ARTIST'S BLUFF RIDGE: 3/3/13

Carol and I enjoyed a short morning snowshoe hike on the Bald Mountain/Artist's Bluff Path, starting at the Cannon Mountain parking area and climbing to the wooded 2340-ft. "summit" of Artist's Bluff. We were surprised and delighted to find four inches of soft untracked powder atop the previous snowshoe track. This is a great "mini" snowshoe hike if you only have an hour or so, with nice woods and a couple of small viewpoints. We did not continue to either Bald Mountain or the Artist's Bluff cliff because of the steep, rocky, snowshoe-unfriendly terrain approaching those destinations.

In the photo below, Carol snowshoes up the old carriage road portion of the trail.

Going along this little ridge, the snow-plastered conifers gave the impression of being on a higher ridge.

The viewpoint on the first "summit" knob looks across at the Cannon ski slopes, mostly obscured by fog.

A beautiful glade in between the knobs. This trail is well-maintained by the Trailwrights, with excellent blazing.

The outlook on the second bump looks south over Franconia Notch, which was unfortunately fogged in today.

All we could see in the Notch was Echo Lake and part of the Parkway winding alongside.

Snowshoeing back down through the hardwoods.

Latticework in the forest - a beautiful snowy setting in the mountains today.