| Hiking Trail Conditions Report |
 | Peaks |
Pitcher Mountain, Hubbard Hill, Jackson Hill, Healey Hill, Oak Hill, NH |
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 | Trails: |
Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway, Fox Brook Tentsite Spur, King Street, bushwhack |
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 | Date of Hike: |
Sunday, February 6, 2022 |
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 | Parking/Access Road Notes: |
We parked at the jct of Faxon Hill Rd and Kings St where there was a large plowed area for several cars. The gate that marks where the MSG leaves the road for Oak Hill was closed in the morning (9am?) so the only option would’ve been to park on the road (plenty wide enough but people may not like it). By the time we got there in the afternoon, the gate was open and it indicates that “hikers only†can park just beyond the gate. So we did. One other car had done so as well. With snow, there seemed to really only be room for two cars here. The Pitcher Mtn lot was well plowed and has room for a half dozen to a dozen cars. Only one other there when we started at 9:45am and returned at 4:30-5pm. There’s some ice that I’d evidently parked on in the morning though which required my friend to give me a good push to get off of as we were trying to leave. All roads were well plowed and suitable for any car. |
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 | Surface Conditions: |
Ice - Black, Snow - Packed Powder/Loose Granular, Ice - Breakable Crust, Snow/Ice - Frozen Granular |
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 | Recommended Equipment: |
Snowshoes |
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 | Water Crossing Notes: |
Mostly snowbridged. Not a problem at all. |
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 | Trail Maintenance Notes: |
The MSG is well-blazed in white. No blowdowns that I recall but a plethora of ice-laden branches hung over the trail that you had to fight your way through. |
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 | Dog-Related Notes: |
Sure but be careful of all the snowmobiles. |
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 | Bugs: |
None |
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 | Lost and Found: |
None |
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 | Comments: |
Day 98, Peaks 87, 88, and 89 (Jackson Hill, Healey Hill, Oak Hill - I’d already done Pitcher Mtn and Hubbard Hill doesn’t count toward the 500). By the time we finally got started at 9:45am, the bitter cold overnight temps had warmed significantly to the upper single digits. Lovely to feel the sun too and only felt some mild-moderate winds on the semi-open summits.
Quick hike up to Pitcher on the MSG following the fire tower road. A quick and pretty gentle ascent with some great views. Walking through the ice-laden trees was a bit of a pain at times but absolutely beautiful. The bushes up by the summit were also covered in ice too which made for an unusual but gorgeous appearance. We continued along the MSG from the summit, descending through more shrub, then turning right and paralleling, crossing, then coinciding with a road as we made our way into the Andorra Forest. Two of us started in snowshoes from the start. One of us switched into them around here. The trail had seen some tracks and was crunchy but not always stable enough to support bareboots. Snowshoes weren’t ideal in the sense that it’s not really powder but they’re certainly better than using microspikes or bare booting. Snow conditions remained the same the entire hike of course more or less and snowshoes stayed on our feet the entire day.
The road the MSG coincided with eventually became a snowmobile trail and we had to yield to many snowmobilers. This continued up to the summit of Hubbard Hill which was a nice viewpoint. Love these open-shrub areas :) So different from most of the hiking we do! With blazes presumably on the rocks buried beneath the snow on these summits, a GPS was helpful to know which way to descend from the summits. From Hubbard Hill, we quickly came to the signed jct with Fox Brook Tentsite which we went to for redlining. Soon after, we came to the col, then began a mostly gentle ascent to Jackson Hill. From the summit of Jackson Hill, the plan was to continue on the MSG a short ways, then take what’s shown on Gaia as the “Blue Trail†toward Kings St so I could whack to Healey Hill. Well, low-and-behold Gaia misled us and the MSG was rerouted back in 2019 to follow this previously blue blazed trai, now of course blazed very well in white. It’s also known as the Bailey Brook Trail…or something like that! The MSG descended to some ponds, then rose up to King St.
We headed south on Kings St for maybe 1/3mi until 1) the private property signs stopped, and 2) we found an open area that looked like a good place to start whackin’! Last trip report for this peak says that it’s heavily posted thus they did not summit. It’s true that there’s many private property signs for a ways along King St here but they eventually stop (once on the other side of the “drivewayâ€) and we didn’t see any signs on the peak itself either. We followed a road most of the way to the peak, then easily whacked to the highpoint. There are two contenders for the highpoint: neither has a jar. The first one you’ll come to as a red blazed metal thing in the ground, that, from a distance, I thought was a jar. There’s also some rope and a very tattered flag high above in the trees. The second contender is behind (NE) of it. Drop down, then climb back up. High point is marked by a boulder in some thick trees with a red blaze on its backside.
We followed our tracks back down, then walked out Kings St along the snowmobile trail to our car at the end of the road. We took a break at the car then drove the whopping 0.3mi to Oak Hill and quickly summited as an out-and-back. The trail descends a bit, then is flat/ascends gently, then is an ass-kicker for the last 1/4mi. Similarly, to snow conditions earlier in the day, snowshoes were best as the crust wasn’t entirely supportive. Snowshoes made “trail breaking†trivial. There was a jar and handle on the summit but the jar had no lid so everything was frozen not allowing us to sign in. Some signs of moose on the mountain. Also, on a particularly steep pitch or two, there was some exposed ice and more lurking beneath to exercise a little caution around.
The hike was about 11-12mi with somewhere around 2000ft of gain. Including our short break in the car and drive to Oak Hill, total time was just under 6.5hrs. 267 more days and 276 more peaks to go… |
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 | Name: |
Liam Cooney |
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 | E-Mail: |
liamcooney96@gmail.com |
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| Date Submitted: |
2022-02-07 |
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 | Link: |
 https:// |
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Disclaimer: Reports are not verified - conditions may vary. Use at own risk. Always be prepared when hiking. Observe all signs. Trail conditions reports are not substitutes for weather reports or common sense. |
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