think that it was it was around in the 60s and 70s for sure i think that the one of the popular things was the people that worked at the golf course near the trailhead and we'll talk about the trailhead parking as well uh they would go up after work and just hang out there and i think that you could it sounded like it was like a first serve

[00:17:06] first come first serve option for bunk beds and they had they had enough people in there that enough room in there that you could sleep probably eight or ten people but eventually the uh the the cabin was removed in the 1980s and um i guess there was also a fire tower up there originally so that's what the the origin of this cabin was is the shelter for the fire tower at the summit but right now all that's left is is basically the fireplace that still sits there

[00:17:34] uh the other interesting thing nick about this so definitely check out the fire um the the fire pit or the the stove when you get there but the other interesting thing nick was that in the 1960s there was a scramble to try to get ski resorts built in new hampshire so there was a bit of competition with vermont and maine to make sure that we that new hampshire was able to get some additional ski

[00:17:59] areas so um there was a proposal that was pretty pretty serious and pretty far along in the 1960s i think 1963 is when it really came to fruition but they were going to have a ski area built between star king and wombat and eventually the plan fell through uh but there was a um a pretty serious plan for the ski resort which even included a hotel on the summit of mount star king

[00:18:26] and there's an article in the new england ski history that talks about this plan and they were going to call it willard basin ski area and uh it was going to be located east of land lancaster and northwest of the presidential range in the pliny range that include that would include mount star king mount wombat and mount weeks and garland brook drains the north side of the range and they were going to call it the the willard

[00:18:51] and it's also known as the willard basin so it was proposed in the 1960s and it would have been the third ski area in new hampshire to have lift service reaching 4 000 feet in elevation so the area would have encompassed over 5 000 acres of land ranging from the willard willard notch to a proposed aerial tramway service and hotel topped at mount star king so it was slated to be the largest ski resort

[00:19:14] in new england with a 5 million dollar proposed um financing for it so um the effort was to develop the ski resort in the kilkenny range i guess it started in the early 60s with a company called the lancaster development corporation so the president of this corporation was a lancaster resident by the name of raymond hartshorn um at the time hartshorn was vice president of atlas foundry which was opening

[00:19:41] a metal castings foundry in concord vermont so um he had been working on this development word got around that they were planning to do this and um they were really looking to establish this as a four season resort combination and they did issue stock that sold out and they were able to purchase 1400 acres of land and they moved along pretty well but eventually uh the plan fizzled

[00:20:10] uh they had they had partnered with a guy named dan kiley of charlotte vermont who had done design work for sugarloaf for the design and um eventually um they had i guess looked at the the plans and even though there was like 500 year-round jobs that were that were expected to be created and additional seasonal positions uh there was concerns about the uh the overall funding on this thing so

[00:20:37] by the mid-1960s they were moving forward but eventually it did fizzle out uh they were pretty far along though with a lease on the u.s forest service uh to get some of that land so that would have been crazy nick so basically star king womback in weeks all the way over to mount terrace would have been ski resorts or ski trails i'm reading through this as you're kind of talking about it and catch it up before but it's a it's substantial amount of area this probably would have been one of

[00:21:07] i'm sure if this thing had materialized i mean i don't know what it is in terms of acreage but it looks like when you just look at the footprint across all those mountains in that basin like that's really impressive it reminds me of something like sunday river uh along those lines and also with a summit hotel and it looks like they were planning like a tram or some sort of lift service to the summit of star king with a hotel and whatnot yeah the um the rendering is actually and this was big in the 60s and 70s nick was a monorail so they had a monorail that would have been um it was a

[00:21:34] hanging oh that's okay that's what that is so there's two types of monorails there's a hanging monorail and then there's the monorails like you have a disney that are more like on top oh yeah i i didn't even notice that on the right of the right page of the rendering okay wow so imagine imagine a tram imagine that like a monorail going up there oh my god you couldn't pay me to get on that thing so a hanging monorail up to the summit of um star king to get to a hotel be like epcot meets a ski

[00:22:00] resort kind of deal right that's what i keep thinking of anyway but yeah so that's the history on uh on wombeck and star king and um all about the the what could have been should have been nick but you know we we we have those mountains all to ourselves now yes thankfully there's no uh skiers or would have transformed the uh the economy up there for sure if that had happened probably be a totally different town exactly uh all right nick what about mount wombeck so star king basically once

