A perfect morning to grab some more trails at Bear Brook State Park. It's not too far for me to travel making it convenient to get home and get some chores done around the house. My initial plan had to be to park at the Snowmobile lot on Deerfield Road, but it's not open for the season yet, and the road has No Parking signs (although there was a truck parked there, I wasn't comfortable taking the chance), so I parked down the road at the Beach Parking/Toll Booth parking area. This only added maybe half a mile to my initial plan. We received a few more inches of snow over the weekend, but I was surprised to find all but 2 trails I traveled on broken out and mostly well packed down! I started on One Mile Trail and went back to the Snowmobile Access Trail and followed that back to the parking lot I had wanted to initially park at. Did the NEMBA Family Loop (these were the only 2 trails not broken out) and back to the Snowmobile Access Trail. Back on One Mile, I quickly picked up Catamount Hill Trail. This leads up a decent little climb to some benches and view points. The true summit is not on Bear Brook land, but there was an obvious path that was well broken out, so I followed it just to grab the peak. It has a wooded summit with no views. Back on Catamount Hill Trail, I picked up the Catamount Shortcut and followed that down to One Mile Trail. Here I encountered some magical spots where the snow had made the branches heavy and created an enchanted forest feel. I backtracked to Wildcat Trail and took that over to Alp d'Huez, where I had been on Friday. I repeated that short section of Sentinel Pine Trail to finish off the section of Cascade Trail I needed. Not pretty like the section I did on Friday, but a nice wander through the woods all the same. This lead back to Catamount Shortcut, which I took back down and completed the other side of Wildcat Trail. Back on the Catamount Hill Trail and I was back at the car in just about half a mile. I saw no one until I was crossing the road back to my car. Surprisingly there were 3 cars there besides mine, but I hadn't crossed paths with any of their owners, except the 1 lady. My perfect kind of day.
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