Sentinel Mountain 3852’ elevation. March 28, 2026. 2nd tallest peak in the Sentinel Range.
Ranges are usually named for the tallest peak in the range. I think the Sentinel range is named for Sentinel because it is so prominent. You see it standing out like a sentinel standing guard over Keene from multiple directions, whereas Kilburn (the highest) is just another bump among several that line the ridge. Anyway, I’ve been on Sentinel many times from Liscomb Brook and have descended from it towards Kilburn, Stewart and Slide as well as approaching it from Stewart in March of 2018, which was the last time I was on it. I’ve been eyeing Sentinel for a few years now and keep telling myself I’m going to go back. So, on Friday March 27th at 4:30pm I explored eight hundred feet up the ridge to the south of Liscomb brook by way of the Cobble trail. There was 4” of supportive crust on the ground but on my way back down I was punching through. Before going down I went up onto the Cobble for the gorgeous sunset views.
The next morning with snowshoes on my pack I ascended alongside Liscomb Brook for a few hundred vertical feet before turning south up the steep sunny slopes to the ridge 600’ above. The woods there are wide open (Oak, Beech, Large-Toothed Aspen etc.). Near the top it was steeper and rockier. There were pretty ice flows to weave around and pines were outcompeting with the hardwoods. Up on the ridge the pitch was gentle and there was tons of blowdown, mostly lying flat. At around 2500’ the ridge blends into the mountain’s side and there is a short flat section that is often swampy. I could hear water gurgling under what was now 2 feet of snow. The pitch gets quite a bit steeper here and the snow depth quickly increased to 4-5 feet. I was using a track log from a previous ascent and by relying on memory saw I was right on it whenever I checked. I would check the phone and verify the bearing on the compass and check it from time to time. The crust was very supportive but the 2-3 inches of newer snow was causing back-slippage so I switched to snowshoes from Hillsounds. At 2750 feet I began to encounter difficulties in the form of interlocked blowdown and thicker tree growth than I remembered from my time before. I kept pushing through intermittent open sections and very tight spindly conifers until at 3250 on a flat section things got a lot tougher. The spruce were tight and between them were steep-walled pyramids and bridges of hard snow that fell away into dark tree wells. The effort to progress ratio was suffering badly. When I looked up at the final cone 300 feet up my drive began to fizzle at the thought of going up and then back down that cone and then back down through the thick crap I had just come up. Above that cone it flattens out a lot and you are only a quarter mile from the summit. But, having barely hiked since the summer I was not in ADK-100W shape anyway so when I turned around I was satisfied with what I’d done. The trip back, following my tracks except for attempts at detouring around the worst sections, was uneventful and pleasant.
What I especially love about bushwhacking trailess peaks is how huge and complex the mountain is and how tiny and insignificant I am in comparison. Travel is slow and methodical and you have to remain attentive to so much detail. I took no photos (should have!) except from the Cobble on my scouting trip the evening prior.