[00:22:28] you hit star king it's like a a hop skip and a jump over to wombeck right yep it's a mile apart so a mile further east along the trail so um mount wombeck we got a 4,006 feet it's the 46th highest of the white mountains 4,000 footers it's also the highest point of the pliny range so pilot range to the north is with cabot pliny ranges wombeck weak star king etc um so highest point in that range the true summit is wooded with a rather short and stout carn marking the spot

[00:22:55] there are views that can be obtained from blowdown area just east of the summit further along the kokenny ridge trail the one waiver about this blowdown is the last time i was up there about a year ago it looks like that's also starting to grow back in um you can still see the presidential range from it but it's probably not the most amazing view i'm trying not to hype it up because i don't want people to be disappointed but it is a nice view especially when you haven't seen much all day right yeah a little bit about that blowdown area there so that area got absolutely devastated by the

[00:23:23] bomb cyclone storm i don't know what year that was it was somewhere probably like 2013 or something like that yeah we'll run through it it's funny because you you have a lot of stuff we're a good team with this because i filled in some of these gaps so that was actually in 2017 um an october storm that bomb cyclone you mentioned decimated that eastern side of the kokenny ridge trail um and the co-host trail association actually had co-host i'm gonna get busted for that one now the co-host trail association um was a pretty much instrumental in helping reopen that section of the the trail the guide

[00:23:53] basically mentioned it was pretty much impassable and non-existent in portions yeah and it's it's crazy because the they did all the work on wombat but nobody got over to the weeks so if you go beyond that like we experienced this like oh yeah you guys were just through there this summer that's right well it's it's better now but when i did it the first time i i don't know when it was maybe 2020 or something like that it was just like the apocalypse like trying to just trees everywhere

[00:24:18] and ferns and whatnot right nature has returned cool so what do we got next here and i'm back i get to scroll back up all right so as we mentioned um 99 i put 99.9 because maybe there is someone that's done one back the long way i don't know i'm sure someone is out there who's done it from york pond before but 99.9 percent of people hike both star king and wombat in the same hike from route two and jefferson via the star king and kilkenny ridge trails the only other trail the route would be

[00:24:47] would be the one uh from york pond road so you take york pond trail to the kilkenny ridge trail and you'd come over the weeks as mike mentioned on the way to wombat with uh quite a bit of up and down in between both them we'll get into the stats later um to show you why it's probably not as desirable to come from that side um and a little bit of history on the nomenclature of mount wombat so mount wombat was originally named pliny major dating back to 1784 and in philip carrigan's 1816 map

[00:25:16] it commemorates pliny the elder who i did a little research on after uh looking at stephen mike's reference in the guide and he was a roman naturalist and encyclopedia writer um i think they referred to him as a poet but it sounded like more he was just sort of a dictation kind of person and a writer which in those days was kind of a pretty big deal so eventually the name wombat came to replace pliny in the late 1800s um and wombat is derived from the native american words

[00:25:42] wombeket methna meaning white or snowy mountains and wombeck meaning white rocks which uh generally was more commonly associated with the presidential range of mount washington to the south so not exactly sure how wombeck ended up being called that since most of the whites all have white kind of rocky terrain um but that's what ended up happening and pliny mountain ended up getting

[00:26:07] um i should say pliny mountain became the name for the southeastern spur of wombeck itself so yeah the name kind of still exists in the area yeah when you look up like the name history even like that that that um i forget the name of that database there but like the the database of names that is handled by the federal government um you can see on mount washington like one of the early references was

[00:26:29] uh that wombeck methna name so uh which makes sense because if it's the native american word for um white or snowy mountains or white rocks then that would make sense that basically like a bunch of different mountains would be references that if you ask native americans oh yeah for sure and um unless they had a greater understanding of the region they might not have realized like all to me it's like if you're just there it's sometimes it's hard even being familiar with these peaks to know what you're looking at from different perspectives and stuff so they're just like oh what is

