Ossippee Hunting and... Bigfoot?

I'm not really doing posts for all of the Ossippee Range, but I'm hiking all of it. There's a hiking patch available for hiking to the summit of 5 mountains and hiking a specific number of trails, some of which are impossible to get to and require ridiculous backtracking and some hikes where I haven't even hiked to the top of a mountain, just hiked in between them. Truthfully, I partly wish I hadn't decided I was going to earn this patch, but at the same time, I'm hiking their trails but I'm going above and beyond and hiking to all of the summits as well. That makes it worth it to me. Like the Belknaps, I can be the master of the Ossippees.

This hike was worth a post because I got a lot of sweet pics and I have a possible spot to look for Bigfoot in. 

So this hike was just me hiking the Cold Spring Trail up, then taking the Faraway Mountain Trail to the High Ridge Trail, then turning around and hiking a slightly different trail down. No summit, no views. Yippee!

I don't normally hike past October, but I decided this would be the year that I kept going outside. It was a cool day, but still pretty sunny, so it really worked out to be a perfect day for a hike. The trail started pretty simply. 

Actually, most of the day looked pretty much exactly the same:

All leaves were off the trees, so my entire hike was walking through 3 inches of leaves essentially down a road in the middle of the woods.

And staring at a forrest packed with nothing but bare trees.

At first I didn't like this, but after awhile, I started to.

The trail just did switchbacks all the way up, and was never hard- just a constant climb up super gradual hills. When I got to the top (intersecting with the High Ridge Trail), I saw my first snow of the year, still frozen to the ground at just high enough of an elevation that it stayed there. On the way down, I smoked and hung out on this section for way too long, taking a billion pictures and just enjoying being outside in a nice place. Maybe hiking past October could work out after all...

This is the view from there, darkened. There's views here. Sort of. Also the thickest mess of branches in history.

Shortly after this, as I left the more open branch-full switchbacks, I veered left where Faraway Mountain Trail met the Cold Spring Trail and started heading down a road towards a big intersection. Very randomly, I looked down and saw what sort of liked like a foot. A big one.

My shoe is either an 11.5 or 12 for reference sake.

Now obviously, this could be someone messing with me. Someone could have come out here and drew out a foot or even had a fake foot with weight on it. It could be a random pattern in dirt created by something else. I don't know. All I'm saying is, this certainly looks like a bare footprint somewhere around a size 16. And not only that, look at how wide it is!

If you look closely, you can sort of see the outline of what looks like toes:

Darkened phone version:

So I don't know if this is a real footprint or not, but as a firm believer in squatches, it certainly felt like I found something that day.

I turned my music off pretty much instantly, and walked as alert as possible. Make fun all you want, but suddenly I was very aware of how alone and in-the-middle-of-nowhere I was. This is a trail that most likely, the only people who ever step foot on it are trying to earn this patch. There are 5 summits right near here that normal people would hike. And even on a beautiful Saturday, those are usually pretty empty. In my experience, NOBODY hikes the Ossipees, and it certainly seems pretty absurd that someone would come out to this random trail that doesn't go to a summit and put a fake footprint in the ground. 

But I don't know. I have no way of proving anything- I just saw what I saw and you can decide for yourself. I still am not entirely confident saying that I found anything. But it certainly looks like a giant footprint to me.

It was starting to get dark fast, but I walked slowly, looking for anything even resembling another footprint. I never found anything, even in the huge section of half frozen mud I had to go through- what I was certain would be footprint gold. 

As I walked, I started to feel a little less spooked, but just as I did, the sky started getting pretty weird.

would you want to be here alone with squatches nearby?!

The fading sun created a weird red glow across all the bare trees. 

It was pretty awesome.

so squatchy!

It was great for instagrams too, cuz I could bring that red glow out even more.

I was running out of time though, so I put my headphones back on (quietly) and set off down the road.

Then I saw this cool Old Man in a Tree.

It was nice and dark by the time I got to the bottom, which meant I got to take sweet pics.

And hang out with horses.

