Mt. Field - 4340' & Mt. Tom - 4051' (3/48)

Trail-head near the Crawford Notch Depot

On Sunday, June 10^th, Joe, Dad, Paloma and I set out for a hike up Mt. Field and Mt. Tom.  We all spent the night at Mom and Dad’s house the night before so that we could get an early start.  After just under three hours of driving, we arrived at the Mt. Avalon trail-head, which is located on Rt. 302 at the old Crawford Notch train depot.  The ride was relatively uneventful, until a few minutes before arriving at the trailhead, where we saw a large fox walking along the side of the road barely bothered by the cars cruising by at 70 MPH.  There were a number of cars in the lot as well as a bathroom (how convenient).

We started out on the 7.2 mile round-trip hike at approximately 10:25AM.  We wanted to hike up to the top of Mt. Field first, then head over to hit the summit of Mt. Tom, so we headed straight up the Mt. Avalon trail to the summit of Mt. Field.  The hike was fairly gradual at first, and followed alongside a river.  At a few points we were required to cross the river, but none of the crossings were too challenging.  The trail was in pretty decent condition, though the wet weather we have been having added some mud.  Towards the middle of the hike up the trail got significantly steeper, and at some points you had to hold onto trees/rocks to pull yourself up.  Definitely got the heart rate going!

Summit of Mt. Field

Towards the summit it began to get extremely buggy – little black flies would cover you if you stood still for a second.  When we finally reached the summit and decided to eat lunch, the bugs were so bad that we couldn’t sit down and eat.  Joe seemed to be targeted more than the rest of us and was ready to go after being on the summit for only a few minutes.  No joke, the bugs were so bad they would almost cause you to have a panic attack because you couldn't escape them.  The summit was fairly wooded, but there was some blow-down areas that provided amazing views of the Presidential range.  We all wolfed down our sandwiches and got out of there as fast as possible, and began the traverse over to Mt. Tom.

Summit of Mt. Tom

It didn’t take too long to make it to the junction where you can head up to Mt. Tom, and before we knew it we summited Mt. Tom.  The bugs were considerably worse over here, so we more-or-less touched the summit, snapped a few photos, and began the descent to the car.  The hike down though steep, was relatively quick and painless.  On the way up I had stopped to pee at one of the junctions, and when we passed it on the way down Paloma so nicely yelled "Hey Tom, is this where you peed?"  Little did she know that a group of two older women and a man were sitting down right there, and one of the older women replied "oh realllllyyyy?"  Keepin' it classy.

After we stopped to take a look at Pancake Rock (a rock that looked like a stack of pancakes that Paloma and Dad thought was amazing ), we made it back to the car at around 3:30PM, and headed home for a nice turkey dinner that my mom made us while we were hiking (thanks, Mom).

My make-shift bug mask.  Didn't work....

Overall not a bad hike.  If the bugs weren't so bad we probably would have enjoyed it much more.  The weather was absolutely perfect for a hike.  Next time I will definitely bring more bug spray or one of those goofy hats with the bug net around it.  P.S. if we have ridiculous looking expressions in the photos from this trip - blame the bugs.  Every time we stopped to take a photo bugs were flying in my nostrils, mouth, ears, eyes, etc., so every photo has some sort of awful expression.  I tried to keep them away with my bandanna - no luck.

Hike Stats
Trails: Avalon, A-Z, Mt. Tom Spur
Total Time (Including Breaks): 5:00
Distance: 7.2 Miles
Elevation Gain: 2750'