The night prior to this hike i stayed at the Top Notch Inn in Gorham. This place seems to have reasonable rates and is always clean. You cant beat being able to just open the door and get to your car & gear in the morning. After heading to the local Cumberland farms for hot water, I headed up to the York Pond area in Berlin. The roads were sheets of ice & a few trees were down. A warm front & rain in the days leading up to this hike made the trail conditions challenging. Later i would come to realize that taking the Unknown pond trail to do the entire loop was not a popular option. This became clear near the horn where trail breaking in deep drifts & a struggle to navigate the Kilkenny Ridge Trail resulted in almost a mile-an-hour pace vs something generally more reasonable near 30 minutes. When i got to the hut it was night & day trail conditions. Fresh yellow blazes started & the trail had been totally broken out recently. I saw many people on the way down vs zero people on the way up. All in all a long day, but decent for physical conditioning & navigation skills. 38/48 for winter 4000 footers.
Coming up to the horn, blazes were few & far between
deep snowshoe post holes
view descending cabot
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