The trail comes to a significant stream crossing in the first 1/10 of a mile. I am sure it is fine most of the time but since it was Spring and there is still 1-2 feet of snow above 3K feet the stream was moving and above many of the rocks you need to step on to cross. The two options I came up with were to take what I called the high road. This had the possibility of keeping your boots dry. The down side is that it was tricky and probably had a 60/40 chance in favor of making it. The unfortunate part is that if you didn't make it you would go into 3+ feet of quickly moving water. The other option was to take the low road. Here your boots were going to get wet since some of the rocks were a foot below the water. If you slipped off a rock here it would not be much different than being on the rocks since you already had wet feet. I chose the low road since I could handle wet boots but wet pants, possibly up to my waist, would have made for a long day. As expected both boots had water over the top since the water was moving so fast. So, 1/10 of a mile in and I already had soaked feet.
Above 3000 feet the trail was a mix of ice and snow and finally just snow for the last mile. I went up Jennings Peak which is a .4 mile detour. Well worth it since this looks off in a different direction and puts you at the top of a big drop off. Around 8 miles round trip.
One area of the trail had some interesting red, orange, green, and white moss.
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| Stream crossing |
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| Waterville Valley |
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