There's no end to the variety of trails or hues that adorn them.
Most descriptions in the guidebooks we used were spot on, that wasn't always the case with signs. It's a little sad to see how much work has gone into preventing erosion but then people still take the "easy" way and walk to the side of rocks instead of on them, so stepping stones that were carefully embedded deep in the ground end up sticking out like sore thumbs.
Gail and I did our part in correcting that by placing a few during a hike up Starr King and Waumbek. No need to take our backpacks off, it only took a few minutes.
The real trail crew. They spent the whole summer working on this one trail, and the improvements were greatly appreciated. They'd put in about a dozen water bars that doubled as steps and cut as many blowdowns that blocked the trail. We offered them a dry kitchen to prepare dinner that night as heavy rain was forecast, but they informed us it was their last day and would be packing out. Glad we got the chance to thank them and see the set-up of a high line, a cable to use as a zip line for transporting boulders from the woods to use on the trail. I was doubly fortunate to run into a few of them on the trail the next day and chat some more.
Some stairs on Mt. Adams. Some of these remain from the trail building heyday in the late 1800's.
A part of the Gulfside Trail that goes six miles from Mt. Washington to Madison Hut by skipping the peaks along the way, constructed in the 1890's by J. Raynor Edmands and his "imported" labor as it said on a poster in the Madison Hut. They used to drive carriages over this path. Truly a work of art.
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