Hiked April 29, 2006 by Tim and Valerie
Conditions: This is our second time to do this loop, and it's always spectacular! Just a couple weeks since Easter, when we saw snow in the Squam Range, and now we're out in short sleeves and its 60 degrees F. There were lots of people on the trail, and just like last time, we are all traveling the same direction. The loop is about 4.4 miles total with 1600 feet of elevation gain. The walk started out easy, and we made it to the ledges on Welch Mountain very quickly (pictures 1-3 below). From there, it's a steep but fun trip to the top. So much open rock, just don't stand up too straight and don't look back/down. :-) The views from the top are beautiful. From there, we followed the blazes on the rocks until they just disappeared over the edge of the mountain. This is the coolest thing. Pictures don't do it justice. We just see yellow blazes pointing us right off the cliff. When we get close enough, you can see that they really do expect you to go right to the edge and then drop-down onto a small step/shelf.
The hike over to Dickey is fairly easy - a little more open rockface as we get close to the top of that one. Then, lots of open ledges as we come down the trail on that side. Overall, a great day out. We're so happy that spring has arrived! We can still see snow on Moosilauke and Lafayette.
Loop took us 3.5 hours.