Rambling 'Round Chocorua: 8/16/21

Headed down to the Paugus Brook valley between Mts. Chocorua and Paugus to check out two trail relocations - one short and one long - recently completed by the White Mountain Trail Collective. In the afternoon I headed up the Chocorua side of the Bee Line Trail and bushwhacked up to the remaining open patches of the old Bee Line Slide, which the trail once followed in its upper part.

I parked at the large lot at the end of Paugus Rd. (narrow and a bit rough), where you can access the Liberty, Brook and Bolles Trails. In early summer, this area is a mosquito nightmare, but in mid-August they were mostly absent.

Into the Sandwich Range Wilderness on the mellow Bee Line Cutoff.

The new junction of Bee Line Cutoff and Bee Line Trail, 50 yards south of the old one. The relocated section of Bee Line, about 150 yards long, goes up to the right and replaces a badly eroded section. Nice work, WMTC!

The second relocation completed by the Collective is a long one, about 0.7 mile on the Bolles Trail north of the Bee Line junction. On this map from CalTopo, the relocated section is on the right and the old route is on the left. The relocation bypasses several muddy areas and three decaying snowmobile bridges.

The new trail section meanders through the pleasant hardwood forest that cloaks the Paugus Brook valley.

The relocation comes back to the original trail shortly before this crossing of Paugus Brook on another snowmobile bridge, which is now closed to snowmobile travel is is open for pedestrian use.

The trail loops through the clearing of Mudgett's Camp. used during the big Paugus Mill logging operation in the early 1900s.

There are some artifacts here, which are protected by law and should not be disturbed.

I continued another 0.3 mile north up the trail across the broad, flat floor of the upper Paugus Brook valley, a wonderfully secluded nook of the mountains.

Then I headed a mile south back down the valley and turned up onto the Chocorua Branch of the Bee Line Trail. The lower mile of this trail is a delightful route up a remote side valley through birch and hardwood forest. This valley was burned in a 1915 forest fire.

The trail makes two crossings of the nameless brook that drains the valley.

Great footing in this section.

Up in the spruces the trail gets steeper and rougher.

Farther up, I started up the blowdown-choked old route of the Bee Line, abandoned in the 1990s due to steepness and erosion. I had followed this route all the way up back in 2006.

I soon veered off into prickly spruces in search of view ledges and then the open patches of the old Bee Line Slide.

A small ledge wall in the forest.

I made my way to a ledge with a fine view west across the Sandwich Range.

I found what appeared to be the old slide track in the woods.

Not far above I came to the first large open slab area on the old slide.

The steep ledges were dry and grippy.

Great view at the top of this spot. I lounged here in the sun for a while.

The old Bee Line Trail came onto the slide track somewhere in this area. The slide track is drawn in under "Spring" on this 1921 Chocorua Mountain Club trail map prepared by Arthur C. Comey. This trail was originally blazed in 1904 by guests of the nearby Locke Falls Cottage. It was taken over in 1908 by the newly-formed Chocorua Mountain Club. For some time the CMC called it the "Slide Trail." In the book, Our Mountain Trips, Part I: 1899-1908, edited by Jane English and Ben English, Jr., the editors' grandfather, Walter H. James, recounted a descent of the trail in 1908, down a “very steep and rough slide” which his companions descended by “clinging to the bushes” and “sliding down the rocks by sitting down, or else squatting.”

The slide track continues above.

When I came through here in April 2006, this strip of ledge was slimy and dangerously slick, and had to be bypassed. The 1972 edition of the AMC White Mountain Guide cautioned that “the open ledges are extremely hazardous when they are wet or icy.” In the mid-1990s, the upper section of the Chocorua section of Bee Line was moved off the tricky ledges of the old slide and onto more moderate wooded terrain to the south, meeting the Brook Trail 0.4 mi. lower than its original terminus. The 1998 edition of the AMC White Mountain Guide noted that the relocation had been made “due to erosion and poor footing that resulted from the trail’s steepness.” On this summer day the ledges were bone dry and a fun scramble.

Continuing up. In At the North of Bearcamp Water, his classic natural history chronicle of the Sandwich Range (published in 1893), Frank Bolles described this slide, as seen from the ledges on the south summit of Mt. Paugus: “A slide, invisible from other points, is seen to extend from the western foot of the peak far down into the forests of the Paugus valley.” By 1907, vegetation was starting to reclaim the slide, as Walter H. James noted in Our Mountain Trips: Part I - 1899 to 1908: “...the slide which Bolles mentions as being visible only from Paugus, could be seen plainly, although time has partly healed the scar.” In 1916, in his Passaconaway in the White Mountains, Charles Edward Beals, Jr. also admired the slide as seen from Mt. Paugus: “The huge slide on Chocorua – nearly the whole length of the western slope, which is invisible from all other points, is here seen in such awful grandeur as to cause the beholder to shudder.”

Huge steep slab off to the left.

Dramatic Chocorua terrain.

This may have been the top of the slide.

A ledge rampart high on the mountain.

Views for miles.

Big ledge expanse.

Looking down the Bee Line Trail valley and out to the silhouetted Sandwich Range.

It was not much farther to the big cairn at the Brook/Liberty Trail junction.

Basalt dike by the junction.

It was too late in the day to continue up to the summit, so I headed down the Liberty Trail, passing this fine south outlook along the way.

The eastern lakes: Chocorua, Silver and Ossipee.

Steep slabs on the Liberty Trail.

Jim Liberty Cabin, located at the site of the old Peak House, has recently been spruced up by the Forest Service. Note that no fires are allowed here, and no camping outside the cabin.

The story.

Chocorua's cone from a ledge above the Liberty Trail.