east russell mountain, west russell mountain 7/26/14

vftt.org

Help Support vftt.org:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bryan

New member
Joined
Mar 2, 2004
Messages
1,019
Reaction score
85
Location
southeastern, nh
date: 7/26/14

trails: campground road, bushwhack

conditions: i parked at the upper day use lot where the road to russell pond first forks to the various camping areas. i headed up the right branch of the road and followed it to its end heading into the woods at campsite b7 (if memory serves...). good hardwoods heading up towards the col between east and west peaks. nearing the col i turned off to the east headed for the east summit. woods were occasionally scrappy, but mostly good up to the summit area. i investigated a couple different possible summit bumps and feel one seemed to ultimately be higher than the others. i dropped back to the col and headed towards west and soon hit a steep cliffy pitch i climbed around to the north before the grade mellowed out heading towards the highpoint. the first bump i came to had what seemd to be on old rock firepit on it, but no sign of an old tower so i continued west going over a couple scrappy blowdown covered bumps before reaching the old tower site. guy lines and some metal from the platform were evident around the site. i was pretty sure this was the highpoint, but continued to the west onto one more bump that felt roughly equivalent to the tower bump. a little scrappy in spots along the top of this peak. i headed back over to the tower highpoint then took a direct line back down towards the campground quickly hitting a steep pitch that i was able to carefully descend before getting into mostly good woods the rest of the way. i got lucky and ended up coming back out through the same camp site.

equipment: nothing in particular.

comments: with a fair amount of day left after a couple earlier hikes these peaks seemed like a good option. some nice woods on the slopes and interesting going in spots on the ridge line. a bit of moose sign on the ridge including a well worn yard between the peaks and some fresh bear tracks in the leaves up above the campground. no surprise there i suppose. cool to see the old tower remains up on the west peak and the firepit a short distance to the east was a neat surprise too. could be more lying around in that area, but i didn't spend too much time looking given the undergrowth. didn't find too much in the way of views other than a very limited look back to east peak from the top of the steep pitch on west. great day to be out.

bryan

[email protected]
 
Top