You Are Here: Pleasant Lake High Trail

I went into today's hike thinking it would be straightforward.. however that wasn't exactly the case. I arrived on Whitney Brook Road and found the kiosk, but there didn't appear to be an official parking area. The area had snow on the ground, but it wasn't too high that I could pull off the road near the kiosk. I drove up and down a few times just to make sure I wasn't missing anything and decided to just park at the kiosk. The NLCC website for Cook Trail shows an interpretive loop trail, but it does reference some other trails marked in various colors. Since their own website only showed the one trail, that was my intention for the day, one side of the Cook Trail up to Pleasant Lake High Trail, do an out and back to the Langenau Loop intersection, where I had reached a few weeks ago, then back via the other side of the Cook Trail loop. The kiosk actually had a map showing the trails with all their associated colors. I took a picture but still had the intention of just doing the interpretive loop. There was snow on the ground, but like yesterday, it wasn't enough to require traction of any kind. I carried my spikes and snowshoes just in case. What I found as I headed down the main trail from the kiosk was a mess of trees/trails with painted blazes on them. I tried making sense of the colors vs the map I had just taken a picture of, but nothing seemed to match. I headed in the direction I thought fit best for the interpretive loop, and did see a couple markers that would indicate that was the case.. but nothing stayed consistent. All the trees seemed to have orange paint marks, with some other colors randomly here and there. There was a lot of debris from recent (and maybe not so recent) storms, and I wondered if during non-snowy seasons, it all made more sense. I had a downloaded track of a previous hiker who I thought had done Pleasant Lake High Trail (and they had for the most part) so I just picked trails that headed in that general vicinity. The trail climbed with gentle grades and I could see what appeared to be a cleared section ahead. Knowing there was an overlook on the Pleasant Lake High Trail, I figured that was it and continued on. My assumption was correct and I came up to a bench overlooking nearby Mt Kearsarge. I continued on now Pleasant Lake High Trail, which was marked with both orange and green paint marks. There were a lot of blazes, so at least on this section, it was easy to follow.. that being said, I was looking down so much following some previous tracks, I wandered right off trail before realizing I hadn't seen a blaze in a minute.. I backtracked and saw where I had gone off, no idea where that person had gone! The trail descended through some big boulders and through a powerline swath before reaching a pond with another bench! I do love that NLCC is generous with their resting options! On the other side of the pond was a road. The foot traffic took a left onto this road, which I did also. Back into the woods and the trail started a really decent climb up. I was not anticipating such a climb, but surprised myself with how good I felt. Continuing up, I had seen that many people had taken a spur near the top, and saw that it was marked with orange paint marks. I followed and it came out into a field with an amazing view across to Kearsarge. I continued across the field until I realized there was a house right there, so I stopped and took pictures before heading back. I did put on spikes at this point, as the steep climb had been a little icy and I figured it would make descending easier.. in retrospect, that was a bad choice as the snow was so sticky it just kept balling up underneath. From the field I descended a little, and came across a bridged brook crossing that was super pretty with frozen cascades. The trail then climbed back up to my turnaround point at the Langenau Loop intersection. It really was a pretty day, the sun was hitting between the trees giving everything a real enchanted feel. I backtracked and when I got to the pond with the bench, I realized I had actually skipped a bit of the trail by following the road to the left. The trail had continued straight across the road and into the woods, so I did a little loop to grab that piece I had initially missed. The day was starting to get long by now, so I considered taking one of the Cook Trails straight back to the car from the powerline swath, which would have missed the last couple tenths of Pleasant Lake High Trail that I needed, but I ended up going with my original plan of Pleasant Lake High back to the car... however, once I was back at the overlook bench, I lost the green paint marks. Try as I might, I just couldn't find any, so I started back the way I came up. A couple tenths in, I took a right onto one of the other marked trails, thinking it might be it, but from here it just got even more confusing. I think I saw paint marks in every color, even purple, which wasn't shown on the map. I was mentally done at this point, and just wanted to be back at the car, so I took any trail that seemed to head in the right direction. Eventually I could see the road through the trees, but was really surprised when I popped out to find myself a couple tenths down from where I had started. I'm hesitant to call these trails complete, but they after consulting with some fellow hikers, who also found it a very confusing area, I'm calling them done!

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