You Are Here: Bear Brook

We have had a lot of warmer days, so a lot of snow has melted. I was on a time crunch again, so back to Bear Brook. My go to in these circumstances with time. I parked in a small area off Podunk Road, almost at the gate that has a "Trail Parking" sign on the tree. It is at the end of what some maps show as the Hall Mountain Trail Connector. I guess it's for snowmobiles, although with their trailers, only a couple cars would actually fit. I geared up, this area was very icy, so microspikes went on. I ended up leaving them on although conditions would change throughout the entire hike from ice to hard packed snow to bare ground to straight up running water. I headed up the connector trail and reached Hall Mountain Trail. This entire hike was hardly signed or blazed, so I relied on my pre-downloaded tracks to ensure I was on the right path. At the intersection a solo hiker came up not long after me, we exchanged pleasantries and he ended up wandering off trail into the woods. The summit of Hall Mountain was less than half a mile from this intersection and is the high point for the town of Candia. The true summit is about 300ft off trail, which I did end up doing since the snow wasn't deep and the woods were open, in fact a little ways off trail and where the true summit was is in a logged area. There is a cairn, and I had heard there was a register jar, but I didn't see the jar. Back on trail and heading down the backside of Hall Mountain, the trail ascends again to what Peakbagger called Hall Mountain Northwest Peak. I went the few hundred feet off trail again to what appeared to be the high point. Hall Mountain Trail in its entirety is a snowmobile trail, so for the most part is wide and until now had been mostly hard packed snow. I started to encounter a mix of completely bare ground and ice. Lots of ice that appeared to be solid, but when you stepped on it, punched through to mud or water. This part wasn't fun. Also at a point in the trail where you take a hard right hand turn, I encountered lots of junk, a truck and a house in the middle of construction. It looked like it had been that way for quite a while. It was definitely unnerving and I passed through this area as quickly as possible. Just after the hard right turn, the main snowmobile trail went straight, but Hall Mountain Trail veered right. Still a snowmobile trail, but this section is unmaintained and not groomed. This was the least fun and messiest part of the hike. The trail was either slushy mashed potato snow, ice or water. Deep water with running cascades! I did my best to skirt the edges of the running water but definitely broke through some of the ice/snow into the water more than once. I was so glad to see the end of this trail, Ferret Trail which was hard packed snow/bare ground. I was on this briefly and passed some scout camp facilities before turning right and crossing an open area and picking up a short connector trail to Hall Mountain Marsh Trail. Oddly enough, this was the trail I had been concerned about with the name Marsh in it! Turns out it was the best of the day. Designed primarily for mountain bikes, it weaved and bobbed through the woods reaching Hall Mountain Marsh and was mostly hard packed snow, easy to walk on. One cyclist passed me, and as I was looking out over the marsh, I saw several more riding across the marsh. I guess it was frozen enough after the recent warming. There was one water crossing at the feeder brook to the marsh with a dam that had high running water and no way to avoid wet feet, so I just carefully stepped across being careful not to step on a wobbly rock and fall into the cold water! I encountered a couple of ladies hiking and had a great chat with them about this area and several other areas on my redlining spreadsheet that they have also hiked. This trail went up and over what Peakbagger called Podunk Ledges, with some nice views over the area before meeting back up with Podunk Road. Here I picked up Hall Mountain Trail again and followed back to the connector trail and down to my car.

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