I don't have any recent trips to write about, so I'll have to catch up with some older trips. Besides, the weather has been quite uncooperative for many months and there aren't many places we can go with this much snow all around.
Back in August 2013, we finally visited the White Mountains in New Hampshire. A fabulous trail that we hiked (defined as moderate but kicked our out-of-shape butts) is the Welch-Dickey Loop.
To get to the parking area, drive up Route 93 in New Hampshire. Take exit 28 and head East on Route 49. The parking area is off of Upper Mad River Road. There appear to be a few ways to get there, but I generally recall seeing signs that tell you which way to go. The only trail in the area (as far as the maps) was the Welch-Dickey Loop. This is only part of the parking lot, but it should give you an idea of crowds you might expect. Luckily, most of the people only go to the first lookout and then turn around. While we did see a number of people, it didn't feel crowded and we had at least bits of solitude here and there. (If you stopped to eat lunch, someone might walk by every 15-20 minutes.)
The trail starts out following a small stream. No worry about fording deep water here as the stream is only a trickle and you cross it only once.
The first mile or so of the trail is a rather steady climb upwards. There aren't too many places where the trail flattens out. It's either "up" or "more up". I guess they felt they were just getting the hard stuff out of the way before you get to the good stuff. Or perhaps once we were among "the good stuff", we didn't notice the elevation as much. (I believe it was the latter.)
Once you get towards the first viewpoint, you'll find the start of "the balds". These are flat, rocky areas where no trees survive. In this case, there may have been moss growing on the rocks at one point, but hiker traffic wore what little there was down to the granite below. Apparently hikers have worn away enough sensitive and endangered vegetation that they have barricaded certain areas of the trail to let some of the natural vegetation grow back.
At the end of the barricaded vegetation area, you get to the first viewpoint. Already it is a nice viewpoint. You think it's a pretty good view until you hike the rest of it and discover it's the bottom of the barrel. There's so much more to come for the next several hours.
The guidebook we used for this trail recommended the hike in a particular direction stating that the balds are difficult to go down and easier going up. This seemed like a good recommendation even on a dry day. I can't imagine sliding down this. If you lose your footing, you can fall for quite some distance. The photo below comes at least partly close to showing how steep the trail was.
You can't quite tell from the photo below, but the trail goes fairly steeply up the hill here. When you've already climbed in the heat of the sun for a bit, a view like this sure feels tiring.
The trail eventually winds up on this bald as well. Each time we climbed higher and higher, we could see mountains farther away.
Suddenly you can see the tips of the blue mountains far, far away in the background.
To guide hikers, there were occasional cairns here and there.
There was occasional respite from the sun here and there in the form of small patches of pine trees. It was darker and cooler among the trees and they provided some welcome shade.
Hard to gauge from the photo below, but this was a bit of a scary drop-off, especially when you are tired from hiking up and down mountains. The trail was angled slightly down towards the left so if you lost your footing, you might fall for quite some distance.
We started around 10:30am and finished around 4pm or so, stopping here and there (and there and there and there) for breaks along the way. The AMC hike book claimed we would finish in 3 hours. It took us closer to 4-5 hours with breaks, and we were tired at the end. There were a couple people who started after we did and passed us, and very few people who we passed. So we were probably among the slowest of the hikers that day.
All in all, a fabulous and recommended hike!
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