Mt. Chocorua Hike Pics 5/28/07

We started on the Liberty Trail off of Paugus Mill Rd passed Liberty Cabin and up to the Summit. The trail to Liberty Cabin was very easy with a nice grade to get us warmed up. Then we had a nice quick scramble to the summit. Beautiful day. The weather was warm and sunny with a nice breeze coming from the west. Crowded on the summit. It took us less than two hours to get to the summit; little did we know that it would take us six hours to get back down. Then we continued over the three sisters. We saw a solar panel on Middle Sister, which I thought was cool. Then we continued down the Carter Ledge Trail. The carter ledge trail is steep is some spots, but it has nice views. However, not everything always goes as planned. After a while, we headed back into the trees and came to a scree slope. Here the trail ended. We went down the scree slope (which was a lot of fun) and then looked left and right of the slope, but could not find out where the trail continued. We think we were very close to Nickerson Ledge Trail. Later, I found out the people coming up had no trouble finding the trail, and they did remember that scree slope, but sometimes trails look different going in different directions. So far, I have heard of no one who has successfully descended the Carter Ledge Trail this year... Anyway, after a half hour of looking for the trail, we decided to go back up thinking that maybe we followed a old trail and perhaps the correct trail would have diverged farther up. We could not find anywhere else where the trail could have diverged and the trail blazes clearly led to the scree slope. We ended up hiking all the way up carter ledge trail and over the sisters again and down the more popular Piper Trail. We had no trouble with the piper trail and we made it back down with plenty of daylight to spare. It was a great day for a hike.

Chocorua