Blackhead

Today's hike: 5.4 mi | 3.4 h | 1.6 mph

Seems like the stats for today's hike of Blackhead were almost identical to last week's stats for Slide Mountain. That's curious, because today's trail had a section that was much steeper than anything we'd encountered on Slide. The steep part was fun. You have to clamber up some rocks and tree roots. The not-fun part was that quite a lot of the trail was wet, even on the steep section.

I was hiking with Maggie's boy again, today. This was our second 3500-footer in the Catskills. We started at the Big Hollow Parking Area, and went clockwise over Blackhead. Originally, we thought we might go over Black Dome as well. But we ran out of gas, and descended after covering only the one peak.

Aside from the one steep section, there were a few interesting things about the trail that we took. First, the lower portion of the trail is criss-crossed by several well-made wooden footbridges. Presumably that's required because there's a large stream that flows near the trail in this area. The footbridges are high up above the stream. The fact that the stream was quite lively and wide at this time of year, after an extended drought, made me wonder how high the stream would get during a wet year.

mini waterfall along the wide stream

On the way up and down, over a short band of the trail, we encountered a lot of small moths fluttering about madly. It was a surprise for this time of year. The temperatures were in the high 40Fs or low 50Fs, but it's certainly been freezing overnight.

small light brown moths fluttered around. can you spot this one?

A little higher up, there's a lean-to close to the path. Not sure I'd be tempted to camp there. It seems too close to the trailhead.

lean-to sign

We had seen some small, bright red berries on the trail at Slide, and the same was true here. We sometimes saw these on tall trees near the trail, too. I haven't figured out exactly what they are yet. Are they possibly winterberries? Note: we also heard birds now and again. I think they were nuthatches, and maybe some titmice and chickadees as well. I wonder if they like these berries. Maggie's boy saw some birds hanging out in a small pool of water on a rock at an overlook! I missed them, since I was lagging behind him.

bright red berries on the trail in the Catskills

Near the top, it was cold enough that we saw some icicles hanging off a moss-covered rock face.

icicles! The trail is so cool here!

There's nothing to mark the top of Blackhead, too bad! Just a trail sign. The peak is covered in evergreen trees.

trail sign pointing to Black Dome at top of Blackhead

Shortly after crossing this area, you get to an exposed section of the trail with rock slab, a bit of "graffiti", some lovely, newly constructed slab stairs, and great views.

We didn't linger for the views. As we'd hiked up Blackhead, the trail was sheltered from the wind with lots of evergreen trees, or maybe there was no wind on that side of the mountain. Once we started our descent, the woods became mostly deciduous, and were bare of leaves. The section of trail with rock slabs was fairly open and exposed, so you could see Black Dome to one side, which was nice. But it was very windy and raw here, and overcast to boot.

view of Black Dome with stone "graffiti" in foreground

Overall, the trail quality was mostly similar to the trail we took up Slide. We rarely come across a tidy dirt trail. It was either loose chunks of rock and/or pebbles and/or running water covering the trail. It makes me wonder how these trails were made!

We were pretty tired by the time we got back to the car. This is a cool trail loop, and I hope to get back to it sooner or later! I'd like to check it out in the warmer months.

Slide Mountain

Today's hike: 5.6 mi | 3.4 h | 1.6 mph

I'm no longer in NH, but I hope to get back to the White Mountains and complete the 4000-footers over time. Who knows!? The Catskills are now the closest challenge, so I've put the 3500-footers in my sights. My first was Slide Mountain.

The weather was not welcoming: upper 30s, with a slight wind, and completely overcast. We decided to take the shortest possible route as described by the DEC. This meant starting at the "Oliverea Road South (Slide Mountain Trailhead) Parking Area".

We began by hiking up the Phoenicia East Branch Trail. We knew that we'd need to turn left onto the Burroughs Range Trail in about 0.7 miles. Soon, we came to a "T" in the trail. We turned left and hiked on for about 2/10 of a mile before realizing that we'd made a mistake. We turned too early, and were on the wrong trail. We turned around and headed back. This trail needs more clear blazing and a sign to make the way clear! Here's a picture of the current unclear sign where we went wrong.

bad sign (not clearly visible when hiking up)

For the rest, it was a pretty straightforward hike: up 1,780 ft and back down again. But there are a few fun points of interest. First, here's something that might be described as a "slide"? This starts after you've done most of the uphill slog, so the grade is quite mild here. (I still don't understand why this is called Slide Mountain).

slide on Slide Mountain?

