Spring Fever on Dickey Mountain: 3/14/25

A sunny day with temps rising into the mid-50s brought on a bout of spring fever and a desire to bask for a while on some bare ledge. Old favorite Dickey Mountain fit the bill, though I knew conditions would be deteriorating in the warm afternoon sun on this south-facing trail.

 

The sun was super bright in the hardwoods climbing up to the first ledge.  The snow was still firm at this point.

Ice formations on the final approach to the first ledge.

There it is!

Looking up the huge slab to Dickey and Welch Mountains.

Long view to the south.

The track from a fat biker who descended from the summit of Dickey. This guy almost took me out as I was starting up the climb above the junction with the Dickey Notch Trail. I heard a humming sound and looked up to see him barrelling down at me at a high rate of speed, out of control. I was able to sidestep quickly out of the way. He was going so fast he probably didn't hear the imprecations I hurled his way.

The trail crosses the most expansive Dickey ledges high on the south face of the mountain.

Looking across those ledges to the west.

Great views where the trail circles around on the west side of the summit: Mt. Wolf, the Kinsmans, the Cannon Balls, Cannon and the Franconia Range. Fisher Mountain in the foreground.

Moosilauke, with the ice cliffs of Jobildunc Ravine seen to the right of the summit.

Lots of bare ledge on the east side of Dickey's summit, looking over Welch Mountain to Sandwich Notch.

Looking north to the several wild southern spurs of Mt. Tecumseh. The sharp summit of Tecumseh pokes up above a white pine.

My favorite view from Dickey is the sprawling ridgeline of the western Sandwich Range.

Scaur Peak, the Tripyramids and the Sleepers. I had a great look into Avalanche Ravine between Scaur Peak and North Tripyramid, where I had been bushwhacking two days earlier.

The mass of Sandwich Mountain: L to R, Jennings Peak, the main summit, and the two Black Mountains.

This is what I came here for, and I had the place to myself for an hour and a half except for a couple of passing hikers.

 

On the way back I bushwhacked a bit down on the NW slope on mostly firm snow for a unique view of the remote Shattuck Brook valley. In the early 1900s there was a rough woods road up this valley, which briefly became an official WMNF trail in the early 1940s. It was abandoned by 1945 and a description never made it into the AMC White Mountain Guide. In 2017 I made a snowshoe bushwhack up the valley on wonderfully firm snow to some of the ledges seen in the upper right of the photo.

As expected, the trail was a slippery chopped-up mess going down in the afternoon. For part of the descent I exchanged spikes for snowshoes to obtain more stable footing.

Looking across the Welch-Dickey bowl to Sandwich Mountain from the lower ledge slab. From here down the descent was a slippery mix of slushy snow, crumbling ice and bare rock - the price you pay for this gorgeous spring-like weather.