Our Hiking Adventures

[DRH]

In 2008, a group of friends in our West Alton neighborhood got together and decided to do some hiking in the nearby mountains. Many of us had never hiked this area before so we needed information on the available trails. The most helpful pieces of information we obtained were detailed trail maps created by the Forum's "dcr", who is an avid hiker. We obtained two of his excellent trail maps, one of the Belknap range trails and the second of the Ossipee range trails. "dcr" has also been very helpful to our group in answering questions about parking, trail heads, etc. (These trail maps are available for purchase in several stores and libraries around the lake.)

Last year we hiked a number of the Belknap range trails, and this year we have hiked some of those same trails again and also several others in the Ossipee range. We have also hiked to several area fire towers. One member of our group keeps a journal of each of our hikes, and we try to take a number of photos during each hike that show trail conditions, views, etc.

Our hiking journals and photos are now posted online for others to see and use in planning their own hikes. This year we have added GPS trail information to our web site for our more recent hikes.

We have separated our hikes into 1) those taken in 2008 and 2) those taken in 2009. The 2009 hike section is updated periodically to include each new hike we take. You can access these pages at: http://echoshores.com/Hikes/index.html Select whether you want to read about our 2008 or 2009 hikes, then proceed to the journal write-ups for each hike. Each section of the journal contains a link to the photos taken on that respective hike.

Please keep in mind that we are fairly new at this. We are not experts by any means, and pretty much everything we know about each hike is contained in the journal entry for that hike. We are hopeful that the information contained in our hiking journals and photos will be helpful to others who may like to explore the many available mountain trails in the Lakes Region.