You Are Here: Straightback & Anna

Today was an incredible day to be outside. I'm so glad Vanessa (and Henry her chocolate lab) and I were able to take advantage of that. More redlining in the Belknaps. It was quite the adventure. I had read all the trail reports I could find, which I tend to do when exploring somewhere new. I knew some of the trail was unmarked, but supposedly easy enough to follow and find. We parked in the small turnout I had read about at the end of Alton Mountain Road. Found the split in the rock wall I had also read about, and the field of scarecrows. At this point, I had anticipated taking a right onto Old Stage Road for 0.5 miles before Blueberry Pasture Trail (the unmarked one, essentially a snowmobile trail) ventured left. We turned right and quickly ended up back almost where we started on Alton Mountain Road. So that wasn't right. We turned back to the scarecrow field, and went in the other direction. I kept my eye on the GPS knowing the Blueberry Pasture Trail was unmarked, but that it was 0.5 miles down the road. We hit the 0.5 mile mark, and there was no indication of a left that we could see. We obviously inadvertently went left without really realizing it.. at this point we knew we were on a snowmobile trail, and could see the direction we needed to be going. This "trail" we were on was heading up and in that general direction.. so our thought process was, OK we'll just follow it.. see where it goes, and bushwhack if we have to. I have a topo map app on my phone which we used to verify we were at least in the right vicinity.. a couple of times we hit what we thought might be junctions and questioned which way to go.. but again, my thought process was, well we are on a very obvious snowmobile trail.. it's going to go somewhere, let's just stay on this.. and wouldn't you know it, 1.7 miles in and we hit the next intended intersection with the Straightback Mountain Trail. We had been on the Blueberry Pasture Trail all along, and just didn't realize it. There was a tree with some small signs that verified this also. I had made peace with possibly not being on Blueberry Pasture Trail, and just making it up to Straightback however possible.. but it was a very welcome relief to know we had been on the right path all along! The ledges opened up, the views were incredible and we followed Straightback Mountain Trail the 0.5 miles up to the summit. It was a bit chilly up there, but really quite a gorgeous day. After a quick snack, we headed over the Straightback-Anna Trail (also the Belknap Range Trail) towards Anna Mountain. There was another redlining party there with some Springer spaniels that Henry made friends with until they got a bit feisty. I knew the Anna-Goat Pasture Trail was blazed red, so we headed out on the "red trail" until Vanessa pointed out that it didn't seem we were headed in the right direction. After pulling out the maps, I looked back at a picture I had just taken on the Anna summit and did realize that it appeared we had taken the trail heading for Belknap. So we backtracked (thankfully we hadn't really gone too far) to the Anna summit where the redlining party still was and they pointed us in the correct direction.. also blazed red, but opposite where we had been headed. Whoops! The Anna-Goat Pasture Trail is very well blazed and easy to follow.. but clearly not well used. The leaf bed is thick and was at times slippery.. also a couple of quite steep descents at times.. but we made it without incident. At the bottom of the Anna-Goat Pasture Trail, I knew we had to follow Old Stage Road back to the car.. this time we did encounter a couple of forks and things we were not anticipating.. but luckily another hiker was coming down one of the forks and was able to confirm which direction we needed to go as she was parked in the same little lot we were! 2 more Belknap peaks for Vanessa and 2 new trails for me and my redlining. I'm now at 56% on trail completion.

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