[00:26:59] that that's that's a white rocky mountain that's open yeah exactly they didn't have like the concept of naming a specific mountain wasn't in there they just would name all the mountains the same yeah yeah um as far as location we've kind of already alluded to this but both mountains um starking and wombeck reside in the pliny range excuse me and the southern portion of the greater kilkenny range and as far as towns they are in the township of kilkenny and the town of

[00:27:25] jefferson right and if you're coming from the north typically you would hit this from 93 but if you it depends on where you're coming from i guess but like if you're coming up 93 or you're coming up 16 to 302 either way eventually you're going to have to take that uh that uh turn up to what is that route two and then you cut off i think it's like 115 or something like that that road where yeah the mountain is yeah the cutoff between like uh i don't know if it's like 114 i always mess up the name of it so i'm not even gonna say you can look you can look it up listeners or maybe we can

[00:27:55] look mike can look it up one when i'm doing this but um it's the one that cuts between twin mountain and like route two basically like your head to appalachia it's along there and you end up banging a left and uh one of those roads too you take to get to wombeck if you're coming from 93 has like amazing stunning views of the presidential range across like all farmland and stuff it's really pretty in there and you can see owl's head kind of to your south um when you're kind of going home and you can really tell why they call owl's head from that direction the 52th of you owl said because it's very sharp and kind of pointy and triangular which is really neat right yeah so

[00:28:25] it's route three oh i was gonna say is that um you can stop at yaya's on the way yes yes great which is huge stop yeah i think you go route three and then let me just look at this here i'm getting myself confused um yeah then one 115 is where you head over to um and then 115 a brings you into um

[00:28:51] jefferson and then you can you can head over to wombeck yeah yeah 115 a is a beautiful road just to drive on even if you're not hiking or anything and route two and jefferson's really scenic um can kind of see jefferson mount jefferson and a lot of the presidential range from there really and you're not far from reckless either so you got all kinds of no no it's pseudo centrally located yeah what about parking nick every everybody gets concerned about parking

[00:29:17] here and i feel like rightly so it's a little bit tight yeah yeah so uh so here's our take on parking so if you're parking at the star king trailhead the summer trailhead is at the end of star king road off route two and jefferson in recent years this road has become very rough for travel it's funny because the most recent guide they don't really get into this at all but i just know from personal and a lot of us know from personal experience uh this road's kind of become rough for travel i definitely recommend having an suv truck or higher clearance vehicle

[00:29:43] i wouldn't recommend it for your sedan um it's doable i've done it in a pretty low clearance sedan but you have to be very confident in where your wheel placement is and not scraping the bottom of your car again if uh you take your car there and it gets damaged don't come after us i'm telling you not to do it i have done it myself i'm just trying not to sound like a total hypocrite um if the lot's full definitely don't park along the side of the road um it's a private road off to the right

[00:30:09] and it's no parking all the way up to the trailhead road there is a lot across the way on route two um if you park here it adds 0.3 miles each way and 200 feet of elevation gain so pretty negligible um you can also park at the military service memorial which is 0.15 miles west on star king road or of star king road i should say on route two and east of the urban gas station over there um this is 0.4 miles from the summer trailhead and while we're talking about parking um in the winter

[00:30:36] plan of the summer trailhead being completely unplowed or at least inaccessible it sounds like in a few recent years some four-wheel drive vehicles have made it up there the lot across the street um that i mentioned the summer is plowed as is the military service memorial but that lot across the street is notoriously icy and tough to get out of um it's kind of like a really short little uphill with your car to get back on route to um which if you don't have all-wheel drive or something

[00:31:02] can be a bit of a challenge i found this with my 2009 corolla a while back i kind of had to jet up there and also you can't really see oncoming traffic that well on route two so that adds to the spiciness of parking in that lot so it sounds like the military service memorial is probably just the best place um to park at if you're going there in the winter and then in the other side if you are going to take the path less travel and go from the york pond trailhead um same area is like going to

[00:31:29] cabot so a small parking area at the end of york pond road past the berlin fish fish hatchery off of new hampshire 110 it's a paved road that turns to dirt and this is open all seasons and usually plowed in the winter because of the hatchery out there um even though it's plowed i did want to call out that it doesn't mean it can't be an interesting ride in the winter um frequently it's really packed down and ends up being icy and you really have to pay attention and um this is something that you guys made me think of when i was meeting you and peter out on the kilkenny ridge traverse but definitely be on the alert from moose on this road

