June 14, 2008 Hike #1
It's time to get back to work on completing the list for New England's 100 highest. My last new peak for this list was January 19th when I climbed Vose Spur (#93). The toughest part of today's hike wasn't the hike itself, but the drive to get there which took close to three hours. This is a very remote mountain and required some driving on logging roads. I found the directions on Papa Bear's website helpful and accurate. Madison was with me and was quite happy to be hiking. Here she is on the first of three logging bridges.
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The trail follows an old logging road for about 2 miles. A little before I reached Snow Mountain Pond the road split where I found this sign. Perhaps both roads went to the pond, but I took a right.
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A few minutes later I was at the pond where I found some signs stating that campfires were by permit only. I continued on what was now a very, very muddy road until I reached the north end of the pond where I found these arrows.
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Now the real trail started. Up we went.
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Overall I didn't have trouble following the unmarked trail, but there were lots of blowdowns making the trail tough to follow at times. As I neared the summit I got my first view of the day.
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A couple minutes later I was at the summit where Madison went to check out the old ranger cabin.
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There was no natural view from this 3960' summit, so I decided to climb the tower. Or should I say most of the tower since there was no top.
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This was #94 on my New England 100 highest list. This mountain also has quite a bit of prominence so it also makes the list for New England's 50 finest. This was #24 for me. Here's the view to the west overlooking Big Island Pond.
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Looking south
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Here's the view to the southeast towards the Bigelow Range.
I've never climbed Cranberry Peak, so I guess I'll go do that next.
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Maddie and I made our way down the mountain.
We then bushwhacked about 50 feet to the north end of Snow Mountain Pond . . .
. . . where Madison decided to cool off on this hot June day.
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We retraced our steps back to the truck before driving over to the Bigelow Preserve.
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