October 23, 2010
After spotting Jeremy's truck at the Miles Notch Trailhead, we drove my car around to Cold Brook Trail. We found the trailhead sign but there was a road there. I was unsure at the time if the road was actually part of the trail so we drove my vehicle up as far as we could. My car has very low clearance but other vehicles could definitely have driven a lot further. Regardless, we chose to start our hike here. A few minutes into our hike we saw our first sign.
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There is still quite a bit of color at the lower elevations.
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Our first peak of the day was Speckled Mountain.
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We came to the Link Trail which we both had hiked before.
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There are phenomenal views from the ledges heading up to Speckled.
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Kezar Lake
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Jeremy points out a peak.
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We reached the 2906' summit of Speckled. It was a windy day. Here's the view north.
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There were a couple of gray jays on the summit.
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It was time for some new trails and new peaks for the both of us.
We continued on the Red Rock Trail.
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We reached Durgin Mountain. We bushwhacked off the trail slightly to tag the 2404' summit. Since there was really no view from the summit, we bushwhacked to find a viewpoint to the north.
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Back in the woods.
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We reached the junction with Great Brook Trail. I had no real reason to celebrate, but Jeremy suggested I give a big hoorah to make the photo a little more interesting.
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Nearing the summit of Butters which had a couple false summits.
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Limited viewpoint to the south.
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Looking back to Speckled
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We had no view from the 2246' summit of Butters, but continuing further along the trail we did encounter more partial viewpoints.
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Looking back to a subpeak of Butters.
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We started to get partial views as we neared Red Rock.
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After tagging the 2141' summit of Red Rock we continued on the trail. There were a couple of ledges that we wanted to bushwhack to. The first one opened up to an incredible view. The bushwhack couldn't have been much more than 50 feet. It brought us down to this ledge.
Jeremy "on the edge".
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For a video clip that helps capture how steep this ledge is click here.
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View to the south
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We continued down the trail and bushwhacked to the second cliff we wanted to explore.
This bushwhack was a couple of minutes or so off the trail.
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From here we had a great view of the first cliff that we visited.
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We dropped down into the notch, the end of the Red Rock Trail.
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From here we took Miles Notch Trail south.
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Leaving the wilderness
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Looking up to Miles Knob, a peak we went around put did not visit since there is no trail to it.
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We reached Jeremy's truck and drove around to my car. We referred to the AMC White Mountain Guide and realized the portion of the road we drove on was actually considered part of the trail. Jeremy parked his truck and we jogged up the road to my car.
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