The access road off of Rte 47 North of Sunderland is plowed all the way to the last house but the road from there to the parking lot by the lake, and from Rte 63 to the parking lot is not. It's only a short distance from the end of the plowed section so we decide to park and walk in from there.

First descision, snowshoes or no snowshoes? The snow has a pretty solid crust but is a little crunchy, it's also compacted down to around 4-6inches at most. We decide to go bare-boot.

This decision lasts until we get down to the lake. After taking a couple of pictures it's back to the car and snowshoes on. The going is much easier with them on and the crampons give great traction in the glaze snow crust.

We follow the Cranberry Pond trail around the pond and wonder at the bravery or foolishness of the the three ice fishermen. The daytime temperatures have been getting up to a few degrees above freezing and the sun is threatening to come out. I guess they know what they are doing, but you wouldn't get me out there for any money.

The trail meets the old summit road then we leave that again for the fairly level bypass trail to the base of the falls. There is quite a lot of water flowing and plenty of ice around the falls. With no sunshine it is a little gloomy under the trees.

I didn't bring crampons so I keep my snowshoes on for the tricky climb up the side of the falls. I don't dare try to reach the spot I have used for previous photographs. Wouldn't want the fall or the dip in the icy water! Getting down again proves an interesting experience. Too rocky for a butt slide, too icy to shed the snowshoes. I let the camera and tripod slide down and Karen throws my hiking poles up to give me a little support. It's only about twenty feet, but not wishing to take a tumble I edge my way down in about five minutes.

We back track to the old Summit Road and decide to head further up to seek out the old cabin ruin on the Robert Frost trail. We find some amazing ice formation both big and small as we follow the brook up the old road. The old Summit Road provides an easy climb and looking back down towards the falls we are surprised how much height we have gained with seemingly little effort.

After turning onto the Robert Frost trail the going gets somewhat steeper! There is more crusted over snow but a couple of previous hikers have compacted some of the route down to a hard icy channel. Walking off the trail on fresh crusty snow is noisier, but safer.

The ruin is not shown on the official map and only vaguely on a guide book map. We scour the woods looking for the ruin only to find that the trail runs right into it after about a 1/4 mile. I manage to fall on my butt while taking pictures but no harm done. After a munch of gorp, which revives us no end, we head back.

No more picture taking this trip as the battery has been playing up. Even keeping it warm up my sleeve it is only good for about two images before running out of go. It's nothing like as cold as last weekend so I'm going to have to look into alternative power sources.

About halfway back Karen complains of soreness on the backs of her heels. We have over a mile left to do so I make Karen remove her shoes and socks so I can take a look. Some rubbing has caused a broken blister on one foot and redness on the other. I break out the first aid kit and put band-aids over the affected areas. As she puts her socks back on I notice that they are a little loose. Last time out on the Mt Tom hike she wore these new winter socks over a regular sock, this time she wore only the new sock. Have to make sure she wears at least a liner sock as well in future to avoid the rubbing that caused these blisters.

The band-aids do the trick and we have a good trip back to the car. We meet a couple of folk with their dogs and a cross-country skier. We also manage to miss the turn off for the Cranberry Pond trail and end up following the old Summit road all the way back to the access road. It's only a short hop down this back to the car though so no big deal. We get back to the car around 2:20pm, about four hours after our second start. For the four miles of trail that gives us our average 1 mph including all stops.

All in all a great work out hike in the woods and a little more snowshoe practice.