I talked about it in my Mount Roberts post, but I while I don't love the Ossippees, there's a special place in my heart for them and the Castle in the Clouds area. The quiet eerie feeling of hanging out here in the dark when you can barely see horses in the distance is just really cool. I hope the squatches leave them alone.

currently listening to: Into It. Over It.- "52 Weeks"

Mount Roberts

As part of me trying to hike the whole Ossipee Range, Mount Roberts seemed like a great choice for a second summit. It looked like my kind of hike- 5 miles roundtrip, and around 1,500 feet of elevation gain. That perfect mix of long-enough-that-you-earn-your-views-and-feel-accomplished and short-enough-that-I'll-really-enjoy-myself-and-not-be-dead-after. Put that at the top of my list of things I learned about me and hiking this year- that's my favorite size hike. 

Anyway, I parked at the main Castle In The Clouds parking area, packed up my stuff and headed out at my standard catch-the-sunset-on-the-way-down hike. I'm using a lot of dashes. I'll try to stop. 

There are lots of signs.

Turn left after the main horse area.

Do your best to avoid giant piles of turd.

I looped around the horse field and the road started looping to the left. 

I had no idea what to do here, so I decided that the right way felt more like it was going up a mountain, so I went that way. I'm pretty sure the left side met up later, but it looked gross. I made the right decision.

The trail was pretty rocky and ugly at first, mixed with boring and steep.

But I liked it. Some felt a lot like a mountain bike trail.

Eventually, there was a short spur to a viewpoint that was pretty nice.

Then it got real steep for a short section, then heavenly. 

That's a ridiculous word to use for it, but I really loved this trail once I got to this point. It was just the perfect mix of not too step, meandering, thick woods but still kind of open, etc. I felt like I was alone in the middle of nowhere in deep woods, but had sunlight shining through everywhere. It seemed like the trees were all kind of short. What a great trail.

It started opening up after a little bit, and I was hiking faster and faster, loving the feel of coming out of the deep woods into such a pretty sky.

And turning around, I knew I loved this hike already.

You get to hike for awhile on a mostly exposed area that's still covered in brush with trees everywhere. I haven't done any of the huge ridge hikes yet where you're on top of the world, and I actually assumed I wouldn't love them as much as others because of how much I love the remote, being deep in the middle of nowhere woods feel. But I'm a view whore- how could I not love hiking long sections with views everywhere?

This was great to hike up, but I knew the real treat would be coming back down, since all the views were behind me on the way up.

The trail started making its way back into to the woods. Check out this grizzled white tree:

The trail got real thick and pretty overgrown. I immediately felt like everyone who hikes Mount Roberts doesn't bother going all the way up since all the great views are still a ways below the wooded summit. But I always go to the top of the mountain. It doesn't count otherwise.

The trail eventually came to a sign with super grown in fire road, and I remembered that this was a big network of trails.

Then I was at the summit.

tough in pink!

You have views of Faraway Mountain and some distant stuff, but you can't see the real views from here, so this is definitely not a great summit.

still love it though!

On the way back down, I took a break on this rock and hung out for quite awhile, texting and just sitting in silence for once (usually music is non stop in my ears).

I hit my one hitter right there, and since I'd been realizing how much I loved being high on top of mountains listening to music, I decided to do 2 when I normally only do 1. And it hit me waaay harder than I expected. I was way higher than I meant to be right away. Once I finally stood up, I realized how bad my short term memory was in my weird zone-out-and-just-keep-walking daze. I immediately understood how easy it must have been for all those people you'd hear about on the news who got high or did something stronger and got lost in the woods. I used to make fun of those people, but wow, I get it now. 

Anyway, I got my shit together and focused on the trail- I had views to get to.

Coming out to this view was one of the highlights of my summer. I was up there completely alone and had a great mix of music going with lots of beautiful epic songs. I hung out here and ate a McDonalds chicken snack wrap and a granola bar, just walking around taking pictures and rocking out. 

I realized that I have a severe problem with taking pictures when I'm high on top of a mountain. I took SO MANY pictures, so many of the same stuff with slightly different angles or slightly different lighting. And they were all HDRs too, so I had like 120 pictures to sort through. This hike alone is a large reason why I fell so behind on Instagram over the summer. I couldn't get through all of the pictures. I think now that I've finally cleaned up the event in my iPhoto library, it's down to like 35 pictures. But I had 60 something all in various forms of edits for months. I need to learn how to stop with the pictures. But I got some good ones.

I realized this puddle would look pretty cool with Winnipesaukee behind it. 

From the right angle, it almost looked like some magical lake in Norway.

