Hiking the East Gilford trail a couple weeks ago piqued my interest in the Blue ( Boulder) trail ...
TLV wanted to go hiking and this was on the way for her, so we set out for a moderate hike on Mt Belknap.
Gallery / slide show
This was a nice loop ... parked at the top of the Carriage Rd, walked down to the White trail, then Green, blue, yellow, Red back to the car.
At the parking lot we saw a volunteer working on a new kiosk.
The White trail ascended more than I remembered before its junction with the Orange Trail, but not too bad. Just enough to get the blood flowing. Shortly along the Orange Trail we reached the Green Trail and started a long, sometimes very steep descent. A certain amount of care required here, lots of gravel hidden by leaves. But no mishaps.
The Green Trail skirts the base of Mt Belknap with good footing and a clear trail. It looks like the Green Trail was the Blue Trail on the Roberts map; and in the woods, numerous green blazes show some Blue under or around the edges, and there are some bare Blue blazes here and there. We were concerned a couple times whether we might have missed a subtle junction with the Blue Trail , but when we finally reached the correct junction, there was no doubt we'd reached the correct one :
We headed up the Blue Trail and it wasn't long before we reached the rockfall. It was level, and although the trail appeared scary steep on the other side, it really wasn't bad. Just another of those walk-on-the-rock-edges spots that require some attention. Strong ankles are a real Good Thing too.
Across the Rockfall it wasn't long before we reached an outlook and ... LOTS OF !
There were so many blueberries, and in such inviting clusters ... it was hard not to stop and pick. So we did give in to a few handfuls ... but we left plenty for the birds and the bears.
Enjoying the last big outlook on the Blue trail we noticed some birds taking advantage of the air currents ... then TLV noticed one of them was a BIG bird and she said she thought it must be an eagle!!
Very exciting! This is the first I've ever seen!
We watched the eagle and several other birds of varying size ascend into the sky until we could no longer look into the bright sun.
Then we moved along to the summit of Mt Belknap.
We climbed the tower to look around a bit and discovered some bonehead had burned part of the platform. The damage was blocked off by some boards, and there was enough left to be able to stand and look around, fortunately. Hard to grasp the pointless destruction that oozes out of some people...
Anyway, from there we descended via the Red Trail and I got to show TLV the steps I helped the BRATTs build a couple weeks back. And I noticed a few new steps - the BRATTs have been busy!
We got back to the parking lot in time to chat a bit with Steve who had finished working on the kiosk and was packing up.
This just may the best kiosk I've seen in NH !
And by the way:
BRATTs also have a Facebook page