Piper Mountain

Yesterday we braved the snow squalls and headed for Piper Mountain, a 2044' mountain in the Belknap area in NH.

We parked at the gate and walked past the "Piper Mountain 1 Mile" sign.

Nicole had microspikes, and I forgot mine.
The trail was very frozen and super slippery in spots, so I tried my snowshoes, which have pretty aggressive crampons, but they were too clunky and really didn't offer the same traction that my microspikes had.
Chose to bareboot it, and made it all the way to the top, intermittently scrambling on all fours to keep from breaking my ass.

We hung out at the top for maybe 20 minutes, taking pictures and sitting on the cool rock thrones that someone constructed.

We didn't know the trails too well and had no time to "get lost", so we decided to go back down the way we came.
After a tenth of a mile we met up with some guys who were taking care of the trail. They noticed my lack of spikes, and offered to show us another way down that might be easier spikeless.

They brought us to the new trail, and gave us further directions...also offering me an extra pair of spikes to use on the way down.
I gratefully accepted, and we made our way down the mountain.

Overall, this was a super hike. Quick. Great views at the top.
If we had more time, we could have done a couple other peaks in only a couple extra hours.
The only downside was that the trail we took on the way down popped us out on an unmaintained road, and we had to walk maybe 3/4 of a mile down that. Someone had taken a sled and gone down the whole thing. Now THAT would be fun.

Also, we met a couple great guys and one SUPER COOL British Cream Retriever(google it!) who loved to eat snow and rip whole branches off of trees.

Great times!