Belknap County Backcountry - February 17, 2012

Learned an important lesson this past Sunday when Scott and I headed out into the Belknap County back country.  To wit: its important to give some thought to where you are headed before actually heading there.  Technically, we at least tried to do this - we plotted out our route up the Nineteen Mile Brook Trail towards Carter Dome, where we hoped to at least look at (and possibly ski) a slide that we spotted last year while skiing Tuckerman.  As Saturday progressed, however, the thought of heading above the tree line into 60 mph gusts, snow squalls, and dense cloud cover seemed less than desirable.  So based on a "recommendation" from a friend, we decided to check out the area between Belknap Mountain and Gunstock Mountain in Gilford, NH. In reality, though, the recommendation went something like this: "one time I skied a power line that ran down Belknap.  It was terrible and I destroyed my skis."  We were desperate to get outside though, so we ran with it.

Upon arriving at Gunstock, it wasn't clear how we would even drive anywhere near the base of Belknap, so we went into the customer service center and asked for a hiking map.  We received what amounted to a hand drawn picture of Gunstock and 1/2 of Belknap.  The drawing was not to scale and generally useless.  Not to be deterred, however, we set out on a cross country trail that headed in the direction of Belknap, and after about a mile, took a right on a trail that headed up.  Based on the map, we thought we were headed in the right direction, but before long, we popped out on one of Gunstock's trails that comes down off the Pistol triple.  Oops.

At this point, we changed our plan yet again, and decided to simply push up to the top of Gunstock.  If we found a cool line down into the drainage between Gunstock and Belknap, we'd run with it, if not, we'd ski down one of the on-mountain glades.  Seemed safe enough given that visibility was improving by the minute, and there was no way we wouldn't pop out on the cross country trail eventually.

Unfortunately, the path up to the summit of Gunstock consisted of significant bush whacking, as demonstrated below by Scott, who most unfortunately forgot a strap to A frame his skis.

Scott, minus strap for skis.  Rugged.

Fortunately, we caught two breaks on our bushwhack.  First, Gunstock has apparently installed a zip line.  To do so, they had to clear a lot of under brush.  Since the zip line wasn't running (cold, significant wind), we took advantage of the easier path.  Except ... the zip line was running.  Sweet Jesus.  It sounded like an air raid every time someone flew by overhead. 

Our second break was finally finding the damn hiking trail, which took us right to the summit (and would make for a great decent itself on a powder day).   On the way up, we looked over at Belknap repeatedly, and the trees are definitely thinned out in multiple places.  Someday I look forward to a more well thought out return.

 Just below the summit of Gunstock, we found a nice picnic table off of the hiking trail.  Perfect place for a wind sheltered lunch.

 Lunch of champions.  Fresh bread, soppresatata from the North End, cheese, mustard, tomatoes, and pretzels (in case you forgot, I love pretzel sandwiches).

Epic Belknap County back country glade?  No, just a glade at Gunstock we took on the way down.  It was a nice run though, and at the end of the day, despite changing plans multiple times on the fly, it was great to just get outside.