Hiked by Tim and Valerie on May 13 (Happy Mother's Day), 2007
Conditions: 60 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Perfectly beautiful day for a long walk. We parked one car at the Cotton Mountain Trailhead, and drove out to Sandwich Notch Road. Within the first 2.5 miles, we'd added two new birds to our life list: Blackburnian Warbler and Black-and-White Striped Warbler. Both gorgeous. Didn't get any good pictures of them, and then the "Low Battery" light came on in the camera. Uuuuugh! Also saw three garter snakes (one *very* large one who reared back and bit at our hiking pole as we tried to "shoo" it off the trail).
We knew it would be a long day, but we thought we'd get more speed going once we were on the ridge. Not so. Very slow going for the first 5 miles or so. Picked up a little speed on the second half of the journey. We can't complain. Took lots of breaks to enjoy the view and the sun on the open rocks. Stopped at a "vernal pool" on the ridge and found interesting egg sacs of some sort in the water. They were really quite big.
The days summits included Doublehead Mountain, Mt Squam, Mt Percival, Mt Morgan, Mt Webster, Mt Livermore and Cotton Mountain. There were a couple trees toppled in the trail from the winter, and some mud to bypass, but overall, the trail conditions were clean and dry. Blackflies didn't come out until somewhere around the summit of Mt Livermore, and they really only annoyed us at the top of Livermore and Cotton. By the time we got to the base of Cotton Mountain, we were very tempted to take the logging road right down to the sand pit, skipping the summit completely. Somehow, we knew that we'd consider it a cheat, so up over Cotton we went. Actually, by that point, walking uphill hurt less than walking downhill, so despite the tiredness, it felt like some sort of odd reprieve.
Overall Stats: 12 miles, 8 hours - Val's most mileage ever in the mountains to date