Having blown through all my personal/sick days already this year, when I had a set of appointments Tuesday I had to take a vacation day.
There was no way I was going to go home to do yard work on a vacation day , so after my last appointment I headed for the nearest mountain ....
Gallery / slide show
South Uncanoonuc is kind of a strange hike, what with the towers and access road. I've been wanting to investigate some of the other trails there anyway, and thought the 'Bickford viewing platform' sounded interesting. Looked like I could do a lowland walk, and circle the summit.
So I parked out on Mountain Road and headed into the maze ...
Trailhead parking was easy to find, there are several pulloffs. The one I parked at has a kiosk and a map. I think this is an intersection with an access road (closed) to the Goffstown reservoirs.
The trail junctions down low were not particularly well signed, but the map made it easy enough. Getting to the viewing platform involved a couple brief forays onto herd paths before finding the right path, but no real difficulty. The viewing platform is a nice spot to look around the marsh. There were a few Red winged blackbirds, some salamanders (adult newts? don't know) and many dragonflies but that was all the wildlife I saw on this trip. Seems like herons would be a good possibility, but none today.
The Bickford Trail and the power lines are a bit worn from ATV/snowmobiles, but the trail is dry enough that there was not much mud. Shortly after the viewing platform, I took a trail which I thought was the 'Summit Trail' . It leads in the right direction, and had an official-looking 'No motorized vehicles' sign ... and the mosquitoes were insistent that I move along ...
As far as I can tell, this trail is not the Summit Trail, but a narrow footpath that parallels it and eventually crosses the Link trail (in a 4-way junction) between the power line and the junction with the 'true' Summit Trail. See the map markup - the purple cross hatched drawing is the actual path I followed.
One direction went back toward the road, I was sure. So that left me two choices; I opted for the one that went uphill, and that took me shortly to the 3-way junction of the Link Trail/Summit Trail. From there, I went up the summit trail, looped CCW around the summit and then Walker trails, then back down to the Link Trail.
The views along the Summit & Walker trails were as expected. The view toward ManchVegas from the Walker trail is getting a bit overgrown, but still good. I didn't spend much time with the views today, though, it was getting late and I knew I had a gauntlet of mosquitoes to get through before I'd reach the car.
There is a bit of a maze between the power lines and the parking spaces, but there are signs, and if you just bear west and North you will eventually come out somewhere on the road.