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Jun. 23rd, 2005 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eorOn Tuesday afternoon we decided to hike Church Pond Loop trail. The guide book said it was an easy but damp hike. The most encouraging parts were the fact that it's not a popular trail and that the afternoon weather was beautiful.
We parked at the tiny trailhead within the Passaconway campground and started off down the trail. After about 15 yards we came to the first brook/river crossing. No possibility of getting across this one dry so we took off the boots, rolled up the pants, and waded across. The current was quite swift and the slippery stones made the wade a challenge.
Once across, we dried out our feet, then we picked up the trail a little way in from the bank. The trail had the signs of little use (trees down across the path and spots where the undergrowth had narrowed the trail to almost nothing). After a very short time we came to the second crossing. This one was shallower and had some stones which made for a mostly dry walk across.
On the far bank were some deer tracks in the sand, the first of many we would see through the afternoon. After a false start up a deer path (they look a lot like seldom used hiking trails) we went upstream a bit and picked up the trail again. The trail wandered through very pretty pine forest. We made a stop to apply more bug dope, after which the swarms of mosquitoes subsided to a few stragglers.
The trail forked with left and right forming the loop part of the loop trail. In what seems to be a habit for us, we took the left fork. After a while the center of the trail was interspersed with mud. That's about when I saw the first moose tracks.
It must have been a pretty good sized moose. He followed the trail for quite a way and we walked along beside his tracks as the trail turned from occasional mud to constant mud to log bridges over frog ponds.
About where we lost the moose tracks we heard a moose moving through the trees well off to our left. Moose are very large animals and don't move through the forest quietly. After that, there was a short interval of solid ground and this track (deer on the right and something else on the left).
And we saw some birds. Well, many birds, but I only got pictures of a few. Most notably we startled what we think was a pheasant into flight and were visited by a very pretty goldfinch at close range.
The trail quickly became a continuous set of log bridges, then the log bridges began to devolve into the swamp. We were soon picking our way along rotted and broken pieces, looking for the next solid step. This continued for quite a while until we came to solid ground again and a pine forested area that led to very pretty views of Church Pond.
We stopped and enjoyed the quiet atmosphere a bit. Then we departed up what looked like the other trail.
It wandered through mostly pine forest for a while, then descended a bit into, you guessed it, swamp. This time there weren't log bridges, not even rotted ones. There were a couple of downed trees that were laid out quite well along the right side of thetrail canal. At this point ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derien was questioning whether I had followed the trail or a moose path. She did not have a lot of confidence. I went ahead, walking down one fallen tree to an even smaller fallen tree. The second was about the diameter of a baseball bat. The water to either side was between 2 and 4 inches deep and very mucky. After the second fallen tree it was a matter of stepping carefully on the right or left side of the trail. Step on a high spot, put some weight on it and see how far it sinks. We picked our way through a couple of hundred yards this way until we finally started to see patches of high ground between the marshy spots. At the far side was, in fact, a defined trail.
Once again we were proceeding through pine forest, which went much quicker than the swamp. We came upon a squadron of dragonflies.
When I stopped to take a picture of them I realized why they were there. As soon as I stop and shrugged the camera pack off my back, hordes of mosquitoes were on me in a flash. It was like the old Westerns where the Indians come swarming over the hills. It was time for another liberal application of bug dope. The swarm retreated leaving only a few stragglers. Just before we departed we heard a strange sound downhill toward the swamp. It sounded like leathery ears slapping against hide. It might have been a moose standing in the swamp eating and swatting mosquitoes. We didn't have a chance of finding him in the dense underbrush and even if we did he might not be in a good mood if he was getting eaten up the way we were.
The remainder of the walk was more wandering through pine forest, jumping around the occasional mud hole, and walking through mixed forest. We had to apply bug dope once more, at about the point where the two forks come together, to keep the mosquitoes at bay.
Oh, if you like blueberries, there are billions of them out there that just need some time to ripen.
