PigPen, OneStep and I started the day with the grandiose idea of hiking both Black Crescents, plus Crescent and Randolph...
Finding the Bog Dam Road approach from the West gated, we retreated to Gorham and parked at the end of the road passing Moose Brook State Park. It was a lovely day for bushwhacking - 40's, fog and drizzle! Following a bearing to the S Peak of Black Crescent, we soon found ourselves in a heavily logged area overgrown with a thicket of moose maple, alders and raspberries. All of our usual strategies to find easier travel (heading uphill, changing course) failed to extricate us from this wet, face-slapping tangle. Finally, after 2 hours (and considerable whining by yours truly), we neared the ridge and beautiful open mature forest. The WMNF boundary line here, leading to the summit, has been liberally blazed with red.
As other posters have noted, there is still lots of snow at elevation. We put on our snowshoes at 2400' and enjoyed the extension of Winter! The route-finding to the main summit then over to N Peak is straightforward, along a broad ridges. We retraced our steps but, instead of descending into the undergrowth maze, continued South along the ridge to Hunters Pass. I had hoped to descend through Ice Gulch, but PigPen's belief that this was not a wise course of action proved to be true. This steep sided ravine was filled with fast moving water, intermittently spanned by snow bridges. Instead we followed the North side of the gulch's rim down, soon hitting overgrown skidder paths, then overgrown logging roads, then (hurray!) wide-open logging roads. This main road took an S-shaped path down the mountain and, of course, intersected our tortured ascent route before eventually dumping us out 1/10 mile below our cars. In retrospect this road would have been a much better avenue for our ascent, but we rejected it because it didn't appear to be heading in the "right" direction when we crossed it.
What we expected to be an "easy" day turned into a 7 3/4 hour adventure! The Mountains, even "mere" 3000fters, still have a lot of lessons to teach!!
Finding the Bog Dam Road approach from the West gated, we retreated to Gorham and parked at the end of the road passing Moose Brook State Park. It was a lovely day for bushwhacking - 40's, fog and drizzle! Following a bearing to the S Peak of Black Crescent, we soon found ourselves in a heavily logged area overgrown with a thicket of moose maple, alders and raspberries. All of our usual strategies to find easier travel (heading uphill, changing course) failed to extricate us from this wet, face-slapping tangle. Finally, after 2 hours (and considerable whining by yours truly), we neared the ridge and beautiful open mature forest. The WMNF boundary line here, leading to the summit, has been liberally blazed with red.
As other posters have noted, there is still lots of snow at elevation. We put on our snowshoes at 2400' and enjoyed the extension of Winter! The route-finding to the main summit then over to N Peak is straightforward, along a broad ridges. We retraced our steps but, instead of descending into the undergrowth maze, continued South along the ridge to Hunters Pass. I had hoped to descend through Ice Gulch, but PigPen's belief that this was not a wise course of action proved to be true. This steep sided ravine was filled with fast moving water, intermittently spanned by snow bridges. Instead we followed the North side of the gulch's rim down, soon hitting overgrown skidder paths, then overgrown logging roads, then (hurray!) wide-open logging roads. This main road took an S-shaped path down the mountain and, of course, intersected our tortured ascent route before eventually dumping us out 1/10 mile below our cars. In retrospect this road would have been a much better avenue for our ascent, but we rejected it because it didn't appear to be heading in the "right" direction when we crossed it.
What we expected to be an "easy" day turned into a 7 3/4 hour adventure! The Mountains, even "mere" 3000fters, still have a lot of lessons to teach!!
