A pretty nice spring day for an interesting
bushwhack to the highest summit in the Campton Range. I went up the long,
curving NE ridge and down through the bowl of Chickenboro Brook.
Springtime and the little brooks are flowing.
On the rocks.
Up a familiar drainage.
This is bear country. In fact, I returned to this area the next day and spotted a bear not far from where this picture was taken.
A good-sized black cherry on the ridge.
A fine hardwood ridge.
Twisted.
The first substantial snow patches.
Ridgetop erratic with a ferny cap.
Sachem Peak and Jennings Peak.
View to Mt. Israel and the Sandwich Notch area. Upper Hall Pond was still frozen.
Triple trunk.
Another triple trunk.
Catskill-like.
Deer tracks.
A pretty springtime scene.
Into the conifers. So far, so good.
Uh-oh. A quarter mile of postholing misery on a gentle northern slope, sometimes with water underneath. Up to two feet of snow, at 2300 ft., on May 1st.
A weathered old giant.
Surprisingly, some bare ground on the ridgecrest on an eastern spur of Weetamoo.
Tons of moose poop up here.
More snow, even in the open hardwoods.
I was glad to turn the corner to SW-facing slopes.
Nice!
Little rocky meadows dot the ridge.
Mt. Weetamoo in sight ahead.
Clamshell fungus.
Nice hardwood col.
A fine spruce overlooks a meadow.
Tandem poops.
One of the main objectives was the wonderful open fern glade on the east side of Mt. Weetamoo.
Mark Klim and I discovered this special spot when we climbed Weetamoo in 2016.
Sandwich Dome.
View to the Ossipees and the north end of the Squam Range.
Heading up to the summit of Weetamoo.
One more stretch of postholing.
Summit of Mt. Weetamoo (2548 ft.). The summit register was saturated and mushy. There was a trail up Mt. Weetamoo in the late 1800s, starting at the large Robey farm in the Chickenboro Brook valley, and Moses Sweetser's comprehensive guide to the White Mountains gave a detailed description of the view.
Stinson Mountain from the ledgy summit.
A wide view from a south-facing clifftop, all the way out to Mt. Monadnock. The Squam Range and Mt. Prospect in Holderness are prominent in the foreground.
Campton Mountain to the west. Killington could be seen on the horizon.
Rugged terrain.
A short re-visit to the fern glade.
Golden late afternoon light in the hardwoods at the start of the descent.
Endless hardwoods cloak the slopes of the Chickenboro Brook bowl.
A magnificent maple.
What a tree!
I followed soon-to-be-official mountain bike paths on the lower slopes.
Beaver pond on Chickenboro Brook. The peepers were peeping! And several Barred Owls were hooting on the walk out.
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