Lovewell Mountain

I continue the quest to find mountains that are quiet. I didn't succeed this week. Well, I did until halfway through, and thankfully it mostly worked in my favour. This week, I headed for Lovewell Mountain, I easily located the parking at the intersection of Halfmoon Pond Road and Lovell Mountain Road. There were already a couple cars there, but I decided to go for it and geared up. This trail is a section of the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway, I've also seen it referred to as Lovewell Mountain Trail. The first 0.9 miles is a Class VI unmaintained road, which is in fine condition for walking. When you encounter a tree in the middle of the road with a yellow sign pointing left towards Lovewell Mountain, you've reached the trailhead of Lovewell Mountain Trail. The only real indication besides the yellow makeshift sign is a Lovewell State Forest sign. The trail then begins it's ascent towards Lovewell Mountain summit. The biggest issue I encountered this trek was some black fly activity on the lower half of the trail. They seem super annoying this year. It's 2020 and anything apparently goes. I was passed by a single hiker and played leapfrog with a young family on the ascent. A couple runners passed us on their descent. The actual trail is in great shape, easy to navigate, and what I would consider a moderate grade for the first half. Once you reach a large cairn where I passed the young family for the final time as they took a snack break, we were all a bit confused if that was the summit. I confirmed on my online map, that it was not and left them while I continued the final 0.5 mile to the summit. This section started as an awesome woods walk that was relatively flat and then reached the final push which was much steeper than the rest of the trail. There is a spring water spur off the left about half way up this climb for the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway thru-hikers (well anyone actually, if you really needed it). Another spur, this time to the right takes you to a viewpoint. I skipped that on my ascent just wanting to reach the top, which I did in another 0.1 miles or so. The top has another large cairn, a benchmark and decent sized prominence with lots of little nooks and crannies to take a break if need be. I could see a view through the trees and found a herd path over to take it in. It was beautiful! Back at the summit, I noticed beyond the cairn is an actual summit sign nailed to a tree, with a register to sign in. As I was signing the logbook another hiker made his summit and I left him to enjoy and began my descent. This is where my timing was good, I passed at least 8-9 groups and was thankful to be going in the opposite direction. This time I took the view point spur, but didn't linger as the younger family was there and I could see the view wasn't that much different than I had just seen from the summit herd path. When I made it back to the car, the road was lined with lots of vehicles. So much for my quiet little hike! Thankfully I did time it just right and enjoyed a great day on the trails.

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