BLOG - Exploring Waterville Valley

I planned on getting up early today and doing Georgiana Falls before Jaime woke up. I might have slept a little too late for that to happen so no Georgiana Falls. I enjoyed my continental breakfast; chocolate chip waffles, a bagel and coffee. Then we headed down to Waterville Valley. I bushwhacked up Bald Knob using a couple steep logging roads and some herd paths. I don't know how in the hell moose fit between those trees, I barely fit. Maybe that's why there's moose poop everywhere, they get it squeezed out of them. After a long and difficult ascent, I finally made it to the summit for incredible 360 degree views with Welch Dickey stealing the show.

Next we wanted to check out a trail-less cascade nearby known as Shell Cascade, which required fording a river. We tried rock hopping it at first but Jaime fell in so we went back to the car, got the water shoes and waded across. What we thought would be a cross country ski trail on the other side turned out to be an abandoned ski trail, the saplings were so thick you couldn't see through them. Jaime stopped once we hit the brook while I bushwhacked along the hard to follow road. Before long I arrived at Shell Cascade which was way better than I'd anticipated. This one is crazy.

I crossed the brook and got some cool pictures from the other side of the narrow flume before heading back through the thick saplings. We spotted another brook down the road but the area around it was eroded in the rain storm back in early July and was a little too unstable to explore right now, plus there wasn't much water so I'll save that one for later.

Then we drove up the Sandwich Notch Road which had some beautiful views and wasn't too bad, for the most part, despite being a steep and narrow dirt road. A truck or jeep really would have come in handy here. Then we went down an even steeper side road to Hall Pond where I bushwhacked to a sort of nearby waterfall. There wasn't much water flowing but this thing is huge. Today there wasn't enough water on the upper half to be anything special but the lower fifteen feet were absolutely beautiful. This entire area has a rugged and wild feel miles and miles from civilization.

Around the waterfall were tons of talus caves with water flowing through them. The enormous cliff towered above me as I crawled through the broken ledges to get into a cave beside the waterfall. It was a little iffy in parts but I made it in without any trouble and got some pictures of the cascade from inside the cave, getting a little wet in the process. Well worth it.

Not having eaten in nine hours, we stopped at Black Mountain Burger on our way back. It was delicious as ever and well earned. My shower tonight was extremely painful, I have so many cuts on my arms and legs that I can't feel the difference between them, my extremities just burn all over. Walking hurts too but I don't mind. We'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow because I got a lot to do.