Up Andrew’s Brook Trail and south on the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway, we hiked in beautiful though slightly-crusty snow. Gerry Gold led three of us on the most challenging of the SRKG winter hikes. It was snowing lightly as we set out. Gerry confided the “secret” of this hike to Lucia’s Lookout—groups never make it all the way there. He said we would turn around at 2 pm if we weren’t there yet. Several of us pondered that plan since it would get us back to our cars between 7 and 8 pm.
We made very good time to Lake Solitude and crossed it to find a beautiful frozen waterfall, so maybe we would break the spell.

Heading south along the well-blazed Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway we found moose tracks, moose-scraped trees, and a pair of moose beds—likely slept in until a few hours before we arrived. Here is one of the moose beds.

Walking through varied forest types along the ridgeline with many ups and downs, we reached several great viewpoints—Kearsarge, Monadnock, Pats Peak, Mink Hills, Lake Todd, Lake Massasecum, five Vermont ski areas stretched out before us.

We were making great time. We would make Lucia’s Lookout before 2 pm at this pace. But some of us had commitments for the evening, and none of us brought headlamps. So we decided we would not wait until 2 pm to turn around. We almost made it—we got within 1 mile of Lucia’s. Here are some photos of our adventure.