Jaffrey

Jaffrey sits at the base of Mount Monadnock, a bald granite peak that, despite being barely 3,165 feet tall, is reputed to be the most-climbed mountain in North America and among the most-climbed in the world, thanks to its accessibility and the wide open summit views it offers for relatively modest effort. Lia and I set out from the White Dot trailhead in Jaffrey before sunrise specifically to beat the crowds Monadnock is famous for, and the strategy worked — we had long stretches of the exposed upper trail entirely to ourselves.

Climbing Monadnock before the crowds

The White Dot Trail climbs steadily through hardwood forest before breaking out onto bare granite about two-thirds of the way up, and from there it’s a scramble across open rock with cairns marking the route to the summit. We reached the top just as the sun cleared the horizon, mist still pooled in the valleys below and the White Mountains visible as a faint blue line to the north, and had maybe ten minutes of near-total silence before the first later hikers started arriving. By the time we descended around ten, the trail was a steady stream of families and weekend hikers, which made us even more grateful for the early start.

Willa Cather’s grave and the old meetinghouse

Back in town, we found the small Jaffrey Center cemetery where novelist Willa Cather is buried, having spent summers in the area and specifically requested burial here rather than in her native Nebraska or adopted New York. Her modest headstone sits beneath old maples near the 1775 Old Meetinghouse, a beautifully plain white clapboard building still used for town meetings, and the whole scene — the church, the graves, the mountain rising behind it all — felt like the quiet New England postcard version of the region, minus any of the performance.

Getting There

Jaffrey is about ninety minutes northwest of Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) via Route 2 and Route 202, or roughly an hour southwest of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT). A car is essential for reaching the trailheads and Jaffrey Center, which sit outside the small commercial downtown.