My pictures often have the rest of the group leading so I could pick up the occasional "action shots".  As this account is a group effort, pix from others are indicated as such.

Our different cameras and lighting conditions played total hell with saturation and white-balance the whole day, but there's no particular point in trying to match it all up in post.

The sky had clabbered up quite a bit, but not in a threatening way.  This was perfect, in fact -- it kept things from getting too warm and provided better diffuse light for photography.

This was also around where we first split the group.  One of us started to receive warning signs in some joints, and decided the better part of valor would be a leisurely return to the base via Lost Farm trail.

Pole scratches and big boot-prints, or almost zero evidence left that anyone has been by at all?  *Our* choice is pretty clear here.

The group split again here; my companions looked at the distance and rise to the summit versus saving resources for a safe descent, and decided it would be better to continue along Smith for a bypass.

I headed off along Amphitheatre almost at a run; suddenly I had a lot of work to do in a short time and had to remember to get a few pictures in the process.  My solo jaunt in the Blue Hills two weeks beforehand must have been good training, or something; I felt pretty confident to conquer that last big mound of rock.

[While it would undoubtedly sound archaic sometime down the road, at this point in time I still think it's insane how they've managed to pack a usable 12 megapixels into a *phone camera*.  The pic on the right is a tiny 1:1 extract from the original, and while some of the in-camera processing artifacts are visible it's pretty crisp and not hopelessly grainy or oversharpened.  Probably better than my old G9 would do.]

The solution was to divert off the main track a little, and get back onto clean rock. 

I jetted past any number of people who were cautiously slipping and shuffling their way down the tumbled slabs, and caught up with my companions only a few hundred yards past the target intersection.  The timing had been perfect. 

Either way, our feet were sticking to the sloping rocks better than just about anyone else's expensive hiking boots.  And no worries about spraining an ankle.  Clearly, we impressed the crap out of many people that day.

Somewhere off-trail, a few ravens were circling and making some of the *oddest* calls.  We caught a glimpse or two of them when they looped out over the valley, but couldn't figure out what they were so on about.

Down closer to headquarters we used a little stream to wash most of the mud off our feet and legs, and shortly thereafter rejoined our missing member at the car.

A little searching later found the relevant incident.  The search results showed quite a few others at different times, too.  This was apparently one of the easier ones to handle, not too far up the trail -- by the time we got back to the car and got ourselves organized and loaded to head out, the ambulance had already pulled up and they had the victim off the mountain.  One ranger told us that some of those rescues, farther up, take six or seven hours far into the night, but it's one reason they're there.  And of course the higher likelihood of mishap comes later in the day, when people are tired and stupid and trying to come *down* which is usually trickier than heading up.  Something to always keep in mind on such trips.

Monadnock itself is a bit deceptive -- people discover that it's more difficult than they counted on, sometimes with disastrous results.  The four-and-some miles I had plotted became a bigger deal with all the vertical, but in our varying preferred degrees we got out and did it, never resorting to footgear at all, and overall it was a pretty awesome day -- completely in line with all those other searchable reports.  We stopped at a pub in Jaffrey for a brief dinner, and then it wasn't too far back to home and a very welcome bed.

    [And exactly a year later, did the climb again!]