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.