You Are Here: Wantastiquet-Monadnock Trail

We had a massive snowstorm this past week. My little town looked a bit like a war zone with tree debris and in the vicinity of 16 inches of snow. We were without power/internet for over 24 hours. My trend of wanting nothing to do with Winter hiking continued, so I checked the town by town snow totals for the areas I have left on my redlining spreadsheet and took a punt on the Keene area. I parked at the Beals Road trailhead for Pisgah State Park. I packed snowshoes and spikes just in case and headed off down Stones Mill Rd. The conditions were alternating between dry, wet, very wet, muddy and snowy. The snowy conditions were never more than a few inches at most, so I was able to bare boot the entire way. I was surprised to see a set of tracks on the trail already. I can't imagine this is a highly traveled trail unless you are either redlining or hiking the W-M Trail. There were also some jeep tracks on all the roads where vehicles were allowed. Some of those sections were really "off road" and I was amazed that a jeep was able to navigate, must have been quite the adventure. A couple tenths down Stones Mill Road, the W-M Trail bears left onto Draper Road. Just under half a mile down Draper Road is the Draper Tent Site. I wasn't sure where exactly the tent site was beforehand, just knew it must be along here somewhere due to the name. Luckily the footprints I was following also explored the tent site as I was looking down so intently to avoid rocks and deeper mud/water I almost walked right past. The tent site is about 0.2 miles from the trail and has a logbook and brand new privy. The next half mile was downhill and the messiest part of the day. Lots of water and mud and trees down in places. Nothing that impeded progress, just slowed me down a bit as I was careful with my footing so as not to slip. At the bottom it was so wet, I wasn't sure if it was an actual water crossing or the trail was flooded. A large tree down made it a bit tricky to see which direction the trail went as there was a cross road, but I had a pre-downloaded track which kept me on course. The trail veered right onto Hinds Road and here it really was flooded. At this point, I was over trying to be careful with my steps and just walked right on through the water. It was only a couple hundred yards, and my waterproof boots held up pretty well. A bridge crossed an inlet and then it was dry. The trail briefly joined Old Swanzey Road, which is residential, then veered left onto Old Chesterfield Road, which is a Class VI road. After one tenth, the road heads left and in another 3 tenths the trail turns left at an intersection I almost missed again as there is currently a large tree down in front of the trail, which initially I thought was blocking access.. it probably is, for jeeps, but at the last moment I caught a blue blaze on a tree indicating the W-M Trail heading in that direction. From here to my turnaround point, the trail was all snow, but never deep. It also gently climbs to a highpoint before descending down to a beaver dam. I was surprised to see that the trail actually crossed right over the beaver dam, that was a first for me. Prepare to get wet feet on this section. I was very nervous that the dam would hold me, but it did and I continued another tenth or so before coming to another pond that had a large log bridge crossing. I decided to make this my turnaround point as I was starting to tire and figured this was an easily discernible point to return to from the opposite direction! I crossed the log bridge, then backtracked to Old Swanzey Road. Not really wanting to climb back up the messy section, I decided to road walk back along Old Swanzey Road to Stones Mill Road. This only added about half a mile and was much easier going. These roads are both hard packed dirt road and quiet.

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