After gazing into Little Tunnel Ravine two days earlier from the outlook on the Benton Trail, I had a hankering to head partway into the ravine for a return visit. Back in 2013 John "1HappyHiker" Compton and I had probed deep into the ravine to the tallest of the so-called "Nine Cascades," a spectacular waterfall more than 100 feet high. The final quarter-mile of the approach to the waterfall was very gnarly on a steep rocky sidehill. With a couple inches of snow in the woods that would become wet and slippery with temperatures in the mid/upper 30s, I had no plan to try and reach the waterfall. Instead, I would head up the gentler part of the valley to a point where the walls close in, then climb to an upper old logging road, follow it to an old slide track, and continue beyond as far as the road would take me.
The gate on Tunnel Brook Road was still open, and for the second time this week I began with a walk up the east side Tunnel Brook logging road.
I left the road just before the bridge over Little Tunnel Brook, where there was a view of part of the north ridge of Mt. Clough.
I headed south up the valley, partly on an old logging road, passing this leaning yellow birch.
Wandering up the old logging road, with the head of the valley visible in the distance.
Little Tunnel Brook, a good-sized stream, was taking on its winter garb.
Delicate deer tracks in the snow.
Well into the valley, this eastern tributary stream joins from the left. At the head of its valley is a slide that fell during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
In the summer, this is an area of ledgy waterslides on the main brook.
On the road again.
A beautiful valley.
The Benton Trail ridge rises to the west.
Where the valley walls close in on the brook, I climbed up the slope to a higher road, used a century ago by the Fall Mountain Paper Co. when they logged extensively in the Tunnel Brook area.
This road led me to the first of three gullies marking a very old slide track on the east side of the ravine, one which was mostly revegetated by the 1950s.
Much of this slide track is cloaked with a beautiful open, even-aged spruce forest.
It reminded me of a planting by the Civilian Conservation Corps, but this grove is presumably all-natural.
The track of this old slide is visible on the LiDAR hillshade image seen here; the blue dot indicates the top. The slide is also shown on a sketch I
stumbled upon years ago in the Dartmouth College Library, in the papers
of Moosilauke forest historian J. Willcox Brown. It is labeled
"old slide, fairly well grown now." The undated sketch may have been
drawn by someone from the U.S. Forest Service. That sketch also shows a series of slides on the steep west wall of the ravine, below what was then a series of three outlooks on the Benton Trail. Another objective of today's bushwhack was to try and find views of the open rock patches remaining from those west wall slides.
I followed the road for a bit beyond the slide, then lost it in a rough area of rocks and holes. I whacked a short way farther up the slope and found another old roadbed, but this one was decidedly uninviting, so I bailed on continuing up the ravine.
I backtracked towards the old slide track and descended a rather steep slope through hardwoods, taking it slow due to the slippery wet snow.
Through the trees I could see the open rock patches of the old slides on the west wall. The Little Tunnel Ravine outlook on the Benton Trail is at the top of the ridge above them.
Farther down the slope I found a clear view of the northernmost slide patch.
Crazy steep up there, I don't think I'll be climbing up on that one.
Steep drop down to the brook from the view spot.
Heading back across one of the gullies of the old slide track.
Peering down the gully.
Nice hardwoods.
A view upstream to the prominent nub on the Benton Trail ridge.
Ice art.
Frozen cascade and pool.
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