I haven't written anything for my blog in a long time, so I thought a blog about my latest hike would be a good start to get back into writing.
The first thing you should know about me is that I love the woods and the mountains. I enjoy being in the wilderness more than anywhere else on earth. I get as excited as a kid on Christmas morning whenever I am heading off
for a hike. I have my pack ready, hiking clothes picked out, maps made
and routes studied several days before the hike.
This past Saturday was no exception as my friend Rich and I headed to
Northern New Hampshire to hike The Percy Peaks. The Percy Peaks are
part of a hiking list (We hikers love lists) called
The 52 With A View - New Hampshire.
The day promised to be perfect with blue bird skies and temperatures in the high 70s to low 80s. The trail-head is almost 2 1/2 hours away, so we left around 5 AM.
The roads were nearly empty at that time. Just the occasional trucker
and fellow hiker. When we finally arrived at the trail head, we were the
first to arrive and had our choice of parking spaces in the small area
off the road.
We couldn't have asked for a better day. The sky was blue, the sun was out and the temperatures were just right.
We quickly gathered our gear and set off on the Percy Peaks Trail.
The trail was decent and well marked, blazed in orange. The
forest are finally in full green mode finally. Sadly, there are occasions that
the Black Flies are out too!
After about 1.6 miles, we reached the junction of Old Summer Club Trail, which would lead us to the trail up South Percy.
We had debated whether or not to do both peaks, but when told that South Peak has a great view of Percy North, decided to bag both summits. In our research, we decided that the North Peak looked the harder of the two, so we decided to do the South Peak first. Boy were we wrong!
The South Peak trail was steep, overgrown and not well marked at all. It
was just shy of bushwhacking in some spots. Once we reached the summit,
it was all worth it. The views, although not 360 degrees, were
spectacular. It was well worth the effort. After about 40 minutes or so
of enjoying the summit,we decided to head on over to North Percy. The
trail down off South Percy was not better going the other way!
Surprisingly, the walk up North Percy was much easier than we had expected. It was quite easy compared to the hike up the South Peak. We made the summit in good time, with little effort. After taking the obligatory summit picture, we had some snacks and relaxed a bit before the hike back to the Jeep.
The summit did not have 360 degree views, but if you searched for
them, you could locate enough view spots to see pretty much all around
the mountain.
It was a picture perfect day!! The right combination of blue sky, puffy clouds, perfect temperatures, little problem bugs, and spectacular views. It's not often you get days like this in the mountains of New Hampshire.
The views on the way down from North Percy were every bit as good as I have seen anywhere. The footing on the rock slabs was good, although, as I said earlier, I would not want to attempt this hike in wet conditions.
South Percy certainly didn't look so bad from this vantage point, but we new better. I would classify this hike as moderate, with some harder sections throughout.
It is dog friendly, or at least we saw a couple of dogs on the hike, and on the summit of North Percy. For any avid hikers, I would certainly rate this as a must do hike. Thanks for reading.
