After receiving a foot of snow Saturday we headed out in snow squalls the following day (Sunday) for a snow shoe hike. At first we were destined for Mt. Major in Alton Bay, NH. However since there would be a lack of a view and since we hadn’t done a lot of hiking as of late, we figured something smaller would be a better option. We decided on the Forest Society owned Morse Preserve on Pine Mt. (also in Alton Bay). I had hiked this a couple times in the summer/fall months with family and knew it would be a great snow shoe hike in the winter months. We arrived at the town forest (plowed) parking lot on Avery Hill Rd. Geared up and headed across the street and a short distance down the road to the gated trail.
It was a nice hike up the old farm road with snow laden trees and branches leaning into the trail. We stopped at the field and watched the snow blow across the open area before continuing on. The trail makes a gradual climb to the open blueberry barren where on clear days one can see almost the entire Belknap Range and Alton Bay. Today we could see maybe 500 feet down the hill side. We continued making the loop around the West side of the mountain and connected back onto the main trail. We descended back down to the bottom with only one wipe out by Scott, who caught his snow shoes together and tumble down onto the powdery snow. Mileage was 1.9 with a total trip time of about an hour. This is a great snow shoe hike with just enough elevation gain to give you a work out, but not enough to wipe you out! And it’s always very quite compared to it’s larger neighbor Mt. Major. You can find a map and more info. at the Forest Society’s web site.
