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August 31, 1983: The Appalachian Trail followed some dirt roads through a pleasant farm valley encircled by mountains and reentered the forest to begin a rather taxing climb up to Holts Ledge, the first real mountain it had thus far traversed in New Hampshire. It kept turning onto one woods road after another, and each was a bit steeper than the preceding one.

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Pictured: Pen Mar Park from High Rock.
July 14, 1983: Entering Pen Mar Park was a relief. In the years around 1900, this spot was billed as the Coney Island of the Blue Ridge, with an amusement park, seven hotels and about a hundred boarding houses. After years of slow decline, the park was forced out of business by World War II gas rationing in 1943.

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September 1, 1983: The trail down the far side of Smarts Mountain was in worse shape than the ascent had been, but what did that matter to a man surrounded by that kind of magnificence? The AT lunged downward across more of those dripping, mossy rocks.

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