Five Ossipee Peaks (3/6/21)
This weekend's adventure saw me joining my girlfriend Dragonfly and her cousin on their attempt to finish the Ossipee 10 in winter, the same quest that I started on last week. In order to finish, they just needed three peaks: Turtleback, Shaw, and Black Snout. However, they generously added Bald Knob and Big Ball to their route so that I could get them.
The plan was to use a car spot to make the day work. A car spot is when you park one car at one trailhead, and then park another car at a different trailhead, and then you hike from one car to the other car. At the end, the second car shuttles hikers back to the first car. It's an efficient way of doing point to point hikes if you have multiple people.
Dragonfly and I arrived at the Shaw trailhead, and then her cousin picked us both up and we all rode over to the Town Line trailhead to start our hike. It was cold at the beginning, but we all warmed up quickly as the Town Line Trail was basically a constant ascent straight up to Bald Knob. We must have gained a thousand or more feet right off the bat. I normally like to warm up a bit before I start a hard climb, but this climb was not providing any opportunity for that. It reminded me of a lesser version of the Wildcat Ridge Trail, which was one of my earliest climbs and still one of my toughest.
Anyway, the Town Line Trail wasn't super long, and we eventually made it to Bald Knob. The wind was cold and fierce, and I suggested that we might want to take our snack break back in the trees instead of right at the summit. Bald Knob is a beautiful spot, which offers a great view despite its relatively low elevation, but it's exposed, and on this day that was a serious issue.
We went into the trees to hike over towards Turtleback Mountain. There is a shortcut trail that goes directly between Bald Knob and Turtleback, but it was closed due to erosion, so we had to go the long way around, which may have added a mile or so to our hike. However, the terrain on the Turtleback Mountain Trail was nice and firm, mostly because it was a popular snowmobile route. We had been told that snowmobile season had closed in the Ossipees, but we would quickly learn that was not true. Still, it was nice to be able to use spikes instead of snowshoes.
Speaking of which, when we got to the Turtleback Summit Trail, we saw that snowshoes were going to be necessary. Someone had gone before us, but they had not used snowshoes and they had mutilated the trail with postholes. As I strapped on my snowshoes, I knew that this was my time. Besides the great company, the other reason that Dragonfly and her cousin wanted me along on the trip was to break trail for them. I did just that as I tried to turn the postholed mess into a walkable trail. With every step I had to bring my snowshoe down hard to try to smooth out the trail. It worked, but it was certainly energy consuming. Nonetheless, half a mile later we were at the summit of Turtleback.
As you can see in the photo above, it was a beautiful blue sky morning. Unfortunately, that was bad news for my mostly bald head, and so I put my balaclava on as we were approaching Turtleback and had to wear it for the rest of the day. It was thin enough to not cause me to overheat, but at the same time provided some sun protection.
After we left Turtleback, we continued on to the longest part of the day, the hike from Turtleback over to Shaw. The snowmobiles were really active by this point, and we were getting passed by parades of them. They always make me nervous as they often go too fast for the terrain, and I don't think they're especially aware of pedestrians on the mountains. Thankfully, though, we didn't have any incidents, and they did keep the trail packed down so we could use spikes.
We summited Shaw in the early afternoon. Shaw is on the 52 With A View list that I completed last year, and with good reason. There are few mountains that have a better view than Shaw, especially for the effort required. Chocorua is probably better, and Willard is pretty fantastic, but Shaw is right up there with them.
Of course, the way to get to the summit of Shaw without putting in any effort at all is to ride a snowmobile up there, and the summit was basically a snowmobile parking lot. If you've ever seen a Trader Joe's parking lot, it was kind of like that, except with snowmobiles. I didn't really have a problem with it, as the summit is snowmobile accessible, so you can't blame people for bringing their snowmobiles up there. What I did have a problem with, though, was the jerk who decided to light up a cigar at the summit. The smell was so disgusting that I had to move a hundred feet down the mountain and I temporarily lost Dragonfly and her cousin. Some people have no respect for those around them. At any rate, I was able to circle around the summit of the mountain and eventually find my missing friends and together we all continued down the mountain.
When we got to the trail to Black Snout, we were all relieved to see that it wasn't snowmobile accessible. We did run into a few other hikers along the way, which was nice. It was an easy hike over to the mountain. As we were preparing to hit the summit, I told Dragonfly and her cousin to let me run ahead to prepare for their summiting.
You see, it's a hiker tradition that when someone completes a list while on a group hike, the other members of the group make a tunnel with their trekking poles for the hiker to walk through as they summit. Unfortunately, they only had me there, so I had to use some tree branches as the other side of the tunnel. Nonetheless, they appreciated the effort, and the two of them hit the summit and completed their Ossipee Winter 10 list.
Interestingly, while Bald Knob had been cold and windy, the much higher summits of Shaw and Black Snout were warm and not very windy. Maybe it's because we hit them later in the day. Whatever the reason, we decided to hang out for a few minutes on Black Snout. It has always been one of my favorite mountains in the Ossipees, as it has a great view and the summit is a nice spot to relax. (There were also no snowmobiles or cigars, so that was a plus.)
While I was hanging out, I decided to try out my new ski goggles. They are Julbo Aerospace goggles, and they are supposed to be the absolute best when it comes to being fog resistant. This is because the lens actually pushes out from the frame, create a vent to let air come through and de-fog them. I wanted to see if that lens mechanism would actually work, but I couldn't actually get the goggles to fog up in the first place to test it. Still, the fact that they won't fog is exactly what I was going for, so I suppose that's a victory either way. I hope to use those on future winter hiking trips when I am above tree line on the four thousands.
Once we finished on Black Snout, all that was left was to hike down the Italian Trail to Big Ball and then get back to my car. Dragonfly and I had done the Italian Trail before, and we remembered that it was challenging, but it was a new experience for her cousin, and probably not her favorite hiking experience ever. As far as I can tell, it is called the Italian Trail because it uses red and green blazes. They are some of the most unique blazes I have seen in all the places I have hiked.
When we finished the Italian Trail, the three of us hooked back up with the Shaw trail to get back to the parking lot. I hiked ahead to get the car warmed up. The entire day ended up being somewhere between 11 miles and 12 miles, depending upon which GPS you believed, as all three of us were running different trackers. I am inclined to think we were on the low end of that range, but then again I trust Guthook (my tracker) quite a bit. Either way, it was a good hike. I again offer my congratulations to Dragonfly and her cousin on completing their Ossipee Winter 10 patch, and I hope to complete my own at some point. I now have only three peaks to go. Always remember, you can't take flight until you spread your wings.
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