I had the day off and a couple spare hours to hill this morning.. so I couldn't go far, and I'm still not cleared to do much.. I have hiked Parker Mountain in Strafford many, many times.. but I have never connected the Mooers Loop Trail from the intersection with Link Trail to the Strafford Town Forest.. for a couple of reasons, the main one being I had the impression it was overgrown and potentially difficult to follow due to lack of use. Thus I was surprised to see a trip report this weekend showing the trail as clear and the author saying it was easy to follow! So I decided to go check it out.. it felt weird actually turning into the Strafford Town Forest lot after having driven past hundreds of times.. there is room for quite a few cars and the trail begins beyond the gate and is marked with a signpost. It begins as a wide road and wanders through the forest before starting to climb the side of Parker Mountain. Not only was I surprised to see how clear and easy it was to follow naturally, it was also blazed with orange blazes. I had the impression it was going to follow this road all the way to the intersection, so I was surprised to see double blazes and a cairn showing the trail taking a 90 degree turn into the woods (had I read the AMC South Trail Guide more recently, it describes all this perfectly). I started down this trail but it felt like it was returning to the parking area, and I thought "perhaps this is why the trail is called Mooers Loop - it was possibly an actual loop. So I turned back and returned to the "road". Not realizing that was in fact the trail, I continued on the road where it quickly became overgrown and eventually petered out. This is what I had thought it would be like the entire way. I started to bushwhack through the woods, while following a digital track, but there was a lot of debris and it wasn't fun, so I decided to backtrack to the blazes and just follow that wherever it was going to lead me. Lo and behold just as I made this decision, I looked up and saw an orange blaze off in the distance and made the realization that was the correct trail all along. I backtracked and went into the woods. The trail from here became more of an actual trail, with rocks and roots and lots of leaves. Thankfully it was well blazed and easy to follow where the leaves covered the path. There were a couple of tiny stream crossings but no issues crossing them. The trail climbed a little more than I had expected and with the leaves down I had peakaboo views of the surrounding area. It was totally different than how I remembered coming in from the "upper" trail head many years ago. I was pleasantly surprised with how enjoyable it was. Before I knew it, I was at the Link Trail intersection, my turnaround point, having done the remainder of the trail several times before. I turned around and retraceed my steps back to the car. This completed the Parker Mountain area for me, and I now have just 0.5 miles to complete on the SE NH tab of the redlining spreadsheet for the AMC South Trail Guide (but I'm saving that for last!)
Strava Activity
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| it's almost like someone has come through and cleared the leaves! |
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| where the trail turns off the road into the woods |
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| me continuing on the "road" after the double blazes |
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| the road petered out and I was in the woods - this is not correct |
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| back tracked and on the actual trail again |
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| my turnaround point at Link Trail intersection |
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