The footing on this trail is poor because it's often covered with pebbles and loose rock. Here's a look at one section of the trail where you can see where those pebbles are coming from.

some kind of conglomerate rock on the trail near the top

Here's the marked top of Slide Mountain. My first Catskills 3500-footer!

peak of Slide Mountain

There are some artifacts at the top. A slab of concrete?

concrete (maybe) at the peak

As we hiked back down, we noticed little flakes of frost on the ground. It was that cold! Some of the pine trees were covered in a fine layer of ice.

ice on pine trees near top of Slide Mountain

All in all, it was a fun hike, despite the gray day. Pretty easy compared to the NH 4000-footer hikes that I've done. I think Slide Mountain is one of the easier 3500-footers in the Catskills. Some of these mountains involve a bushwhack to the top. That will get interesting, for sure!

Mt Pierce and Mt Eisenhower

Today's hike: 10.6 mi | 6.5 h | 1.6 mph

I hiked up to Mt Pierce and Mt Eisenhower with Maggie's boy today. The forecast was about as good as it has been all summer, and it seemed like the perfect day to get the views from the summit of Eisenhower.

We started at the Crawford Connector. The hike up to Pierce is a steady, moderate, uphill climb through trees. You break out of the trees just below Mt Pierce, where there are spectacular views out to Eisenhower and off in the distance to Bretton Woods and Omni Mt Washington Resort.

view of Eisenhower from below Mt Pierce

view of Bretton Woods

You have to cut back uphill for a short jog up to the top of Mt Pierce. We found a couple of geodetic survey markers there - sweet!

"U.S. Geological Survey Marker Reference Mark"

"U.S. Geological Survey Marker Bench Mark"

The walk over to Eisenhower should have been easy. The col between the two mountains is not very deep. But it was tiring. It felt like a slog! Despite that, I enjoyed the mountain flora - interesting, tough little plants that looked a bit like broccoli. Even the lichen was beautiful!

flora in the alpine zone below Eisenhower

We stopped for a quick snack at the summit of Eisenhower, and enjoyed more amazing views - 360° around.

view of Mt Washington from Eisenhower

view of Eisenhower as you look back at it, heading towards the Edmands Path trail

We carried on hiking down the Edmands Path trail. I read somewhere that this is supposed to be a very well constructed trail. It was "okay". After descending the trail for about 30 minutes, we both were getting pretty tired. This may be the longest hike I've ever taken. So even though it was fairly easy, with moderate ascents and descents, I was pretty much ready to collapse by the time we got back to the road.

Yeah - the road. We made a big loop hike that's kind of shaped like a square. You start at the parking lot, hike east up Crawford Path to Mt Pierce, hike north to Mt Eisenhower, then hike back down and west to Mount Clinton Road where there's a second parking lot. Then there's a 2.3 mile hike back south on paved Mount Clinton Road to get back to the car. I perked up once I hit the road - that was easy going! Hiking such a big chunk of the trail on tarmac definitely improved our hiking time.

You couldn't ask for a better day to do this hike. I guess it could have been a little cooler. I'm not sure what the temperature was, maybe in the seventies. It was one of those still days, hardly even a breeze, even at the summits, which is rare.

A lot of other people had the same idea as we did. We crossed paths with numerous other hiking groups, and we had to share both Eisenhower and Pierce with others. That was okay, although I prefer more solitary hikes.

I've now hiked 26 4000-footers, so I've now crossed the halfway mark, w00t! Another fantastic day in the Whites!

Mt Chocorua via Champney Falls Trail

Today's hike: 7.6 mi | 4.5 h | 1.7 mph

I went for a hike up to Mt Chocorua with a friend, today. This was my first big hike of the season!

The bugs are pretty heavy, currently. It's mostly mosquitoes, but also gnats and black flies. Not being a fan of DEET, we used "Human Nature Insect Repel". It seemed to work to keep the bugs away, although we did find we had to reapply it (it was applied a total of 3x during the hike). We didn't collect any ticks on this trip, which was a surprise.

We took the Champney Falls trail. It was unexpectedly wet. My boots are old and sporadically leak. Despite my damp socks, I didn't get any blisters.

It was a beautiful day, and the tourists were out, as well as the bugs. We were mostly able to avoid traffic jams, and the peak of Chocorua was actually not very crowded - just a few small groups were chilling at the top.

Champney Falls

Pitcher Falls or maybe another part of Champney

I've never taken the side trail over to Champney Falls. We did that this time... it was nice, but not spectacular. The sign to the side trail says "Pitcher Falls" and "Champney Falls". I'm not sure what we were looking at. Maybe we saw both.

Looking up at Chocorua

It's always fun as you approach Chocorua's peak. It's rather exposed, and gives my heart a little flutter.

Obligatory USGS Geodetic Survey marker

Awesome wiew from Chocorua!

It was another great day in the Whites! Looking forward to the hiking season...

the White Ledge trail again

Today's hike: 4.3 mi | 3.5 h | 1.2 mph

We snowshoed around the White Ledge Loop again, this morning. It was a fabulous, blue-sky day. We'd had some light snow yesterday, and didn't expect to see any broken trail. In fact, it looked like one or two people had been around the entire loop, either yesterday or today.

