This is the last entry in my blog.  I had hoped to hike the last 3 4000 footers by the end of this semester but that did not happen.  I still plan on finishing them before the end of the summer and have Reba finish hers (she has 5 more to go) by the end of the summer too.

Last Saturday I hiked Mt Cardigan with Beth, Lindsey, Cooper, Benson, Jen and her greyhound Genie.  I have hiked this mountain countless times, but it is a great hike and very close to my house! On the way up to the trailhead I saw a moose hanging out on the side of the road which was great to see!  But couldn’t stay long the dogs started to bark and go crazy…

 

We started at 6:30 am since it was supposed to rain at some point that morning.  Loved having the trail to ourselves!  Usually Cardigan is a busy trail.  We went up and across Firescrew to get to the summit.  This route lets you enjoy open rock and great views.  We did encounter some snow and ice in the shaded areas but easy to get around it.

     

     

  

We had the summit to ourselves for the most part, only one other hiker passed by.  After a snack we headed back down on the Clark Trail.  The pups had a great early morning hike and so did we!

Since I have been unable to get to hiking the 3 mountains left on my NH 48 list I have started to work on the 52 with a view hiking list.  The are shorter usually and I can bring Buck on most of them.  This past Wednesday I was joined by my friend Kathie and her dogs Bodhi and Jasper for a hike up Blueberry Mt in Glencliff NH.  I had never heard of Blueberry Mt and after seeing pictures of all the open rock face I was excited to hike it.

We decided to do a car spot so we could enjoy the whole trail from end to end.  We found that Long Pond Rd was closed due to it being washed out and trees down from storms.  This was ok since it was only a .7 mile walk to the trail head.

Since it was a mid week day we had the trail to ourselves which was amazing so we never had to worry about leashing the dogs.  They were so happy to just run freely, play in all the water, mud and sniff all the wild animal smells!

The trail to the summit was a very easy, gradual climb through old farm land, open woods and then to open rock slabs.  Along the way we kept seeing very fresh coyote scat, but never saw the coyote which was nice!  Once we hit the open rock we had a wonderful view of Mt Moosilauke.

                 

Before arriving at the summit we did encounter some snow and ice but all easily passable.  We had a snack at the summit and enjoyed the beautiful weather and views.  When we started off again we became rather confused since the trail blazes where non-existent we thought we would just follow the cairns that were scattered around on the summit.  This did not lead us to a trail…Thank goodness we had cell service because the map did not show the spur trail and we were able to read a trail description from a website.  Once we figured out where to go things where good.

 

                                                     

 

       

 

 

 

 

The hike down was very pretty, more open rock slabs and wonderful views of Black Mt, Sugarloaf Mt and many others.  As we came closer to the end of the trail small streams where more like rivers but still easy to cross.  The dogs really enjoyed taking a quick dip to cool off!  The hike in total was about 5 miles (forgot to turn on my Gaia GPS app).