Earlier this summer I visited my father’s grave in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he is buried next to his father Ira and mother Grace, her brother Elery, wife Josie and daughter “Little Middie,” who was born in 1877 and passed away three months later.

My father was a surveyor who trod the White Mountains and had degrees in forestry and civil engineering from the University of Maine and the University of Massachusetts. He met my mother in South Deerfield where he settled down and started a business, but he was a northern New Englander at heart.

Growing up in Deerfield, I regularly climbed Mount Pocumtuck behind our house, and this summer I decided to try Mount Monadnock, which is relatively close to my home in Northfield.

My sherpa friend was Jeff LaFrenier, who lives in Warwick and has hiked the Appalachian Trail. We rendezvoused at the White Arrow Trail parking lot in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, one of the six main trailheads that also include Pumpelly, Marlboro, Dublin, White Arrow, White Dot and Birchtoft.

Monadnock is commonly referred to as the second-most climbed mountain in the world behind Japan’s Mount Fuji. “That is something that people say, but not us,” said Monadnock State Park Manager Will Kirkpatrick, who estimated 100,000 hikers come each year.

What’s the attraction? “It’s close to cities and it gives you the sense of being above the tree line. It feels like a rugged hike but it’s a day hike,” said Kirkpatrick, who’d prefer it wasn’t as popular. “The erosion really beats it up. We recently capped the number of daily visitors by requesting parking reservations and charging $15 per car.”

They can do that at park headquarters, but other trailhead parking lots aren’t as regulated. There was no one manning the hut where we parked off the Old Toll Road, so I dropped $10 into a sturdy donation beam. Senior discount, I figured.

Jeff reached into his trunk and pulled out an extra pair of hiking sticks.

“No thanks,” I said.

“They really help,” he said.

Uh-uh. I like to grab onto branches or hunch over and use my hands and go ape; on steep descents I’ll slide down on the seat of my pants and go chicken.

I was wearing cargo shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of well-worn New Balance 990s, and brought a bottle of water and an energy bar for sustenance.

The trail quickly became a rock climbing adventure, and I was drenched with sweat before we were halfway to the top. During a water break Jeff pointed to a cliff and said, “That’s where we’re going.”

Never look down they say, but looking up wasn’t such a good idea either. All I saw were rocks — big rocks, small rocks, smooth rocks and jagged rocks. There isn’t much give to granite. There would be no soft landings.

In June, a 44-year-old Newton woman was injured on the White Cross Trail and had to be stretchered off the mountain. Last summer an experienced climber fell near the top and banged his head off a rock. “We heard a cry for help,” a hiker told NBCBoston.com. “There was blood all over the place.”

Dozens of hikers get injured or lost each year. “We get called when it’s a carry-out or a person is lost or at night when they don’t have a headlamp or start at 7 p.m. and think it’s weird they got caught in the dark,” said New Hampshire Fish and Game Conservation Officer Lieutenant Bill Boudreau.

“We get about 10 or 12 calls a year. The reason we don’t get more is because the park staff does an excellent job of cutting people off at the pass. They’ll see a person in flip-flops with no gear or water, and they’ll read them the riot act.

“Two years ago we had 10 search and rescues and nine last year, but only three so far this year. Typically it’s a lower body injury such as a broken ankle or leg, more often on the descent when the momentum is going downhill and they go flying forward.”

Boudreau grew up hunting and fishing in Belchertown and works out of the regional office in Keene, New Hampshire. He recommends hiking sticks and good hiking boots. He said most of the injuries happen on the White Cross and White Dot trails.

“They both start at park headquarters so everyone knows how to get there, but they’re also two of the steepest and most rugged. People think because Monadnock is hiked so often it’s going to be an easy hike and aren’t prepared physically or equipment-wise.”

Asked which trail was safest, Boudreau said, “Probably the Dublin Trail. Pumpelly is most gradual, but twice as long.”

The further we climbed, the smaller the spruce and underbrush became until finally there was virtually no growth, only big boulders, pools of rainwater in narrow crevices and giant slabs of smooth granite.

No one’s sure how Monadnock lost its hair, so to speak. “The most romantic story is that back in the day they set a fire to drive wolves off the mountain, but there’s no real evidence to back that up,” Kirkpatrick said. “In the early 1800s there were two fires — both could’ve been by natural causes — and the second burned hot enough to cook off all the topsoil.”

The day was clear and dry, and after we admired the panoramic view of central New England we both put a foot on a round copper disc called a benchmark. It was proof we could go no higher.

A climber took our photo and Jeff asked her where else she climbed. “I’m doing the 48,” she said.

“What’s the 48?” I asked him during our descent.

“There’s 48 mountains in New Hampshire over 4,000 feet,” he said.

Monadnock’s elevation is only 3,165 feet — she’d been out for a stroll.

The 4.2-mile hike lasted about four hours, and back home I put off the errands for another day. “Doing anything after Monadnock is a lot,” Jeff texted. “I’m in the recliner with a coffee enjoying my endorphin Zen. Hiking is a great addiction!”

Two weeks later I returned and hiked the Marlboro Trail off of Route 124 in Jaffrey. “Starts out nice and then it will kick your ass!” Jeff texted.

Getting to the parking lot required driving on a muddy road through deep puddles mined with big rocks that hammered the car frame.

Climbing alone meant heeding the white blazes and markers on trees and rocks, and looking for stone pyramids called cairns. Again it didn’t take long to be soaked in sweat, and my heart was pumping so hard I thought my iPhone was vibrating. A few hundred yards from the top I lost the trail and stopped to listen. Shortly I heard the crunch-crunch-crunch of another hiker about 30 yards to my left and got in behind him.

It wasn’t as peaceable as the first climb. A strong wind roared through the trees and I walked through ankle-high puddles caused by the previous night’s storm. On top someone said the wind gusts were up to 60 mph, and we all walked around like weather reporters in a hurricane.

On the way down a hiker my age was wearing a floppy hat and using hiking sticks. “Be careful,” I said.

He turned and looked at me and contemptuously drolled, “You be careful, too.”

It was an omen. A climber was approaching and to make way for him I grabbed a pine branch and swung down toward a mossy patch and lost my balance. My lower left shin crashed into a rotten tree trunk stubbled with dead branches and quickly swelled and bled into my sock.

I cleaned it with water and wipes, but a week later realized the pain wasn’t a healing pain and my swollen foot could barely fit into my shoe. At the MedExpress in Hadley, Dr. Mitzi Johnson examined it and looked at the photo of the open wound and declared it infected and prescribed antibiotics.

I texted Jeff and he replied, “You need to start using hiking poles. They prevent falls, but you’re a stubborn bonehead like we all were until we gave in and said I should’ve been using these all along.”

Yeah. He might just be right about that.

Chip Ainsworth writes a regular sports column for the Greenfield Recorder. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com.