We were lucky enough the other day to be able to get one last mountain hike in before 2015 came to a close at Kearsarge North in North Conway. Peaking out at 3,268 feet, it isn’t high enough to be a 4,000 footer but has a really steep climb in the middle.

One of the newest experiences that we had on this hike was a large amount of ice along the route! Oddly enough, most of the ice was shaped like triangles. We were lucky that the ice we saw going up was mostly gone on the way down. Without micro spikes, it would have taken me a loooong time to get down.

Even though it was only about 40 degrees out, there were a fair number of people out enjoying the sun and exercising with their dogs. By the time we got to the fire tower at the top, the sun had come out to reveal how awesome a spot we were in. My panorama photo didn’t come out, but someone helpfully took one and labelled all the mountains we saw from the summit:

Pretty awesome hike and along the way, we saw some wicked cool mushrooms on the tree stumps and branches. Even with us not really being in shape we were able to get up to the summit and back to the car in just over 4 hours! Not bad for two slow pokes 🙂

One thing that was annoying is that I NEVER get views like this when I’m at Mount Washington. The 8 times I’ve gone up, 7 climbing and once on the autoroad, it has usually started to cloud up just as I go to take the photo. Oh well, I guess I’ll accept this view of the observatory there instead 🙂