The hike was 2.8 miles and took us about 3 hours. We saw lots of evidence of wildlife, saw some smaller wildlife, and fed some even smaller wildlife.
We parked at the tiny trailhead within the Passaconway campground and started off down the trail. After about 15 yards we came to the first brook/river crossing. No possibility of getting across this one dry so we took off the boots, rolled up the pants, and waded across. The current was quite swift and the slippery stones made the wade a challenge.
Once across, we dried out our feet, then we picked up the trail a little way in from the bank. The trail had the signs of little use (trees down across the path and spots where the undergrowth had narrowed the trail to almost nothing). After a very short time we came to the second crossing. This one was shallower and had some stones which made for a mostly dry walk across.
On the far bank were some deer tracks in the sand, the first of many we would see through the afternoon. After a false start up a deer path (they look a lot like seldom used hiking trails) we went upstream a bit and picked up the trail again. The trail wandered through very pretty pine forest. We made a stop to apply more bug dope, after which the swarms of mosquitoes subsided to a few stragglers.
The trail forked with left and right forming the loop part of the loop trail. In what seems to be a habit for us, we took the left fork. After a while the center of the trail was interspersed with mud. That's about when I saw the first moose tracks.
It must have been a pretty good sized moose. He followed the trail for quite a way and we walked along beside his tracks as the trail turned from occasional mud to constant mud to log bridges over frog ponds.
About where we lost the moose tracks we heard a moose moving through the trees well off to our left. Moose are very large animals and don't move through the forest quietly. After that, there was a short interval of solid ground and this track (deer on the right and something else on the left).
And we saw some birds. Well, many birds, but I only got pictures of a few. Most notably we startled what we think was a pheasant into flight and were visited by a very pretty goldfinch at close range.
The trail quickly became a continuous set of log bridges, then the log bridges began to devolve into the swamp. We were soon picking our way along rotted and broken pieces, looking for the next solid step. This continued for quite a while until we came to solid ground again and a pine forested area that led to very pretty views of Church Pond.
We stopped and enjoyed the quiet atmosphere a bit. Then we departed up what looked like the other trail.
It wandered through mostly pine forest for a while, then descended a bit into, you guessed it, swamp. This time there weren't log bridges, not even rotted ones. There were a couple of downed trees that were laid out quite well along the right side of the
derien was questioning whether I had followed the trail or a moose path. She did not have a lot of confidence. I went ahead, walking down one fallen tree to an even smaller fallen tree. The second was about the diameter of a baseball bat. The water to either side was between 2 and 4 inches deep and very mucky. After the second fallen tree it was a matter of stepping carefully on the right or left side of the trail. Step on a high spot, put some weight on it and see how far it sinks. We picked our way through a couple of hundred yards this way until we finally started to see patches of high ground between the marshy spots. At the far side was, in fact, a defined trail.Once again we were proceeding through pine forest, which went much quicker than the swamp. We came upon a squadron of dragonflies.
When I stopped to take a picture of them I realized why they were there. As soon as I stop and shrugged the camera pack off my back, hordes of mosquitoes were on me in a flash. It was like the old Westerns where the Indians come swarming over the hills. It was time for another liberal application of bug dope. The swarm retreated leaving only a few stragglers. Just before we departed we heard a strange sound downhill toward the swamp. It sounded like leathery ears slapping against hide. It might have been a moose standing in the swamp eating and swatting mosquitoes. We didn't have a chance of finding him in the dense underbrush and even if we did he might not be in a good mood if he was getting eaten up the way we were.
The remainder of the walk was more wandering through pine forest, jumping around the occasional mud hole, and walking through mixed forest. We had to apply bug dope once more, at about the point where the two forks come together, to keep the mosquitoes at bay.
Oh, if you like blueberries, there are billions of them out there that just need some time to ripen.
The hike was 2.8 miles and took us about 3 hours. We saw lots of evidence of wildlife, saw some smaller wildlife, and fed some even smaller wildlife.
