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After
supper, we started to get ready for bed. I boiled some water to put in our
Nalgene bottles to stick in the foot of our sleeping bags. Suddenly,
Muffin started barking and I looked outside to see if anything was going
on. There was a guy with a flashlight standing nearby. It turned out that
his car had stalled in the parking lot and he needed a jump. He and his
wife had been trying to turn around in the parking lot when their engine
died. Unfortunately, the jump didn't help; there seemed to be some sort of
electrical problem. Since they lived only a few miles away in Lincoln, I
gave them a ride home. They were going to call for a tow in the morning.
A
little while later when I got back, I was ready to get to bed. Holly was
already half asleep. I read for a little while, then turned out the light.
The
next morning, their car was gone. We had slept late so it had probably
been towed before we woke up. It was a nice sunny day. After eating
breakfast, we decided to take a hike up the Wilderness Trail to Franconia
Falls. I had been thinking of renting snowshoes and climbing Mt
Pemigewasset, but the thick icy crust changed my mind.
We
drove over to the start of the trail at the Lincoln Woods Trailhead across
the highway. There were quite a few cars in the lot; most people seemed to
be cross-country skiing. The Wilderness Trail is a wide and flat trail
that follows the bed of an old logging railroad up the East Branch of the
Pemigewasset River. After crossing the suspension footbridge, a sign
directed hikers to walk in the center of the trail, between two lanes for
the skiers. For the first mile or so, we played leapfrog with a young
family. The littlest girl was having a tough time with her skis and with
her jacket, so they stopped to rest fairly often.
By
the time we reached the Osseo Trail junction, they had turned around.
Next, we shared the trail with two men and their three dogs - a Cairn
Terrier, an Irish Setter, and a Papillion - who were on their way to camp
at Black Pond. The dogs were extremely energetic, particularly the Papillion, who repeatedly ran back and forth along the trail
with the Terrier usually tagging close behind. Somewhere before the Black
Pond Trail, the two guys put on snowshoes and the whole troupe disappeared
into the woods toward the river. I don't know whether they ever made it to
Black Pond. |
Muffin
and Hobbes in the tent. Hobbes is Holly's stuffed tiger that she's had
since she was 3 years old. These days, he always comes along as a pillow. |
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