NH Cohos Trail: Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge

Slide Brook Trailhead on Rt 115

Day two of slackpacking began on the Slide Brook Trail, the first of four trails the Cohos follows through the Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge. Slide Brook is presumably named after the big two mile landslide that started up on Owls Head and came to rest somewhere in this low plain where it buried a farm.

Bear!

Slide Brook Trail was largely a mowed path that meandered through lots of open fields. The goldenrod was especially vivid in through here, and there were plenty of berries.

Goldenrod

I probably should have started earlier in the morning to increase my odds of seeing a moose or something.  But who wants to wake up early on vacation?

Blueberries, which helps explain the bear.

At one point I heard some animal making a ruckus, and I recognized the sound from Thursday morning when I was still in my tent at Zealand. At the time I thought it might be a red squirrel, but the sound moved around so much that I then thought it must be some kind of bird. Turns out it was a red squirrel after all. Noisy! We only have the gray squirrels down in southern Connecticut, so I wasn't familiar with the sounds of the red ones.

Chittering Red Squirrel

The Slide Brook Trail came alongside some wet boggy areas where purple Joe Pye Weed was in bloom. The elegant spires of Black Spruce dotted the boggy areas, and feathery Tamarack (aka Larch), a conifer that turns golden and drops its needles each fall, found some footing in there as well. There's a similar European Larch that is sometimes planted in my neck of the woods, but I don't see the native one that grows in the boggy areas unless I'm up north. We had it in the north country when I was growing up, so it was nice to see.

Black Spruce Bog, with Tamarack and Joe Pye Weed

While the Slide Trail was marked with yellow, the Presidential Range Rail Trail was not. This followed an old railroad bed for a good ways, with low boggy areas on both sides of the trail.

Presidential Range Rail Trail

At one point I though for sure I saw a moose far up ahead on the trail. Big and dark. But it turned out to be a woman dressed in black walking her dog. When we passed, I didn't tell her I thought she looked like a moose. She was the first person I had seen in several miles on a Saturday morning in August. It's a quiet trail.

Joe Pye Weed thrives at the edge of low areas

A bit further on, a pair of bicyclists stopped to ask if there was anything else associated with the wildlife refuge, like some buildings or something. I said I wasn't aware of anything. The woman said, "Well, it's very beautiful anyway."

Presidential Rail Trail, the Kilkenny rising beyond

It was around that time that what I assume were sight-seeing planes started to take off and buzz over our heads. They were so loud and annoying. I arrived at the viewing platform at Cherry Pond and a series of five of the plane took off from the nearby airport and flew directly overhead at a low altitude. At that point I was sure I wouldn't see any wildlife because anything still out this late in the morning was now diving for thick brush and would stay there until dark.

Mount Washington behind the clouds at Cherry Pond

Low clouds obscured what is normally a spectacular view of Mt. Washington across Cherry Pond. Oh well.  It was still beautiful.

Cranberry Viburnum

There were a remarkable number of berries next to the boardwalk leading out to the viewing platform. Cranberry Viburnum is a native shrub that we sometimes specify for landscaping, and here it was growing wild and full of bright red berries.

Right after the viewing platform, the rail trail was approaching another railroad at right angles and the trail did a "Y". I took a right at the "Y", which appeared to be a brief shortcut, and so presumably missed the Waumbak Junction which I had read about earlier but completely forgot about while hiking. Or maybe I was looking right at it but not seeing. At any rate, the Waumak Junction was where three railroads came together and there were some railroad buildings there. This is one reason so many tourists came out to view the big landslide at Cherry Mountain in the late 1800s. It was easy to get there from many directions.

Don't miss the turn

Per the map and a few brown and yellow signs, the Cohos turned right to follow a set of RR tracks a short ways. I assumed the line was abandoned, but it turns out that trains do occasionally run. This info is written down in the guidebook, but I just didn't remember as I was walking right down the middle of the tracks. It's not like you're reading the guide while you're out there walking.

View from the Ice Ramparts Trail

The Cohos soon turned off of the tracks and became the Ice Ramparts Trail. This was pretty cool and something I'd never heard of before. The "ramparts" are a natural berm created over time when the ice in Cherry Pond breaks up in the Spring and a good wind drives the chunks up onto shore.  During the winter, the ice would have extended down into the bottom sediments, and during the spring breakup those sediments and some pretty big rocks are carried by the ice chunks and thrust up onto shore. Over the course of a few thousand years, a berm of these rocks and sediments is created. The trail followed the top of it.

Duck in Cherry Pond

I found a bench along the trail overlooking the pond and sat for awhile, hoping maybe the clouds would lift. They didn't budge. Seems like something that happens in the afternoon.

Colonel Whipple Trail

The last trail of this section, the Colonel Whipple Trail, was the longest and most remote. I don't know who Colonel Whipple was, but I love his name. I want him to have invented whipped cream, as in Whipple's Whipped Cream.

Chicken of the Woods

Ahh, there was some Chicken of the Woods, in perfect shape to be sauteed.  I had no way to do that at the motel. And I always feel guilty picking stuff along the trails. Let the other hikers enjoy the pretty orange stuff growing on the tree, and let its spores spread far and wide.

Dalibarba (Dewdrop)

Turtlehead

There were a number of bog walk sections and I started seeing a lot of moose tracks. One of the bog walk planks was broken, and there were moose tracks right next to it. Which got me wondering: Do moose ever step on the bog walks, and does that break the planks? A moose can be over 1,000 pounds. I don't think the bog walks were designed for that.

Moose tracks next to the broken bog walk

The Colonel Whipple Trail looks like a very difficult one to maintain. First, there were all the low areas, which required the bog walks and probably a lot of cutting back during the growing season. Then there was the wooded section with the blowdowns that had been chainsawed.

Blowdown Central

And finally there was the really long section through the brush that must get mowed with a towed mowing deck. The guidebook says this area had been logged not too long ago and that the trail follows a logging road, which explains the culverts. The saplings are said to be having trouble regenerating due to excessive moose browse. The brush is having no such problems, that's for sure.

This must be hard to maintain

This mowed part went on for quite a long ways. The ground was a bit lumpy but otherwise sold, with plenty of moose tracks. If I were a moose I would use the trail, too. Imagine those big beasts trying to get through that thick brush.

Getting closer to the peaks of the Kilkenny

The Colonel Whipple Trail (I cannot say that enough times) comes out onto Whipple Road (excellent), which is gravel.  According to the mileage book, this section was about seven miles. It seemed shorter.

Nice.

As I drove down Whipple Road, I saw a bunch of turkey in a field with the Kilkenny rising up in the background, and stopped to take some photos. I had decided to leave the four-mile road walk until the next morning so I could stretch my legs before the long drive back to Connecticut. And the Kilkenny might be obscured by clouds the next morning, so I wanted a photo while I could get it.

Turkey in the field along Whipple Road, the Kilkenny beyond

I then took a quick drive up to Route 2, following the street-walk route of the Cohos, to the general store in Jefferson. This is where thru hikers can buy supplies. I bought instead a slice of pizza and ate it at the little table inside. It was delicious.

Looking back at Owls Head and Mt. Martha

That afternoon we decided to take the long drive through Crawford Notch down into North Conway. It was Saturday. What a zoo. Gridlock everywhere.  But it's OK, we survived and escaped to live another day. My husband had played 18 holes at Bretton Woods in the morning. It's that place that looks like the hotel from The Shining, so I snapped a photo on the way back from North Conway. The clouds had lifted by then and we could finally see Mt. Washington looming over the famous hotel. It was quite pretty during the two seconds that we sped by.

Bretton Woods, on our way back from North Conway