Today I had a hike with the White Mountain Trailhead Steward program. We hike the trails to get to know them prior to staffing them as trailhead stewards. Today was the Welch and Dickey Mountain loop.
While a shorter hike, it is rated “moderate” to “difficult” depending on where you look. It also has “granite slabs” and “ledges” and “rock scrambles”. News flash, I am not a fan of ledges. That generally seems to mean an open ledge with a drop off on one or more sides.
The hike includes two summits, however they only count as one “52 WAV” (52 With a View).
I was once again the slowest of the group, but this time because I’m a big scaredy cat when it comes to granite slabs and ledges. Several of these were wet with spring melt/drainage, making them even scarier as they were now slippery. A few of them required me to either butt scoot or go hands and knees. As always, I’m grateful for patient folks in my hiking group.
The recommended direction of this loop is counter clockwise, so you can go UP the worst of the slabs and ledges, which means you summit Welch Mountain first.
While I’ve incorrectly named the photo, this shows some of the granite slab (this one was nice and horizontal and surrounded by trees), with some logs moved to protect fragile vegetation. You can see one of the more vertical slabs in the side of the peak, we’re headed there.
This hike has everything. Fairy forests, open views, ledges, and even lemon squeezers.
More granite slabs. It is the granite state, after all.
The view back to Welch Mountain from Dickey Mountain (no summit selfie).
Panoramic view from a large granite slab. The forecast had been iffy leading up to today, I was actually quite pleased we could see as mush as we did. And even more pleased it didn’t actually rain.
May 5th and this is what’s left of the monorail on Dickey. Most of the trail was either granite, mud, rocks, and/or roots. Just a little bit of snow here and maybe a pile or two more.
I won’t lie, parts of this hike were terrifying to me, but I’m happy I did it. It really is an enjoyable hike with lots of great views and varying terrain.
4.4 miles, 5 hours, 8 minutes, 1,700 feet of elevation gain
My Take 
[…] slabs and ledges, which can become very slippery and potentially dangerous in wet weather. (Here’s my account of my first hike of the loop). We’d recently had a lot of rain, and the forecast had more rain plus thunderstorms. Open […]
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[…] a few reasons. I know the hike as I’ve done it twice. It has a little bit of everything (see my prior post about it). It isn’t too far north (he was coming from Massachusetts). It’s a little over 4 […]
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