I hung up there and watched the sun mostly set, listening to music and playing air guitar, wandering around for probably close to an hour. It was absolutely wonderful. I spent most of the walk down thinking of the logistics behind trying to have a band play at a place like this- how to get instruments and fans up, how to clear it with landowners, how to keep it quiet enough and safe enough that it would work, the documentary I'd of course have to film about it, using Hilton's helicopter camera for it, the speech I'd make before the whole thing about how hard it was to put together and it's worth it to hear beautiful music with this view on top of a mountain, etc. Of course it was Caspian in my theoretical plan. I really think that would be about the coolest thing ever. 

classic self portrait

The whole hike down was awesome. I felt fantastic, was so into the music, and all my views were perfect. Absolutely a highlight of my summer and probably my favorite hike of the year. 

The sky did some weird stuff.

I especially love this one:

As I left the exposed area and had switched from shuffle to just listening to Caspian albums, I got back into the woods that I had loved so much on the way up, and I got some awesome sunset rays shooting through the woods. It was literally like I had said "I wish this hike was even better" and the nature gods went "oh, ok- here."

I always see people posting pictures of crazy sunrays on Instagram and I somehow never get to see any. I saw some huge ones shooting though large sections of woods that night. My camera really sucked at capturing any of it, but I got a few good ones, especially this one I 'grammed: 

light sword

The hike got darker as it always does, and I picked up the pace to get back to my car. On the way back, I stopped at the horse area and had a weird creepy moment with this horse:

I stopped listening to music as I got closer to the horse area. I've always been freaked out by horses- I've never been a fan. But coming down from a mountain alone to an area where horses lived outside with nobody else around was really pretty cool. Since this hike, I've spent a few times walking through this area at night, just alone in the cold with horses I can barely see in the distance, and it's been a really surreal, creepy but oddly cool and kind of beautiful experience every time. I'm not sure why, there's just something about this area that's really cool at night. Just hanging with the horses. 

I saw a giant horse named Zeus that day too- he was in his own area and I tried to get pictures of him, but I tried to get them close, and the lighting was never right, plus, being close, you couldn't tell just how big he was. I also purposefully don't spend a lot of time with horses, so I figured he was pretty huge, but maybe not anything record breaking. Apparently, he was one of the biggest horses in the world- some sites say the biggest, some say the tallest, some say the second tallest. I'm not sure which is accurate, but he was huge and pretty well known. He died about a month ago (which, after reading his facebook page almost just made me cry), and there's talk of having a life-size statue of him on the Castle in the Clouds grounds. I really hope they do that, and I'm happy that I got to see him that night.

So anyway, yea. I really loved this hike. Even taking my state of mind, music, having the mountain to myself (other than one older couple I saw on the way up) and it being August and an absolutely perfect summer night out of the equation, this is still a pretty awesome hike. It's one of my favorite finds and I'd absolutely recommend it, especially for people who want awesome views without a ton of effort. I plan on hiking it again this year- possibly twice as I imagine it would be awesome in the fall, and I'm planning a massive Ossipee Range traverse. Stay tuned.

Oh- so here's one. 

I hike alone 95% of the time. And 75% of the time I'm hiking, I'm listening to music. I don't blast it, but it's loud enough. I've had a few scares where I thought I heard a growl and after pausing the music after coming to from my brief heart attack, it's either been a distant plane, thunder, a rock I stood on shifting weight, or, the scariest time, a pheasant flying at me through the woods. But other than almost walking directly into a porcupine, I've yet to have any real scares with any dangerous animals. 

I checked a site I often use to make sure I got the mileage and elevation gain right, and clicked one of the trip reports- http://www.franklinsites.com/hikephotos/NewHampshire/mtroberts-2013-0805.php

I laughed and thought "wow, that first picture could have been taken by me- it looks exactly the same. Then I scrolled down and saw a picture of a bear. The trip reporter had seen 3 bears on their way up the mountain, and had sent a cub up a tree with the mother very closely growling at him/her. I looked to see what day it was on, and it was August 5th. I knew that was close to when I had hiked, so I checked my iCal (where I keep track of hikes and everything else in the world), and saw that my hike was on Sunday, which was August 4th. That's pretty damn close. I had no idea bears would be in the Ossipee Range, right on the trail. Time to start turning that music down a little more.

currently listening to: We Vs. Death- "Postneoliberalparadise"