[00:31:59] um don't fly down it even if you're tempted to because it's kind of a straight um monotonous road um you're basically going through a bunch of wetlands bogs and ponds and it's a moose's favorite habitat and i know a lot of people that have seen moose on this uh on the ride out there i haven't seen it myself but it sounds like one of the ones where people are more likely to see moose than not sometimes especially if you're going early in the morning or maybe going out at dusk or something they they love that whole area up in the kilkenny range and the amount of moose poop you'll see

[00:32:28] around there will confirm that cool so i do have a little bit more of the things i found interesting just little history blips mike if you want me to roll through that yeah this is good i'm just checking this out so it answers one of the questions about um when the shelter was actually built in the 1940 so i i missed that so that's that's a good one but yeah why don't you roll through this

[00:32:55] cool so 1773 joseph whipple establishes a settlement in jefferson and at that time it was actually known as Dartmouth which i'm not sure if that gets back to like Dartmouth college or any of that i didn't dive into that rabbit hole but that might be something fun to figure out one day um 1860 at the urge of thomas star king benjamin placed it builds an inn at the base of wambach by 1888 this is one of the largest and most luxurious grand hotels in the whole region with a capacity of 500 to 600 guests i always think it's so interesting how these places were built up and they just don't

[00:33:23] exist anymore well you know why it fascinates me yeah a lot of them burned for sure but it is interesting to think about how like star king was getting the word out about how great the white mountains were and then he was recruiting people to build a hotel and then going back down to boston to tell all his rich academic friends to head up there so it's it's a full circle and then it looks like he did the same thing rinse and repeat with san francisco and yosemite which it's very cool and

[00:33:49] it's a very impressive that they would do this i mean people didn't live as long during those periods but they got a lot done they were very busy and you know it was a lot of risk taken you know being up in this area because it's not like there's a bunch of doctors and hospitals if something goes wrong no for sure yeah it's not it's not like today yeah so uh fast forward a little bit to 1864 samuel eastman mentions in a guidebook that star king is easily ascended from the inn

[00:34:13] and this suggests that there was a trail established from the base to star king by that time 1876 our our boy moses sweetser who i know now by i know his name pretty well uh mentions that star king has a well-established path and that the summit is clear with large weathered rocks along with stunning views of the presidential range best appreciated at sunset so i was trying to imagine reading this what star king but apparently star king was basically a bald summit um even this would be 150 ish years

[00:34:42] ago so that's kind of wild to imagine that it was completely devoid of sort of trees or anything yeah i wonder if they just sent like the the whatever the the lumbermen up there to say like clear a view for us we got hotel guests yeah i mean i was thinking i'm like i wonder maybe if there was a fire up there if they did they must have just cleared it at the time we're like screw it we don't care we don't care about the alpine vegetation we want views um but if you get up there then

[00:35:07] apparently it was pretty stunning so 1885 nathan matthews of boston a mass hole cuts trail from star king to wombeck this is the original path from star king to wombeck so when you're if even if you're a new hampshire resident you do have to thank a mass hole originally for cutting the original blaze trail from star king to wombeck so 1887 uh this this was kind of a big blip i just summed it up here but basically there was a logging railroad that extended from lancaster to the willard basin

[00:35:35] um the same one that mike mentioned in the ski area on the north side of wombeck and then it was abandoned three years later just short of willard notch in 1890 for a bunch of different issues 1916 the second edition of the amc guide mentions a path from star king to wombeck following herd paths and also deer paths and some stretches so it seems like it wasn't as established it my guess is too is like people just weren't going to wombeck as much it seems like until it was added to the list which we'll read in a few different blips but this is kind of the ongoing theme why

[00:36:04] would they right because if there's not as good of views and you've got that um beautiful view from star king and you've got a you know fire tower and a house there then that seems like it would be the the the the goal yeah i'm imagining this like nathan matthews being like hey guys you want to go over here i cut this trail and everybody's like no we're good nathan we're just gonna stay here and appreciate the views we'll wait for you on the other side i'll pass so 1928 the main building of

