Catching up again on some springtime rambles around the Whites.
REEL BROOK TRAIL/BEECH HILL CLIFFS
On a late afternoon/evening trek I headed over to the west side of the Kinsmans to check out a relocation on the Reel Brook Trail that was newly roughed out by the WMNF Pemi District trail crew. The 0.2 mile long project is slated to be completed by the Trailwrights in July.
The lower two miles of Reel Brook Trail is a pleasant and well-maintained section, very enjoyable to walk.
There is a powerline crossing where you should be on the lookout for ticks. Surprisingly, I picked up only one going each way.
A nice cascade and pool on Reel Brook.
Nice!
I followed the scratched out relocation, which runs on a slope above the brook and bypasses two crossings that had been rearranged by recent storms.
When the relocation is complete, this will be the only crossing of Reel Brook along the trail.
With a few hours of daylight left, I continued farther up the trail and launched a bushwhack up the slope of Beech Hill to visit a clifftop I had been to once before, many years ago.
The woods were pretty open nearly all the way. Even the hobblebush was relatively mild.
Wide open as I approached the crest of the ridge and the clifftops on the other side.
The top of the largest cliff is well-guarded by mountain holly and other dense growth, and offers no open perches.
There is a good standing view of Mount Moosilauke and the southern end of Kinsman Ridge.
The little pointy peak of Mount Wolf from an unusual angle.
I made my way along the ridgecrest through dense prickly spruce and struggled out to a ledge perch I had discovered on my previous visit.
As I remembered, there is a beautiful view - enhanced by fresh spring greens - down the Black Brook valley to Mount Moosilauke, with Mount Clough in the distance on the right.
In addition to The Moose, the vista takes in Mts. Waternomee, Jim and Blue, as well as Blue's long, bumpy north ridge. A nice reward for an evening whack.
PASSACONAWAY CUTOFF & NANAMOCOMUCK SLIDE
My second spring maintenance trip to Passaconaway Cutoff, the adopted trail of the AMC Four Thousand Footer Committee, to clean drainages on the upper part of the trail and do some hobblebush brushing.
The water was up a bit from recent rains, but the crossing of the West Branch of Oliverian Brook was manageable.
A new blowdown that came down on the lower section since my trip earlier in the month.
Cleared.
Spring greens on my favorite hardwood section of the trail.
A nice little cascade on the West Branch, slightly off trail.
As the late Hal Graham, longtime stalwart of the Trailwrights and the BRATTS, often said: "Drainage, drainage, drainage." Cleaned 23 of them on this trip.
Earlier in the spring passing hiker John Poisson kindly cleared this multi-limb blowdown to provide passage for those heading to Mount Passaconaway or Square Ledge. Thank you!
With a few more cuts I was able to fully clear the trail.
The last drainage is just a few yards before the top of the Cutoff and the junction with Square Ledge Trail.
When time permits, my reward for completing the drainages is to climb 0.3 mile up Square Ledge Trail to the slide on Nanamocomuck Peak for some views. The sun was highlighting spring greens on the birches along the way.
Stove parts at a logging camp site used by the Conway Lumber Company's Swift River Railroad in the early 1900s.
Square Ledge Trail passes under the base of the Nanamocomuck Slide, which surged down this steep slope during the September 1938 hurricane.
A short scramble up the right edge of the slide leads to a shelf with a small seat. Above this point, climbing on the slide is treacherous due to loose gravel and stones atop crumbling ledge.
On numerous previous visits I had never seen a white pine on this slide. I was pleased to spot a tiny seedling over at the east edge of the gravelly swath.
Looking up at the cone of Mount Passaconaway.
For the short scramble you get a fine view north to nearby Hedgehog Mountain, mid-distance Mount Tremont and Bartlett Haystack, and distant Mount Washington.
Zoom on Hedgehog, Tremont and Washington. After savoring the views for a while, I brushed my way back down the Cutoff.
BOLLES TRAIL & BOLLES PASS
On a gray day I revisited the northern section of the lightly-travelled Bolles Trail between Mount Chocorua and Mount Paugus. It was the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend and the Champney Falls parking lot was hopping. But once onto Bolles Trail I didn't see a single hiker, only a couple of crazy mountain bikers who had come over Mount Chocorua.
The Bolles Trail offers pleasant hiking as it follows Twin Brook up the valley.
The trail makes ten unbridged crossings of Twin Brook plus one of a tributary. At normal water levels they are generally pretty easy.
A washout from one of our recent storms, perhaps the one in December 2023.
An unexpected rock scramble along the edge of the brook.
The trail climbs steadily to the broad pass between Chocorua and Paugus. It's a neat, secluded plateau. The Bolles Trail is named after the naturalist Frank Bolles, an avid
explorer of the Chocorua-Paugus region in the late 1800s. With
assistance from local Tamworth residents, he reopened this historic
route through
the valleys between those two peaks in 1891, when he called it the "Lost
Trail." A chapter titled "Following a Lost Trail" gives a fascinating
description of this route in his
classic 1892 book, At the North of Bearcamp Water. It would seem fitting to bestow the name "Bolles Pass" to the saddle between Paugus and Chocorua.
From the pass I headed off-trail up the steep slope on the west side to visit a small cliff I had been to a couple of times in the past.
A line of cliffs, mostly hidden in the woods, lines the west side of the pass.
After a bit of thrashing around I found the ledge, which offers an intimate view of Mount Chocorua and the Sisters.
With binoculars I could see a couple of hikers standing atop the iconic peak.
Zoom on a favorite bushwhack ledge on a Chocoura spur. It has an impressive view of Mount Paugus.
A framed view of the Ossipee Range.
Before heading down I visited a wet mountain meadow in the pass, on the other side of the trail.
Painted Trilliums.
For the descent back to the Kanc, I followed an obscure and overgrown (but still marked) snowmobile trail that parallels the Bolles Trail on the slope to the east.
The snomo trail passes through some fine forest, but it's obscure enough that I temporarily lost it three times. I wouldn't recommend it as a hiking route.
