Snowshoeing to the Cobblestone Bridge & Jordan Stream

Today was sunny and about 20 degrees with no wind, a beautiful day. The forecast is for a big snowstorm tomorrow. Because the skiing conditions were so mediocre on Sunday, I decided to give snowshoeing a try. Frank got me some LL Bean snowshoes for Christmas a couple of years ago and the first time I tried them out I got such terrible pain in my ankles and shins I didn't drag them out again...until today. I'm glad I did. I decided to head into the park at the carriage road entrance located at the top of Stanley Brook road. That entrance leads you into the Green Rock area around Redfield Hill (Signpost 29).

The snowshoes were very loud at first on the more packed areas, but I got used to them pretty quickly. I took the shortcut down to the Cobblestone Bridge. (Above, sorry I don't have a winter picture!) It was fun snowshoeing in the deep snow. Jordan Stream was frozen silent. I wished I had brought my skis because it was tracked pretty well there on the road around Little Long Pond, which was a complete surprise. Another surprise was finding that the carriage road had been snowmobile tracked at the Cobblestone Bridge leading west up to the Amphitheatre Loop (Signpost 32) and east up to the Jordan Pond House! The tracks looked perfect and completely unused. I will try to get out there before it starts snowing tomorrow.

I turned east up the hill toward Jordan Stream and had a very pleasant walk there, as always. Coming back I thought I would take the foot trail that runs beside the JPH dormitory. It was blocked by quite a few fallen trees so I had to traipse around in the woods. Then when the tracks diverged I did a stupid thing and chose the tracks that ran into the woods. I ended up having to do a lot of bushwhacking but finally ended up on the right carriage road, at the entrance of Rick Bourke's stables. Snowshoeing was pretty fun and I will definitely do it again! The walk was about 3 miles and it took one hour and 20 minutes.