Although I had already done a number of them, notably Cardigan, Kearsarge, Smarts, Cube, Monadnock, Martha, and Black, we have begun to hike more of “New Hampshire’s 52 With A View”. We were inspired by Ken MacGray’s book with that title and “The Adventures of Buffalo and Tough Cookie” by Dan Szczesny, which chronicles his hiking the 52 mountains with a spunky 10 year old girl.
The Welch-Dickey Loop in Thornton and Waterville Valley is a wonderful 4.4 mile hike over the Welch and Dickey Mountains. It is justifiably very popular and almost impossible to do alone. When we arrived around 7:45 AM, there were three or four cars in the huge parking lot. When we finished the lot was nearly full with perhaps 50 or more cars – I didn’t bother counting.
The initial part of the hike is along a stream that is a tributary of the Mad River. We eventually crossed it at the spot in the photo below.
The trail is very well constructed and maintained. The shingled water bars are excellent at keeping the trail mostly dry.
At various places along the trail we saw interesting mushrooms. Here are two photos of Amanita mushrooms called Fly Agaric.
Along the trail we found a number of glacial erratics. Here are two of them.
After 1.3 miles we reached a large granite slab where are we encountered the first of perhaps a dozen other hikers. Caro ran over to greet them. Here he is running back to us.
This area is very pretty and is known as the South Shoulder.
The views from this spot over the Mad River Valley are spectacular. Unfortunately we picked a day that was very hazy due to the wildfires out west. While that certainly compromised the distance views, the haze made the light in the forest very soft which was wonderful for photography of near subjects.
I made a seven-photo panorama looking basically east and labeled some of the peaks.
A short distance along the trail, I took this photo looking northeast across Waterville Valley.
While there are a number of rock scrambles and somewhat tricky areas on this hike, overall it is not overly challenging. If doing it in winter I would certainly want to take crampons or at least micro spikes.
In the photo at the left you can see Bruce and Caro at the top right walking carefully next to a bit of a drop off.
Then there was an interesting squeeze through a huge split rock that involved some climbing.
And a left turn at the end.
There are only a few locations in the White Mountains where fire–dependent Jack Pines are found. Welch Mountain is one of them. The cones of this pine open when exposed to high temperatures. Many times the cones remain closed for years until a forest fire kills the mature trees and opens the cones, re-seeding the burnt ground. We did not see huge stands of Jack Pines, but there were some areas of them and a few scattered here and there. Some were in unlikely places.
Continuing up Welch Mountain we were treated to this view looking southeast.
And then an interesting scramble with several options to get to the top.
I made a six-photo panorama.
Since that pan is a bit short, I cropped it to the left, center, and right. These versions are shown below.
We reached the summit of Welch Mountain and Alex took a photo of Bruce and me with his iPhone.
I stepped away from Bruce and took a photo of him on the summit. That is Dickey Mountain behind him.
From the summit we got a nice view of the huge ledges we would hike coming down from Dickey Mountain.
We descended into the valley separating Welch and Dickey.
Caro got well ahead of us. You might be able to see him in the far distance near the middle of the photo below.
Near the summit of Dickey, Alex and Bruce stood behind a huge cairn. Because I was close to the cairn with a wide angle lens, the cairn looks taller than it actually was.
A different view of that cairn has Welch Mountain in the background.
We descended through a beautiful forest, made even nicer by the great soft light.
You can see how nicely the path had been constructed in the photo below.
We reached Dickey’s huge southwest ridge with a steep drop-off to the east.
From the southwest ridge there is a great view of Welch and the mountains beyond it to the east.
Near the end of the slab was a cairn.
Then the trail led into some vegetation where we saw Reindeer Lichen …
… more Reindeer Lichen and Canadian Bunchberries …
… and Deceiver Mushrooms in yet more Reindeer Lichen.
And naturally another cairn.
We entered some woods and stopped for water and a brief snack. It was still too early for lunch.
We finished the loop right at noon. Before we did, I found some Amanita mushrooms called Blushers.
I can’t describe how pleased we were about this hike. We plan to return in October when, hopefully, the air will be much clearer and the foliage colorful.
If you miss the fantastic halo around the sun, you can see it if you CLICK HERE.