Mt. Tecumseh - 4003' (1/48)

Mt. Tecumseh trailhead

Today my father and I hiked Mt. Tecumseh, on which Waterville Valley Ski Resort lies.  I had hiked Mt. Tecumseh when I was around the age of thirteen, but have little recollection of the hike.

We left Danvers at around 8:15am, and set out for a two hour ride up 93 to the mountain.  On the way up we were traveling alongside a Toyota Yaris, packed with five passengers, each weighing over 220 lbs each it looked like.  That must have sucked.  It was quite hilarious to watch, though.  The ride took us just over two hours, and we arrived at the Ski Resort parking lot at around 10:20AM.  There were only a few cars in the lot, the rest of the resort shut down for the summer.

We began the hike at exactly 10:30AM.  We headed up the Mt. Tecumseh trail - the trail followed alongside a river for a while, before turning a bit and heading literally almost straight up the rest of the mountain.  Efficient? Yes.  Tiring? Absolutely.  On the way up, the first group that we came to were heading down, and let me tell you how happy I was that I was not with them.  It was a group of two girls and two guys, and the nerdy guy in the back was talking about extrapolating numbers to determine radiation exposure in adults working at gas plants.  The other three looked thrilled to hear this story (not).  We only encountered them for about thirty seconds total, and that was twenty-nine seconds too long.  Like honestly, your friends are probably thinking about what beer they want when they get back to the car, not your quantum physics jargon.  Turd!

View from lookout point

We continued up the steep trail some more, each time you think it is flattening out it isn't.  We could start to see some good views through the trees, the best view coming about a mile and a half up where you can look down one of the Waterville ski trails and at the mountains across the way.  Some more trudging up the mountain and we came to the intersection with the Sossman trail (which we were eventually going to take down), and continued on about a half mile longer towards the summit.  One thing I noticed was how good it smelled up there.  The air was super clear, and the balsam pine was very strong.  It smelled like candles.

Dad & I on the summit

When we got to the summit at 12:20PM there was one guy up there by himself, and a group of three other guys.  We made some small talk until the solo guy started talking about the "party group" that he took candid photos of that were up there before we got there.  Uhh, creepy?  We quickly ate our lunch because the flies were out in full swing, and headed back down to the intersection with the Sossman trail.  The Sossman trail section was relatively short, only a bit more than a half mile, and brought us over to Waterville Valley ski area, where we began hiking straight down the ski trails to the base.

This was awesome.  I love the views when skiing down a trail, and to see the same views in the summer is pretty cool.  The trails were pretty steep, so it gave our legs quite a workout, but we were cruising down them. We followed one of the chairlifts the entire time.  Along the way we saw some wild turkeys, one of them with his feathers fully opened up.  We probably scared the crap out of him - it didn't seem like anyone had been up on the ski slopes for a long time.  When we got closer to the bottom, we started to see.....SNOW.  Yes, it was about eighty degrees on the mountain yet there were three huge patches of snow still sticking to the trails like tiny glaciers.  Pretty cool (no pun intended).  Another few minutes and we were back in the car.  Only took us an hour to get down!

Snow?

Overall this was a rather short hike time-wise, but the steepness up and down added a slight challenge.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous - probably one of the best hiking days I have had.  Also my first experience hiking down a ski slope, something that I hope to do again!








Hike Stats
Trails: Mt. Tecumseh, Sossman, Ski Slopes
Total Time (Including Breaks): 3:15
Distance: 5.0 Miles
Elevation Gain: 2200'