If you’ve ever taken teenage boys hiking, you know you’ve got to keep it interesting, or else they’ll never come with you again. Today we had an awesome crew: myself, Ryan, my brother AJ, and my fake brother Nick. We had agreed on the easiest of the three options I posed in the group chat and got a painfully late start (literally 11 am… who even am I) up the Chippewa trail.
The Chippewa trailhead was beyond busy, there were 9 cars and a bus that exceeded the 4-car lot by the start of the trail. After suiting up and connecting hydration bladders, the four of us walked downhill a bit until we got to the Kiln intersection. Curious since I’d never seen a Lime Kiln, despite spending the first year of my college career living off a road named after one, we took the spur over and marveled at its size and impressive build. There were attempts to climb it, but all were unsuccessful for the sake of not wanting to damage it.
Returning to the junction, we pushed uphill on a trail that was pretty similar to my journey up Rattlesnake 20 hours earlier- steep and eroded, but not bad for safety or difficulty’s sake.
We took three small breaks on the way up, once on the trail, and twice at each of the first two overlooks; we avoided the third one because the school bus group (who were all so cute and well behaved) were taking in the view at that one. As a whole, I was massively impressed by how much we got to see before we summited and loved this perspective of Moosilauke.
Shortly after the ledges we were looking up at got more dramatic, we were on the last leg of the trail towards the summit! We stopped for a little while, took some goofy pictures, and then walked back on Black Mountain Trail, as we’d left my car on that side so we could trace both ways on the same day.
Black Mountain Trail was a tad longer, less steep, not eroded, and much more densely wooded. We did have to stay on bear alert though because the only other car we saw in that lot earlier warned us they did not complete the hike due to turning around for a bear! We never saw the bear or any signs of one though.
We got down significantly faster than we got up and felt satisfied with the way we had decided to complete this hike. And out and back would’ve been fantastic if we hadn’t had the luxury of car spotting though!
Black Mountain has easily crept its way to being my favorite non-4K in western New Hampshire, go check it out if you haven’t yet!
