amstony
New member
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2004
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The day started out fine as I headed north, very warm and pleasant in So. NH. But the weather reports up north indicated it was not a nice day.......despite that I decided to go and bag a NEHH peak, specifically Sandwich Dome.
As I headed up the Drakes Brook Trail off of Highway 49 in Waterville Valley at 9:35 AM, it started raining. This continues my streak of rainy and no view hikes that started last September....
Optimistically I took my lightweight binoculars with me.
The Drakes Brook Trail is overall a very nice trail to hike on. Nowhere was it very steep and has only a few rocky areas, nothing to write home about. What it did have was about a dozen blowdowns spread out along the length of the trail, some easy to bypass and only a few actually requiring some effort. The junction with the Sandwich Dome Trail came up rather quickly and is very obvious. I reached the summit in only an hour and 58 minutes, way ahead of book time, and I had not even been moving that quickly.
At the summit, which is open, the rain and wind really picked up and views were nothing, only clouds, fog and rain . I stayed here less than 5 minutes, and ate my now soggy and crushed ham and cheese sandwich on Sandwich! It tasted good anyway.
On the way down I took the Sandwich Dome trail back to the trailhead. This trail was rather steep in places, and there was a good number of wet rock slabs. It had also stopped raining for a few minutes, so I dried off some as I headed down. Though it was 8/10 of a mile shorter, I only saved a few minutes on this trail.
All told the hike was 8.2 miles r/t, 3 hours 51 minutes on the trail, and 2600 feet elevation gain. Despite the nasty weather, it was still fun and I have now completed 73/100 on the NEHH list.
As I headed up the Drakes Brook Trail off of Highway 49 in Waterville Valley at 9:35 AM, it started raining. This continues my streak of rainy and no view hikes that started last September....
Optimistically I took my lightweight binoculars with me.The Drakes Brook Trail is overall a very nice trail to hike on. Nowhere was it very steep and has only a few rocky areas, nothing to write home about. What it did have was about a dozen blowdowns spread out along the length of the trail, some easy to bypass and only a few actually requiring some effort. The junction with the Sandwich Dome Trail came up rather quickly and is very obvious. I reached the summit in only an hour and 58 minutes, way ahead of book time, and I had not even been moving that quickly.
At the summit, which is open, the rain and wind really picked up and views were nothing, only clouds, fog and rain
. I stayed here less than 5 minutes, and ate my now soggy and crushed ham and cheese sandwich on Sandwich! It tasted good anyway.On the way down I took the Sandwich Dome trail back to the trailhead. This trail was rather steep in places, and there was a good number of wet rock slabs. It had also stopped raining for a few minutes, so I dried off some as I headed down. Though it was 8/10 of a mile shorter, I only saved a few minutes on this trail.
All told the hike was 8.2 miles r/t, 3 hours 51 minutes on the trail, and 2600 feet elevation gain. Despite the nasty weather, it was still fun and I have now completed 73/100 on the NEHH list.
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