[00:36:31] the wombeck house burns in a may fire several buildings remain and are operated um through the 1970s by all sorts of different owners for guests to stay at 1930s uh you mentioned this tower before too so by the 1930s there was a usgs tower that's mentioned and referenced on the summit of star king with views in all directions so there was actually a tower up there not only was it clear at one point um didn't look into any more details of why i'm assuming it was just a tower they established

[00:36:59] for viewing purposes or i'm not sure why um 1940s so that answers your question that's when a shelter is referenced as being built near the summit of star king so right around world war ii sort of era 1948 the amc guide reports that a path from star king to wombeck is very obscure so not getting any love it seems like after after 40-ish years at that point 50 years 60 years um then 1960 with the creation of the 4000 footer club all of a sudden people are concerned with getting to

[00:37:28] wombeck so the path from star king to wombeck is now well established and blazed with views from several cleared outlooks so what a change from 48 to 1960 with that uh list creation right can't can't stop the peak baggers everybody wanted to get up there again so mike filled us in on this uh in great detail but the 1960s um there was a bunch of ski development and actually at one point it sounds like the path again was hard to follow between star king and wombeck partially from cutting

[00:37:56] so uh that was mentioned 1968 the shelter original shelter on star king is actually rebuilt um the 1970s a path to star king becomes established yet again and the star king trail is officially extended to the summit of wombeck so at that point i guess the the wombeck spur had just kind of been considered a herd path and not actually an official trail so that's part of i think they extended it

[00:38:20] partially so that this wouldn't happen again with it kind of getting lost um 1980 the wombeck house the grand hotel is closed for good and the star king shelter is removed and then the late 1980s the kilkenny ridge trail is opened by the white mountain national forest so actually a pretty new trail in the trail system here all things considered yeah they didn't really like completely finish it they could have done a better job it's fine it's rugged it's what it's supposed to be but it's a

[00:38:46] it's like it's a beast is it finished they could have made a couple more views on it right they could have widened that thing out a little bit they could cut back some of the ferns on the weeks for me yeah so uh that got open in the late 1980s um and this extends all the way from south pond which is just north of rogers ledge another 50 tooth of you all the way south down to mount star king and then eventually the star king trail hit off route too so 2012 the star king summit is actually

[00:39:13] re-cleared and the blowdown um so mike did reference the the bomb cyclone that like rocked the kilkenny ridge trail the current blowdown area um that you see past wombeck this actually happened in 2012 um so that's probably why it's grown in it's been like i don't know 15 it'll be approaching 15 years since that happened so that explains it grown in a little bit um and this viewpoint the one we mentioned earlier is just east of the summit of wombeck along the kilkenny ridge trail

[00:39:40] then uh we already mentioned the last interesting blip uh 2017 that bombs like home late october storm decimates the kilkenny ridge trail east of wombeck and uh again the cohos trail association shout out to them because they're doing a lot of work up here in this area and they reopened it and it sounds like it took them a ton of time um an effort to actually reopen that mostly volunteer time so good on them for doing that right and then if you want to hike this so like we had talked about

[00:40:04] the the standard southwest approach from uh using star king trail in the the i guess it's kilkenny ridge trail to the the wombeck uh that's the trail that we would recommend most people go um if you're doing your 4 000 footer so it's a pretty mellow approach very similar to like uh the the gradual climbs that you'll see with pierce on the crawford path or or tecumseh or some of the trails on on

[00:40:30] musaloc so uh steady climb 2 800 feet 7.2 miles when you get to star king like most people would sort of chill out there and have a snack look at the views as best you can and then um head out it's another mile to get over to wombeck i think you drop down a little bit i think the star king is like 3 900 and then you end up being a little over 4 000 feet at um wombeck so it's you drop down a

[00:40:58] little bit and then you climb so there's a couple of like steepish sort of turn climbs that you have to go up to get over to wombeck but that last mile is it's it's very mellow to get up to star king and then that last mile was a little bit of up and down but mostly it's it's pretty pretty gradual climb too yeah you've done all the work pretty much after you get to star king it's mostly a nice rom i think it drops like immediately after you hit the summit of star king and then it sort of climbs up and down a few times with a couple puds but nothing too crazy there and the terrain's like

