Round Pond Trail

View of Mts. Swett & Piper, and part of Belknap, according to PeakFinder.

Well, that settles it.  I’m ready for winter & snowshoe hiking to be over.

Ok, I’m half joking.  And I certainly don’t want to rush the year, as time goes by way too fast as it is.  But today just proved how much of a toll the big backpack and snowshoes take on me.

It really wasn’t a bad trail, or terribly steep.  I’d happily do it again, in any direction.  But many times I found myself looking backwards and feeling ridiculous for being as tired and sore as I was, when the incline was truthfully quite moderate.

It’s been a long time since I’ve used the full backpack, and not just my little sling pack, plus we’d previously determined that carrying that much weight (despite it being legitimately ultralight) drains me a lot faster than hiking unhindered.  Strapping snowshoes on obviously added significantly more weight too, so my body was really feeling it pretty early along the trail.

In fairness, we did actually hike 2 miles more than intended before even starting the "real" hike…  We began by following the snowmobile trail as you’re supposed to, but we missed the sooner-than-expected turnoff, so our approach, while a perfectly nice trail, gave my pain levels a head start.  At one point while “lost” we said if this trail didn’t take us to the junction we anticipated, then we were just going to continue towards Shannon.  Which would have been perfectly acceptable too! 😉

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you look at it, the trail eventually curved around to the place we needed for Round Pond.  When we finally hit the red trail up, we gratefully stopped carrying our snowshoes, and started wearing them.  Turns out we actually would have been fine in just spikes for the majority, but wearing snowshoes on our feet was less exhausting than carrying them on our backs.  At least slightly.

In trade for all of our effort, we were rewarded with multiple lovely viewpoints along the way, and a cool looking sky to boot.  Yet another reason we were very glad it wasn’t totally gray as seemingly forecast.  We almost regretted finishing before sunset!  Although it wasn’t by a lot, and the first hint of color was already appearing as we descended. 

One disappointment was Round Pond itself.  We expected it to be more attractive, but it honestly didn’t look like anything special today.  It’s probably nicer as a fall foliage hike.  Or after a fresh snow, with frosted trees, perhaps.  This is also where we finally found snow depths that justified snowshoes.  Near the pond there were interesting drifts, and the trail beyond was simply less broken out.  For good reason, I’m thinking…  The small loop trail that crosses over to orange/Mack Ridge trail had a lot of wet spots, so that was less than pleasant, and I’m glad we weren’t hiking it later in the season!  But no matter, we accomplished some more Belknap Range redlining, and a unique trail for the 52 Hike Explorer Challenge, so it was all worthwhile.  For our descent, we stayed on the snomo trail for easier walking, which was a good choice.

Thankfully such conditions were not on the entire trail up.

Round Pond, currently unexciting.

Back home, although this wasn’t a totally killer hike in the end, it did still necessitate some pain treatment, in my usual form of abundant arnica and Deep Blue.  I skipped the vodka, which I’d considered earlier.  Mostly because I forgot how good it sounded once I got involved with supper. LOL

At one point, I commented to Hawk that I’d eaten quite healthfully today… salad, chicken sandwich, smoothie and my Everything Muffin (which is loaded with whole grains, bran, flax, almonds, seeds, veggies; all sorts of good stuff, hence “everything” while still hypoallergenic for me)… and then I ruined it all by making brownies.  His response to that was, “Brownies are healthy for your happiness.”  And there we have the quote of the day!


Hike 10. 3/5 Round Pond Trail, 6.5 mi, 3:04 hrs, 1066 ft.