Jobildunk Ravine & Mount Jim

For my third Moosilauke ravine wander of the week, I headed into Jobildunk Ravine, the wild glacial cirque enclosed by the main summit, Mount Blue, Mount Jim and Mount Waternomee. The ravine has a steep headwall that rises to 4300 ft. and a broad forested floor at the3500/3600-ft. level, dotted with beaver ponds and meadows. The entire valley is owned by Dartmouth College and is maintained as a semi-wilderness area. The one trail that led through it - the Dartmouth Outing Club's Asquamchumauke Trail - was abandoned five decades ago. The DOC built a cabin on the ravine floor in 1931, but the area was devastated by the 1938 hurricane and the cabin fell into disuse and eventually collapsed. The ravine can be seen from few vantage points. The Beaver Brook Trail does provides a peek down into it.

 

I set off from parking on Ravine Lodge Rd. and headed north along the Baker River on the DOC's pleasant Asquam Ridge Trail, often called just the Ridge Trail.

I took a quick look for artifacts at Camp 3, used by Chaplain Realty in the 1920s and Parker-Young Company in the 1940s.

 

A four-log bridge for the trail's second crossing over the Baker River.

In the lower valley, some parts of the old Asquamchumauke Trail, which followed logging roads in this section, are easy to follow. The trail was opened in 1949 following a huge logging operation in the ravine by Parker-Young Co under the direction of Sherman Adams, salvaging spruce felled by the 1938 hurricane. The trail was abandoned around 1973.

Blowdowns obstruct the old route in many places.

Moose sometimes use the old pathway.

Farther up the valley the trail disappears in blowdowns and swamps and bushwhacking is necessary.

 

 

 

I dropped down to the Baker River for a break.

 

Experienced bushwhackers can follow the trail on and off again for a while. After this river crossing on big rocks, it's gone in more blowdown and swamps..

My objective was the northern of two open beaver meadows out on the flat floor of the cirque. Getting there was a little rough in places.

 

 

There were some friendlier woods along the way, also.

Made it! Looking across at the East Peak of Moosilauke. 

 

The water level was up compared to a visit I made last September, but that was during a drought. I didn't see any signs of recent beaver activity. They were active when I first came through here back in 1990. 

An interesting story is told in  Moosilauke! After The Ice: The Moosilaukee Reader, Volume 4, edited by Robert W. Averill and Kris Pastoriza. According to his sons, Minnesota native and Dartmouth '29 grad Dick Sanders was involved with restocking beavers in New Hampshire, where they had been extirpated by 1900. Sanders was a DOC stalwart and a noted woodsman, and is memorialized with a plaque at the summit of Moosilauke.  In the late 1920s the governor of Minnesota gave Sanders two beavers to bring to the governor of New Hampshire while on his way back to college. Sanders maintained that these beavers were released in the Jobildunk Ravine area.

 

 

Great view of the rock-scarred headwall here.

Closer look. In the winter these become impressive icefalls. During the winter occupation of Moosilauke's summit in 1870, photographer Amos F. Clough made a madcap sliding and jumping descent over the headwall to obtain images of the "ice precipices." After taking his photos he made a two-hour climb through the woods back to the summit, concluding that Jobildunk was “one of the wildest places in New Hampshire, especially in winter.”

 

 

In wet weather, a sizeable cascade spills down the right side of this big slab. On my 1990 visit, I bushwhacked up the headwall to the right of that slab, ending up on Beaver Brook Trail. It's a route I will not be repeating.

These two rocky swaths have the look of old landslides. I visited the base of each of these last fall.

 

A channel feeding into the pond.

 

 

A single tiny white pine growing along the edge.

 

 

Looking over towards Mount Blue. An hour or so in the sun passed quickly at this wild spot. 

The bushwhack along the floor of the ravine had been tedious, so I decided to whack up the east side of the ravine to the Asquam Ridge Trail and descend by trail over Mount Jim. The climb started out on the rough side.

 

 

After a brief improvement, I entered an area of dense young conifers crammed under older trees. This looked like it would continue up the slope as far as I could see.

Here I invoked the "fifty-foot rule" of bushwhacking, which states that the woods might be completely different fifty feet in either direction. In this case, they were.

 

In this area I encountered a brief trace of the old Asquamchumauke Trail as it ascended out of the ravine.

And I spotted an old DOC blaze.

 

But the old trail is basically impossible to follow in these woods, which soon turned ugly.

The upper part of the climb, and the traverse across the flat saddle to the trail, took a long time to squeeze through.

 

I was very happy to see this.

 

 

Looking back at Mount Blue from a fir wave as the Ridge Trail ascends Mount Jim.

 

I'm glad I didn't try to come up through this.

 

 

A lovely section of trail heading up to Mount Jim.

View of the Kinsmans from a fir wave to the left of the trail.

 

And Franconia Ridge. If you look closely, you'll see the bright, thin slash of a small new slide just below and right of Mount Lincoln's summit. 

There's a good view of the new slide from the field at Lafayette Place. It may have fallen during a recent thunderstorm. It's way up there, not easily accessible.

DOC sign near the wooded summit of Mount Jim, a Trailwrights 4000-footer.

 

Fine boreal forest descending off Mount Jim.

 

Grades on the 4-mile length of Asquam Ridge Trail are easy to at most moderate the whole way, but above the first mile the footing has gotten significantly rockier over the years. Still, it is a lovely, quiet approach to Moosilauke.