Our returning guest is casually working on her 48 4000-footers in the company of family and friends. She’s not driven to complete, not in a rush, and her priority is to experience the enjoyment of it all. Another thing she could do without are any serious scrambles, at least in winter. Since Whiteface and Passaconaway were in the crosshairs, so to speak, this exposed a challenge: taking on these two mountains without taking on the notorious Blueberry Ledge Trail.
One possible solution was to take McCrillis Trail to a point close to the near-summit lookout ledges on Whiteface. But would it be broken out?! We found no reports and decided to take this on another way. Also up for consideration were other less enticing options and these were longer and also unknowns in terms of whether they were broken out or not. The team decided to play it safe sticking to well used trails for which there were recent reports posted on the New England Trail Conditions website.
The plan ended up being to take Dicey’s Mill Trail to the Loop trail used to access the Mt Passaconaway summit. After summiting and returning to the junction the team could reassess the situation. If feelin’ it the team could hike to the Whiteface summit via Rollins Trail, then retrace their steps back to the junction to descend, adding over four miles to the day. When they finally got to that point the crew had had a great day and decided on the option to take Dicey’s Mill Trail back down saving Whiteface for another day.
This plan hit the nail on the head. As the leader of this trip, Redline Guide Debra McCown, said afterward: “This was an another peak for the 48 for a cool group with great winter hiking weather, temps above zero, great snowshoe conditions, and light snow with a hint of sunshine. It was a nice, chill day in the woods.” What follows are some of Debra’s photos of the trip.
The lone wolf shown in the photos above suggested we use this wolf emoji to protect her privacy. Arroooooo-🐺