Sunday, November 29, 2009

Weekend Warrior

Once again another week has gone by, and the totals aren't pretty, but I had a great weekend. Saturday I headed up to Crawford Notch to check out the 6-10 inches of new snow that they got Friday night. I couldn't find a plowed out trailhead anywhere so I parked at the AMC Highland Center and broke trail on the 0.7 mile Around the Lake Loop. It was fun to get on the snowshoes again. I looped the lake 3-4 times (lost count) plus added on the Red Bench Trail for a 40 minute +/-4 mile run. On the ride home I found muscles that I haven't used in a while!

Jess braving the elements at Bretton Woods on Saturday


In the afternoon Jess and I headed up to ski the Bretton Woods golf course. They had 4k of groomed terrain that we were more than happy to sample. We spent about an hour classic skiing, then I helped Jess on some technique on her new skate skis. I'm looking forward to winter. Jess seems to like skate skiing so far, and I bought our seasons passes to Jackson XC, so it better be a good snow year.

View of Mt. Washington from Black Cap

Today I headed up to the Green Hills Preserve right here in North Conway. Part of my training plan is to get in a long mountain run every week, so I started my run by heading up the Red Tail Trail to the summit of 2,369ft. Black Cap. The trail climbs about 1,700 ft. in 3.4 miles. It's great windy singletrack most of the way to the summit. It is the hidden gem of the valley. From there I headed down the Mason Brook snowmobile trail towards the summit of Peaked Mt (1,793 ft.). I hadn't been on this mountain since 2004 or 2005. Wow, I forgot how great the views are from there. After heading down Peaked I made my way over to Middle Mountain (1,857 ft.), the last summit on my journey. I've been on Middle once, many moons ago. I found another great view with some more great trails. This was the halfway point. From here I headed back across the ridge skipping the summits and headed back down the Red Tail. The whole trip was around 15 miles in 3:04:36. The elevation gain was around 4,500 ft despite the fact that I never topped out over 2,400 feet. Kind of like 7Sisters!

Nice rockwork on the Red Tail Trail

Weeekly totals: 27 miles, 6.5 hours
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3 comments:

  1. pbazanchukNovember 29, 2009 at 5:58 PM

    The webcam shot from the Top of the Quad had an awesome view of the snow on the Rockpile and west slope. Thanks for sharing the Red Tail/Black Cap/etc. trail description. Hope the winds calmed a bit for you.

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  2. Jedi DadiDecember 1, 2009 at 5:25 AM

    Snowshoeing in November....nice!

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  3. KevinDecember 6, 2009 at 7:21 AM

    Paul, the Red Tail Trail is great. Have you ever been up Black Cap? Let me know if you'd like a tour.

    Steve, it was nice to get on the snowshoes early. I got to do a run once in October in 2005, but that year we got very little snow after that. I have a feeling we'll have a decent winter this year.

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