After morning snow showers ended and skies began to clear, I headed down to Waterville Valley for a hike up the Timber Camp Trail, which offers unusual views of the Mad River Notch area and a great angle on Mount Tripyramid. It was nice to run into WMNF surveyor Kevin Tilton at the Depot Camp clearing. He had been taking measurements for a watershed study involving the Mad River.
There was just a dusting of snow on the Greeley Ponds Trail as it ascends towards Timber Camp Trail.
Sign at the junction.
Timber Camp Trail follows an old logging road up into the valley of Greeley Brook on the east side of Mt. Osceola. After its first hairpin turn it offers an initial peek up at the impressive Painted Cliff of East Osceola, with the snow-caked summit rising behind.
The trail ascends through corridors of small snow-crusted conifers.
At 0.6 mile from Greeley Ponds Trail the trail cuts along the base of a large open gravel bank. I'm not sure exactly how this opening was created, but it offers excellent views, especially in the leafless seasons.
There is an especially fine angle on the Tripyramids, with Flume Peak and Scaur Peak to their left.
The Tris looking rather wintry. The top of the North Slide pokes above Flume Peak.
Head-on view of the hollowed out Painted Cliff. In
the 1990s two friends and I
snowshoe-bushwhacked up to the talus slope at the base of the cliff. The
closeup view of the cliff was impressive, and the view out to the east was
wild and expansive. The whack was very thick in places and along the way
we traversed some sketchy terrain with big boulders and deep holes. We were also mindful of the potential for chunks of rock to peel off the cliff, evidenced by the huge gouge in the face and the jumble of rocks below.
Unique to this vantage point is the view of the western front of Mt. Kancamagus, featuring the K1 Cliff (R) and K2 Cliff (L). In the early 1900s both of these cliffs
were reached by trails built by Waterville Valley hikers, but those
paths are long gone.
A profile of Mad River Notch.
I was not surprised to find a couple of white pines amidst the spruces that surround this gravelly opening.
Timber Camp Trail continues another 0.3 mile to the small clearing of "High Camp," a logging camp used in the 1960s when there was a 185-acre logging cut here in the valley of Greeley Brook. The floor and south side of this valley are striped with old logging roads from that operation. Two documents
found online note that this valley did hold old-growth spruce, but the
1960s logged areas now support a scrubby growth of young birch and
conifer.
A few years ago this clearing had views of Mt. Tripyramid and the Painted Cliff, but these are now almost fully overgrown.
A large artifact.
From High Camp I followed an unofficial continuation of Timber Camp Trail that continues up the Greeley Brook valley and then ascends partway up its south wall.
Though it mostly follows sections of the 1960s logging roads, this unmarked route has one short steep and rocky stretch.
A thin line through a crowd of scrubby softwoods. There was 3-4 inches of crunchy snow up here.
A side view of the Painted Cliff.
Well up on the side of the valley the route follows a remarkably clear logging road contouring southeastward.
The route ends at a semi-open scrubby area with a striking view of the Painted Cliff and the bumpy ridge above.
Looking north through Mad River Notch to snowy Mt. Huntington and the dark profile of Mt. Hancock beyond.
Looking up at East Osceola.
The high-elevation flume on Mt. Kancamagus shows as a dark cut in the K1 Cliff. This was recently ascended by two backcountry adventurers, who surmounted a chockstone in the middle of the steep rocky cleft.
On the return trip, I paused at the gravel bank to admire the late afternoon light on the Tripyramids.
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