Kettles Path Maintenance: 4/22/22

On a blustery day with alternating sun and spitting showers, I made a second trip to my newly adopted trail, the Kettles Path in Waterville Valley --  to clean drainages and check for blowdowns from the high winds of a nor'easter earlier in the week.

Though there were dozens of small branches strewn along the trail, this multi-limbed beech was the only major blowdown from the storm.

Cleared.

This fine spring at the base of The Scaur runs across the trail, and was shown on Arthur L. Goodrich's early maps of Waterville Valley. Goodrich opened the Scaur Trail in the late 1880s and the Kettles Path around 1890. Today's Kettles Path includes the steep upper 1/4 mile of the Scaur Trail; the lower part of the Scaur Trail has been abandoned.

Eleven of the trail's 15 drainages are on that upper 1/4 mile.These are well-built  rock waterbars, constructed in 2007 in a cooperative project of the Waterville Valley Athletic & Improvement Association and the Rey Center.

This is one of several waterbars along the steep climb through spruce forest on the north side of The Scaur.

After completing the work, time for a break at The Scaur, looking south across the valley to Sandwich Dome.

View out towards Lost Pass. Later in the day I would pay a visit to the large maple visible in the hardwood forest at the base of the Scaur cliffs.

Middle and South Tripyramid.

Late in the afternoon I dropped back off the short spur trail to The Scaur and headed east along the ridge on Irene's Path, soon passing Waterville's "Rock of Gibraltar."

Wandering along the ridge on Irene's Path, which was opened in 2014 to replace the storm-damaged Flume Brook Trail.

Where Irene's Path drops off to descend to the Waterville Flume, I continued off-trail along the attractive ridge.

My objective was an open sugar maple glade farther along the ridge.

It's become a favorite spot.

Mt. Tecumseh seen through the trees to the west.

I stayed here for a while, listening to the gusty northwest wind overhead and the song of a winter wren tumbling down from a nearby spruce-covered knoll.

Mossy ledge.

Leaving the glade.

After returning along the ridge, I bushwhacked down below the cliffs of The Scaur, stopping by to admire the big maple I had looked down on earlier in the afternoon.

Nice whacking descending to the Kettles Path.

One of two large white pines that tower over the Kettles Path.