Elevation gain: 2545 feet
Trails Used: None. Snowmobile trails, bushwhack.
Highlight(s): canister on the summit of West Castle.
Saturday we headed "north of the notches" to do a bushwhack to West Castle mountain. The grand plan would have us hiking to Gore Mountain just to the north, as well as possibly other nearby peaks on the ridge. Alas, someone forgot to inform Old Man Winter of our plans, and with deep snow in the higher elevations it turned out to be a tough, cold, and wet bushwhack just to get to West Castle.
West Castle is located in Stratford, New Hampshire. There are no trails that go to the wooded,view-less summit of West Castle so it requires a bushwhack to reach its high point. There are slight views looking south just off the summit of West Castle.
West Castle is on the New Hampshire One Hundred Highest List, the New Hampshire Two Hundred Highest List, and the New Hampshire 3K List.
The gate where we parked leading to the snowmobile trail we would use to get closer to West Castle Peak. There was already a snowshoe track heading in to points unknown.
Walking on snowmobile trails is always so nice and easy, just long and tedious. We get views from and old logging area with views of Lightning Mountain and Teapot Mountain.
A long stretch of the snowmobile trail, as it continues on and on. This is a view south to Stratford Notch Peak and Goback/Savage-East Peak.
Occasionally you get some nice views to compensate for the monotony of the snowmobile trails.
It also helps that this area has been logged extensively to help with the views.
We ate still continuing on the snowmobile trail. The snow was starting to get deeper at this point, and eventually we would have to begin our bushwhack.
Once off the snowmobile trail it was a series of logging cuts and skidder roads with plenty of views to start the bushwhack. This is where we were pretty much hiking in fresh snow. Brian is looking back to Spruce Mountain, Goback Mountain and Teapot Mountain.
The logging roads gave way to pretty nice woods, but it was also about here the snow started getting deeper on us. Some very nice moose woods on the way up to the summit of West Castle.
Occasionally we would come across these frozen over ponds which we could pretty much hike right across and/or over.
We slowly headed towards West Castle. It looks an awful lot like winter in here.
We started hitting thick spruce covered in enormous amounts of snow that made for the slowest, wettest and toughest going of the day so far.
I found another antler, most likely left by someone on the summit of West Castle and not in the best of conditions so it got to stay where it was.
Me at the summit canister for West Castle (elevation: 3590 feet).
We reversed course and headed back to the car with this one last view of the day.
From the summit, it was a rather slippery, but straight-forward way back down as the snow proved to be very loose. Brian was a bit under the weather for most of this hike so once back on the snowmobile trail however, he seemed to perk up a bit and it was smooth sailing back to the car. All in all, a nice return to a summit we had not been to in a few years, and under different conditions (the first time was a stark contrast of sweltering heat and bugs). While the whole plan had to get abbreviated, it was still a respectable but tough 10 plus mile day.
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