A smooth and easy elevation-free day to recover from the previous day’s 22-miler on the Randolph Paths, perfect. However, I unfortunately did not care to put much effort into finding the correct trailhead for Pasture Path and have now realized I'll probably need to purchase the Randolph Path book in order to get this portion of my trace successfully. This said, Ryan and I ended up at the end of Town Road in Randolph, which happened to be the Crescent Ridge Trail Head.
I had recalled reading about Mount Crescent at some point and knew that it was not particularly low in elevation- not ideal for my incredibly weak-feeling legs. But, I couldn’t will myself to get back in the car and drive down the street for Pasture Path, so we journeyed up Crescent Ridge Trail.
The beginning of the trail featured a lot of Randolph-typical boulders and was not my cup of tea for a recovery day. Yet, as we pushed on the feat got a lot easier despite the heat. By the intersection of the Castleview Loop, the terrain eased in technicality and increased in slope, this was an excellent trade-off in my eyes.
At the loop junction, we took a right. However, I don’t think counterclockwise vs clockwise would’ve made things any different in terms of difficulty or practicality. To our likings, the trail felt well taken care of yet private and peaceful at the same time. We agreed we’d like to live here as moose.
After a quick scramble that needed a quick 5.3 move to get up, we got up to the South Outlook which provided excellent views of the Northern Presidentials that grew clearer the longer we sat there. Down on the ground with us, there was a whole bunch of moose poop which supported our moose thoughts from earlier.
Pushing forwards, we had a flat runway over to the Northern Outlook that gave us a great perspective of how oddly symmetrical the 3 Weeks peaks are. Though less dramatic, I preferred this outlook because I had not seen this side before. The view had a cute bench that overlooked Cabot, Unknown Pond Peak, and Black Crescent Mountain. By comparison, it was more exciting to me than that of the South outlook because it had similar views to Boy Mountain, which I did this past spring.
The way down felt oddly steep, but this was probably because I never got to work my down muscles on the long hike. It wasn’t at all technical and I would’ve been much quicker on fresh legs.
Before I knew it, we were back at the junction and decided to take Castleview Loop and the Interpretive Trail back to the car, which was pretty heavy on grassy and exposed meadows.
And of course, this quick mid-morning hike was powered by a humid nights sleep at Fourth Iron, a gluten free Yaya’s breakfast sandwich, and several liters of water from the Jefferson Spring- just how I like it!
Stats: 3.94 Miles | 1,346 Feet | 0 Frogs (super sad)
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