mtruman
New member
I've been lurking here for a long time and finally got sponsored to join a couple of months ago. Haven't posted since I wanted to have some actual hiking to report and it's been a winter of downtime. We spent last weekend in Pinkham and got in a few short hikes to shake off the winter rust and went to the fantastic Mount Washington Observatory event in North Conway Saturday night. Here's a recap of the hiking portion. Look forward to more participation here.
Drove up early Saturday morning and stopped by Chocoura Lake on the way to soak in the first beautiful vista.
We stayed at Joe Dodge Lodge in Pinkham on Saturday night so we decided to get a hike in there on Saturday. Since we needed to be back in North Conway for the event Saturday we decided to go for a moderate one and picked Lowe's Bald Spot. First time we'd been up there are it's one of the best views for the effort that you can find. The trails were completely lined with every variety of spring flower.
Painted Trillium
Red Trillium
Trout Lilly
Bunchberries just beginning to come out
The view from Lowe's Bald Spot was incredible. The sun broke through just before we got to the top.
Lenticular over Adams and Monroe
View North up the valley
Shoulder of Mt Washington
Sunday morning I snuck in a quick hike to Lost Pond
We wanted to get in one more good hike on Sunday before heading home. We decided to do the Wildcat River Loop. Got started and at the first water crossing we go stymied. Bushwhacked up and down the shore a ways and found no reasonable spot. Looks like the rain on Saturday night was more than I thought. Since we knew there were several more crossings after this one we decided to try a different option.
We headed off to Mountain Pond which is described as a nice 3 mile loop around a the pond. Hmmm. Guide said something about portnetial difficulites in spring and wet conditions. Hmmm. In short the trail was more of a continual bushwhack through soaked underbrush while climing over wet "greasy" rocks. Doesn't appear that it gets much human travel - but the moose clearly like it. We followed several sets of moose tracks the whole way around and there were fresh piles of scat every few hundred feet. As much as I would like to see a moose I was actually pretty glad that it wasn't there since it would have been pretty close quarters with the path. At the far end of the pond we got a beatiful view across to South Baldface and several other peaks. Mud, moose poop, wet soggy bushwhack over slick rocks. All in all a really nice morning walk.
More Painted Trillium after the rain
Finished the day off with a great lunch at Moat Mountain. Just a fantastic weekend.
Rest of the pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mtruman4...eat=directlink
Drove up early Saturday morning and stopped by Chocoura Lake on the way to soak in the first beautiful vista.
We stayed at Joe Dodge Lodge in Pinkham on Saturday night so we decided to get a hike in there on Saturday. Since we needed to be back in North Conway for the event Saturday we decided to go for a moderate one and picked Lowe's Bald Spot. First time we'd been up there are it's one of the best views for the effort that you can find. The trails were completely lined with every variety of spring flower.
Painted Trillium
Red Trillium
Trout Lilly
Bunchberries just beginning to come out
The view from Lowe's Bald Spot was incredible. The sun broke through just before we got to the top.
Lenticular over Adams and Monroe
View North up the valley
Shoulder of Mt Washington
Sunday morning I snuck in a quick hike to Lost Pond
We wanted to get in one more good hike on Sunday before heading home. We decided to do the Wildcat River Loop. Got started and at the first water crossing we go stymied. Bushwhacked up and down the shore a ways and found no reasonable spot. Looks like the rain on Saturday night was more than I thought. Since we knew there were several more crossings after this one we decided to try a different option.
We headed off to Mountain Pond which is described as a nice 3 mile loop around a the pond. Hmmm. Guide said something about portnetial difficulites in spring and wet conditions. Hmmm. In short the trail was more of a continual bushwhack through soaked underbrush while climing over wet "greasy" rocks. Doesn't appear that it gets much human travel - but the moose clearly like it. We followed several sets of moose tracks the whole way around and there were fresh piles of scat every few hundred feet. As much as I would like to see a moose I was actually pretty glad that it wasn't there since it would have been pretty close quarters with the path. At the far end of the pond we got a beatiful view across to South Baldface and several other peaks. Mud, moose poop, wet soggy bushwhack over slick rocks. All in all a really nice morning walk.
More Painted Trillium after the rain
Finished the day off with a great lunch at Moat Mountain. Just a fantastic weekend.
Rest of the pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mtruman4...eat=directlink