[00:41:25] generally pretty nice it's pretty much dirt right kind of floor with a couple rocks interspersed right and then uh the other approach which i i can't imagine too many people doing that i mean if you have a car spot then it's probably it's fun but it's gonna be a long ride to just loop around to get over to york pond but you can certainly do a piece of the kilkenny ridge so if you take york pond trail you'll connect eventually to kilkenny ridge in willard notch and willard notch is basically

[00:41:52] nestled between terrace mountain and cabin and terrace mountain on one side and then you've got willard notch and then you've got the weeks which are a series of three peaks that go across the kilkenny ridge trail goes across the weeks so it's three up and downs there is a little bit of a water source on south weeks i think that you can get to if you want but i would say just bring water with you to be safe because it's it's it dries up i think in the the summer but for the most part

[00:42:22] then you've got to climb do your final climb up the back side of wambac it's a tough hike that's a tough hike not a lot of views the trails usually grown in um with ferns and whatnot and it's just it's it's a long day so you're talking like 17 18 miles doing out and back with 5 000 feet of up and down and then eight and a half nine miles to get uh get across it at 3 700 feet of climbing one way so it's it's a beast of a climb yeah i was kind of blown away by those stats when i was reading it and then

[00:42:50] that 5 000 feet figure for out and back just comes from me like looking at the map and assessing like the up and downs but you got three like pretty pretty good 300 to 500 foot up and downs on the way back uh after you hit wambac if you want to go that way so um like mike said if you're if you're not looking for any people in the whites go to this trail because i i doubt you'll see anybody no matter what time of year you're going maybe you'll see someone finishing their redlining with a with

[00:43:16] a group of folks yeah i've come across this a few times and we've never seen anybody um and the tough part is is i think he the trail tends to grow it's like it's a very ferny it's got a lot of ferns and a lot of like uh waist deep vegetation that even though they i think they cut the trail back for the kilkenny ridge race like it just grows back in so it is a weird experience because a lot of times you're hiking and you can't see your feet you're just busting through ferns for long long distances

[00:43:44] and it gets a little tricky because there'll be blowdowns hidden under the ferns and sometimes you'll trip and it you gotta pay attention it's it's a it's a stressful hike from that perspective but it's it's a bucket list type of thing to knock off kilkenny ridge i would say yeah for sure and um north weeks or i've referred to it as just or i've seen it referred to as weeks mountain to on maps is a new england 100 highest at 3903 feet so maybe that one gets a little traffic but again that's

[00:44:13] that's the first one in the line of kilkenny ridge trail so if anything that one gets a little bit more traffic than the three of the weeks past north weeks i suspect like you were saying is pretty uh pretty wild on the bright side if you're looking to get the jurassic park vibe like you feel like a velociraptor is going to jump out and attack you at any moment this is the perfect place to get that vibe it is for sure um yeah exactly you could definitely picture like um you know something moving under the ferns and just like coming up and talking like head high ferns in that area yeah it's crazy

[00:44:43] it's crazy but um going back to the normal approach that we would recommend from from um jefferson and taking the star king trail up in the winter time you touched on this a little bit nick but this is a you know parking can be a little bit tricky in the winter uh but this does tend to get packed out pretty quickly from the jefferson side and is one of the more sheltered 4 000 footers in the winter so it's right off route two and uh really good if you're looking to get into you know if you're not experienced with snowshoes and you want to get experience like this is a good one

[00:45:11] because it's pretty steady yeah for sure great snowshoe track yep it's a freezing cold day then this is the one you want to hit yeah absolutely and hopefully with that if you get a good snowpack you'll probably have better views um for some of this this area the whites gets a lot of snow too so right nick how many times have you hiked this so i've hiked it three times um first time i did it was uh with ash and it was our actual our first winter hike i mentioned that a little bit earlier

[00:45:39] it was january 4th 2018 um this was kind of like a hot mess of a day when i look back a little bit we were like pretty inexperienced with winter stuff as most people are the first time they go into these things and uh and i remember like ripping open hand warmers on the summit of wombat because ash's hands were like freezing because she took off gloves um when we're eating food and it was like it was like a whole ordeal and i'm like oh my god my girlfriend's gonna like lose her fingers and it was like a thing we probably in reality we probably just could have kept moving and she would

