Roberts and Faraway (2/28/21)

The four thousand footers were out for this weekend due to high winds, so that meant finishing up the White Mountains or continuing on the Maine high peaks was a non-starter. I really needed to get out for a hike, though. I haven't hiked in a couple weeks, and I am nowhere near prime hiking shape. An individual recently created a hiking patch for the Winter Ossipees, so I decided to start working on that this weekend. I had an ambitious plan for this hike; I wanted to summit four peaks: Roberts, Faraway, Turtleback, and Bald Knob.

Of the ten Ossipee peaks needed for the patch, five of them lie within the Castle in the Clouds area in New Hampshire. My girlfriend Dragonfly and I already hiked all the Castle in the Clouds peaks last spring, so I had some familiarity with the area. The two most popular peaks in that area are Shaw and Roberts, both of which offer great views without only a mildly strenuous hike.

After the equipment difficulties I had last hike on the Bigelows, I had to send my usual pack, my Osprey Stratos, in for repair. I own six hiking packs (I know I'm crazy), so you would think coming up with a backup option wouldn't be hard. You would be wrong, though. I probably would have used my Osprey Exos, but that also had to be sent in for repair alongside the Stratos. My EMS pack is a small summer daypack, so that wasn't going to work. My Zpacks pack is a long-distance backpacking pack and is very expensive, so I didn't want to accidentally mess it up on a winter hike. My Osprey Xenith, the one I used on Owl's Head, is way too big for a daypack, so that was out as well. That left my Osprey Atmos, which is a 65-liter backpacking pack, as my only choice. It's big for a daypack, but it distributes weight well, and it's only a pound heavier than my usual Stratos pack. It looked weird carrying that big pack on a small day hike, but it did perform well.

I started my day off with some luck, as I got the last parking spot in the parking area. I then turned towards the Mt. Roberts Trail, which offered a straight shot up to Roberts. It was a fairly easy hike for the first couple miles, and I got some great views along the way. I also passed a lot of people, and I knew that I was pushing myself a little harder than I should be.

Shaw and the other eastern Ossipees from the Roberts approach.

The Mt. Roberts Trail is 2.5 miles long, so I assumed that the snowshoe track that I had been following would lead right to the top of the peak. I was surprised, then, when the snowshoe track simply disappeared after 2 miles. I assume that whoever created the track decided the going was too tough and never summited. Either that, or they didn't know where the summit was and thought that they had already hit it. Either way, I suspected that given that circumstance, all those people behind me were going to be happy that I was now in front of them breaking trail with my snowshoes. It took me about an hour and 15 minutes to summit Roberts, which wasn't great time, but not terrible considering the uphill and the trail breaking at the end.

I continued on past Roberts onto the High Ridge Trail, which would take me to Faraway. The going here was tough, as it appeared that no one had been on the trail for a long time, and so I had to break perfectly undisturbed snow. There was a track, but it was a few inches below the surface. I gritted my teeth and plowed through, but I was becoming aware of the fact that if I had to do a lot of breaking, I wouldn't have the energy to do Turtleback and Bald Knob, as they would add several miles to the hike.

The High Ridge Trail.

I was actually cheating a bit when it came to finding Faraway Mountain. I didn't really know where it was, and I didn't have a good map to find it. However, I knew that Dragonfly had hiked it a while back, so I was able to use her AllTrails recording to find it. I was briefly excited when I found the trail to Faraway, as there was a cross-country ski track, and I thought maybe I would be able to follow that for a while and not have to break trail as much. Unfortunately, the ski track ended fairly abruptly, so it didn't offer much help.

Actually, the ski track was a strange mystery. I found both ends of the cross-country ski track, one on the trail to Faraway, and one on the High Ridge Trail, but I had no idea how the skier got up there. You would think that maybe there were some footprints where the skier put on their skis, but I didn't see those, either. It was weird.

The trail to Faraway was pretty easy, and it was pretty obvious when I summited, because there was a big radio tower at the top, which wasn't exactly the best scenery. Still, it was a nice check mark, as it was my second Ossipee winter peak and my seventh Ossipee peak overall.

As I began to descend, I was still breaking trail pretty much the entire way, and it became clear that I wasn't going to get Turtleback and Bald Knob this day. I continued down the High Ridge Trail until I found the Faraway Mountain Trail, and then I switched over to descend on that. Interestingly, the Faraway Mountain Trail does not actually go to the summit of Faraway Mountain, so I am not sure what's up with the name.

A bridge over a stream on Faraway Mountain Trail.

Yes, I know that you don't see a bridge or a stream,

but you'll just have to trust me.

I did run into two nice guys on the way down who were skiers skinning up the mountain. I asked them where they had been, but it turned out that they hadn't been where I had been, so they couldn't have been the mystery skiers who left the tracks I had followed. Regardless, we chatted for a few minutes, and I was happy to see that I wasn't totally alone up in the higher part of the Ossipee mountains.

Gravity was my friend on the way down, and I appreciated that. However, the temperature was not my friend. It was very warm compared to normal winter hiking, with temperatures ranging up towards 40 degrees. I was hiking with only a base layer shirt and no jacket on my torso, and I wisely made the decision to leave my base layer pants at home and just hike in my hiking pants. Regardless of those choices, I was still overly warm.

I wasn't the only thing that was warm, though. The trees, and specifically the ice in them, were warm as well, and so I was practically getting rained on as the ice melted. It was probably the worst ice melt rain I have had since I hiked Mt. Hibbard last March. I didn't dare put on a jacket, though, or I knew I would overheat. It's times like that where The Furnace isn't necessarily a benefit.

Frozen Lake Winnipesaukee with Gunstock Ski Resort in the background. 

After I finished the Faraway Mountain Trail, I connected with the Lower Bridle Path, and I saw snowmobiles off in the distance. I hoped I wasn't going to have to share trail with them again, and thankfully I didn't. I made good time down the Lower Bridle Path due to the trail already being broken. At the end of the hike, I checked my stats and saw that I had done 2.1 mph on a hike of a little under ten miles. Considering how much trail breaking I had to do, I was proud of those numbers.

I hope to be able to get back to the four thousand foot mountains next weekend, but we'll see how cooperative the weather is. As always, thanks for reading and remember that you can't take flight until you spread your wings.