White Ledge Trail sign submerged in snow

I like to break trail, so it was a little disappointing. However, on a day like today, you can't stay grumpy for long.

Trail on the approach to the lookout. Animal tracks accompanied us most of the way.

We went counter-clockwise. Once you pass the lookout, you get to the really fun section, where there's wide open space, and you can pretty much make your own trail. It's a moderate downhill walk, and you're basically floating on deep snow. Super fun!

Make your own trail!

Nice hike! I hope the snow keeps coming so we can do this a few more times before the season ends.

narrow trail on the way back

Boulder Loop Trail after the snow

We got some nice snow on Tuesday of last week. So we went back to check out the Boulder Loop Trail.

The parking lot has been completely plowed, now, so there's plenty of parking, once again. Thank you, government workers!

Driving in, we noted a team of perhaps eight people hauling 3-4 sledges. We thought maybe they were going ice-climbing.

Ever optimistic, we left our snowshoes in the car, taking only our Microspikes, and headed in. We passed the people with sledges, and asked what they were doing. Their plan was to go cook a meal, somewhere up on the trail where there's a view. It was quite an undertaking: they were carrying several heavy-duty pots and pans, and even a set of metal folding chairs!

After passing them and taking off on the left branch of the loop, the snow covering the trail began to get just a little choppy. We weren't post-holing, because the trail had been packed down pretty well by snowshoers over the last week. But our feet were slipping, creating divots in the snow, and the going wasn't easy. There were a few windswept areas where the snow deepened, too.

We got to the first lookout, then turned around and came back. In good weather, this would take us less than 30 minutes, but it took us about an hour. We encountered the intrepid team of winter chefs on the way down, struggling upwards with their sledges. I wonder what they made?

windswept Boulder Loop Trail

Boulder Loop Trail after the snow and rain

Today's hike: 2.8 mi | 2.5 h | 1.1 mph

I hiked around the Boulder Loop Trail with Maggie's boy this morning.

We got about a foot of snow here last Sunday. Then, yesterday, the temperature got up to nearly 40 F, and it rained and rained. So we brought both snowshoes and microspikes, not sure what to expect.

We had come here early in January, only to be turned back because the parking lot wasn't plowed, presumably due to the government shutdown (this parking lot is located in the White Mountains National Forest). Today, we saw that the short entrance to the parking lot had been plowed out and was now covered with a thick sheet of ice. I suspect this was due to "a guy with a plow who wanted to go ice climbing." In any case, I'm sending out a big "thank you" to whoever it was. This mini parking lot would probably hold about 5 cars, and there's some room for parking on the side of the Kanc too, if you don't mind risking your car that way.

"parking lot"

After hiking in for a few minutes, it appeared that the trail had been broken by a few people with snowshoes. We decided that microspikes were the way to go, and put them on.

We reached the initial "T" where the end of the loop meets the beginning of it. The snow covering the trail was broken going up left, clockwise, but the trail was unbroken on the return. It was clear that whoever had gone up before us had come back the same way. We decided to go clockwise too, and to try to get to the first lookout, and decide whether to continue from there.

We didn't hike far - just up to the big 30-foot sheer wall of rock - when we saw that the trail was no longer broken. We exchanged microspikes for snowshoes and went on.

pine needle carpet

Although the trail wasn't broken, it was fairly easy to follow. The rain from yesterday carried a lot of detritus to the trail. In places it was filled with dead, brown leaves from autumn. In others, the path was covered in a carpet of pine needles.

The snow was covered in a thick, supportive crust, no doubt formed after yesterday's rain. Our snowshoes tended to stay on top of the snow and not actually break through it most of the time. Overall, the hiking wasn't too difficult, so we decided to carry on to the top and complete the loop.

Perhaps this was a mistake. Getting to the top was easy enough. However, the second half of the loop was pretty difficult - actually, it was exhausting! Usually, I find the uphill going most tiring. However, we constantly post-holed through the snow on this side of the trail. There was a thick crust of ice over powdery snow, but it wasn't solid enough to hold our weight. I've never had such bad conditions snowshoeing before. I'd take a step forward, land on the crust, and then as I put my full weight onto that snowshoe, I'd break through the crust to fall another few inches or even get buried down to my knees in snow. Over and over again. Not easy!

Be warned: The trail will no doubt be a complete mess until a few more snowshoers come through and pack it down.

Although this was not a super-fun hike, it was just wonderful to get outside, for a change. We both have had cabin fever with the last few weeks of bad weather. It was a mostly cloudy day, but the sun broke through after we hit the first lookout, and we got some sun and blue skies for a big part of the hike.