Acteon Ridge Ramble: 4/2/21

On a cold day with highs in the 20s I had hoped to do a snowshoe bushwhack on a firm base to some slides, but there were only a few patches at the trailhead and a test sample revealed grainy snow that was not very supportive. So Plan B was a favorite bare ground spring bushwhack around Acteon Ridge.

I started out on the Old Waterville Road and made a brief stop at the Foss and Burbank Cemetery, in which are buried family members of the earliest settlers in Waterville Valley. According to Waterville Valley historian Preston Conklin, the cemetery dates back to 1831. Because the gravestone surfaces are fragile, no physical contact and no rubbings of the inscriptions are permitted.

Nice walking on Old Waterville Road.

Also beside Old Waterville Road is the cellar hole of Moses Foss, the first settler in Waterville Valley, who moved here with his wife and six children in 1819. He and Josiah Gillis received the original land grant for Waterville from the NH Legislature.

Typical scene of abandoned farmland - stone wall and a sugar maple.

Granite slabs on a low spur of Acteon Ridge along a (currently) unofficial mountain bike trail known as the Ledges Trail.

Hardwood whacking, a springtime staple.

Rocky slope.

Giant oak.

Boulder tandem.

View of the Campton Range from the lower end of the "ramp ledges."

The upper "ramp ledges."

The two Black Mountains, darkly wooded as the name implies.

Relaxing....though with temp in the twenties it required some bundling up.

Lichen-crusted wall.

A cliff with style.

Roof rock.

Open spruce forest on Middle Acteon Peak.

View ledge overlooking the lower Smarts Brook valley...

...and looking up to Sandwich Dome and the higher Black Mountain.

Big white pine encountered at ~2000 ft. while whacking down a little valley in the Wilderness.

Wild-looking forest.

Remote hardwoods.

Neat little waterslide on a tributary of Smarts Brook.

Stream runout

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I was able to cross Smarts Brook, taking care to avoid icy rocks.

Smarts Brook beaver meadow and the lower Black Mountain.