Piper is a sweet little mountain, I really like it a lot. Been there several times, and had a couple things in mind to do.
One was the Valley View trail, basically a loop off the main trail over Piper. The other was Swett Mountain. Or so I thought ....
Gallery / slide show
It turns out that what I've been thinking was Swett mountain is actually South Piper. This is a very open ledge with terrific views to the south. Very worthy. Swett mountain is lower and further south. It has views, but by the time I reached the trail junction I didnt have the juice to visit it.
But the main draw for me was the Valley View trail. I had made it partway down the VV once before, in the late afternoon. Mosquitoes drove me back. I'm glad they did. I would have had a lot of trouble with this trail as the shades grew longer.
Valley View starts off with a sign warning you about the slippery and steep scrambles. Having read similar warnings about Mt Major - and not finding them particularly warranted - I kind of discounted this warning.I think the Mt Major warnings are a little extra dire to account for the large numbers of um, casual, hikers it sees. Not so on the Valley View.
That was a mistake. This is a gnarly trail, not for the inexperienced. And if you have a dog you love - don't bring it on this trail.
The VV trail drops off the Piper trail and heads down the slope over many stretches of water and moss covered ledge. The footing is not good. The trail is not heavily traveled, and the blazes and treadway can sometimes require a bit of head scratching to spot. But it is navigable.
Dropping down and thru some nice woods ( where I saw a hare dash off thru the forest !! A rarity!) , there is a nice outlook into the valley. At this point I was rather surprised how high up I still was; the slippery descent is more strenuous than the distance leads you to think.
The trail then heads south, more or less parallel to the ridge, and the searches for the next blaze become more frequent. There are numerous 3 to 6 ft scrambles/butt slides over low ledges. Finally you reach a long ledge, perhaps 6-8 feet high and a hundred or so feet long along a small ravine. This was tough. The trail offers a foothold, and a tree near it, but the tree is at the top of the ledge and the foothold did not inspire confidence. A slip would likely result in a fall on sharp rocks. I opted to bushwhack to the base of the ledge and back up the brook. I'm happy with that choice, but the bushwhack was not trivial - basically across a rockfall of broken boulders covered by low brush.
Coming up the brook, I caught the trail again and it was immediately clear that a number of people must have been turned back by the ledge barrier - the trail became quite faint and more difficult to follow. Oh well ... forward!
Finally I reached the bottom corner of the loop, which breaks out onto an open flat rockfall - big broken sharp edged boulders with plenty of wobble and holes between them. And some of the vegetation between the boulders merely cover holes. Definitely a place to be careful. Further on, the trail heads up. And here, it heads up a steep rockfall - more broken boulders with big holes - big enough to lose a large man in ... the 3 vultures now circling overhead did nothing to ease my nerves.
I was *very* happy that the rocks were all dry. And that I was ascending. This would be a very nasty spot to descend, and probably quite dangerous if wet. There were several spots that required total commitment. Not quite what I'd call technical rock climbing, but not that far from it either. There were two places where I made the conscious choice not to look back at what I'd just climbed. I did not want to lose my nerve !
It was with considerable relief that I reached the top of the rockfall. I was very pleased to find the rest of the climb was straightforward; it would have been very bad to have been forced back what I'd just come up.
The rest of the hike was pretty uneventful - other than the spectacular views from South Piper. I ran low on water and time, though, so I didnt stay quite as long as I would have liked. But that's OK. I'll go back sometime. Just not via Valley View. My curiosity is sated; there is no need to walk that trail again :O !