[00:46:05] have been perfectly fine but now we know that um it was memorable but overall a great like uh winter hike day like i think it was like minus 13 when we started so it was a very chilly day um and again you're kind of sheltered um second time i hit it september 8th 2024 i hit it with our good buddy steve um and this was actually the final peak to finish my summer seasonal peaks off so i'll kind of remember it for that and then um i was up there last year june 19th and i bagged it for spring

[00:46:33] and it was on a super hot day in the morning um and i got really sweaty and took a dip in the stream on the way down so there's a stream right at that parking lot in the trailhead which is actually kind of nice if you need to like filter water or if you want to wash off before you have like a three and a half hour drive home um so i need it for fall but it's a nice peak like you could generally talk me into going up there even though it's not the most stunning it's just good vibes on that trail what about you mike yeah i've done it three times i think too yeah matter of fact that

[00:46:59] parking lot we had uh some beer and a little party going on in that parking lot for peter's red line finish because uh he finished on the kilkenny ridge with us on last summer and i remember like leaving the parking lot like you had said like it's bumpy i had maybe i had a beer or two in me but i had forgotten that it was bumpy so i just drove off like i normally would drive off oh my gosh and i start i like started like i realized oh crap i'm like gonna ruin my subaru but i was able to sort of

[00:47:27] i had to lock my brakes up to like slow down so it was a little bit of a mess so definitely listen to nick and be careful on that on that parking lot but i've done it three times the first time i did it was um let me look let me let me see what my strava says nick it's in the archives says i did it in february of 2019 this was actually my 47th 4000 footer this is where i was like i did this hike and then i was

[00:47:52] planning on finishing my 4000 footer list on canon like a week or two later and then i realized i was like oh if i i went home and did the math and realized like i could finish the 52 with a view in the terrifying 25 and finished them all in one hike so i actually did my 47th 4000 footer one back in february of 2019 and i don't think i finished my 4000 footer until like the next fall of 2020

[00:48:20] okay interesting yeah i kind of i vaguely remember remember that from the podcast and you like doing a crazy hike with navi but uh that seems very mike-esque for you to do that right so i was like thinking i scheme that up on on the hike set but it was just a winter solo hike that i i was doing the 52 with the views and the 4000 footers and it was just a nice day i got a good view with it i got that presidential view because i think i the snowpack was pretty high and then there was still clear back

[00:48:45] then it was on the 52 with a view list and then the other two was i i did a um kilkenny ridge traverse in july of 2020 with my friends jonathan and tom you know tom you haven't met jonathan but we did that as a two day overnight uh where we we camped out in willard notch i went from the south to the north that time and then the last time was last summer i did kilkenny ridge from the north to the south

[00:49:12] and went over wambac so yeah it's mostly two times so i've done it um as part of the kilkenny ridge traverse and by the time i got there the last time i was over it so i was ready to go back to the parking lot and have a beer but it's pretty much what we said it's a it's a mellow hike it's easy going down going up and it's uh it's a good hike to put on your list of like the five easiest 4 000 footers it's not like the top of the list but it's it's it's definitely a good one to go with somebody that's

[00:49:40] new or if you're looking to do like a solo hike and you're not super comfortable you'll see a lot of people on a saturday or sunday if you go up so even in the winter yeah well said yeah i think we think we covered i think we covered it pretty well i think that's it so get out there and um hike wombach and then tag slasher podcast on instagram or facebook and then we'll give you a notable hike shout out yeah sounds good and if you do it with a dog um i don't know what mike will do maybe

[00:50:08] i'll send you a sticker or something you'll definitely you'll definitely get notable hiker of the week but hike on and enjoy mount wombach and mount star king and we'll catch up with you next time on another show you wanna we got we got we got a bunch of things planned yes bye everybody

[00:50:20] thank you for listening if you enjoyed the show you can subscribe on apple podcasts spotify or wherever

[00:50:49] you listen to podcasts if you want to learn more about the topics covered on today's show please check out the show notes and safety information on slasher podcast.com that's s-l-a-s-r podcast.com you can also follow the show on facebook and instagram we hope you'll join us next week for another great show until next time on behalf of mike and stomp get out there and crush the peace