Wonalancet Out Door Club’s Mount Katherine & Trail Tending Red Path To Tilton Spring

PHOTO: Yours truly and Ellen celebrate the successful cut of a Birch Tree that was blocking the Red Path in Wonalancet. Trail maintenance is fun and satisfying work. We have been volunteering with the Wonalancet Out Door Club for years and we look forward to our next work day. You can volunteer with a trail club there is work for different skilled workers–from tossing sticks to raking out drainages and painting blazes to clipping brush.

by Amy Patenaude
Outdoor/Ski Writer

If you hike it is more important than ever to support the organizations that take care of the trails you enjoy. Please join a local trail club, more of your membership fees will go to support trail maintenance. If you’re not sure who maintains the trails you like to hike look it up in the AMC White Mountain Guide. Right after the name of the trail the organization responsible is listed in parentheses followed by the map location. Example: Kate Sleeper Trail (WODC, Map 3,J7-J8). WODC is the Wonalancet Out Door Club. There are dozens of trail clubs in New Hampshire, please help, join today.
Hiking and getting outdoors has been a popular activity for many people and their families this summer. Nothing is better than being outside where there is plenty of fresh air and room to spread out. Even though the hiking trails and paths have been and are being heavily used, volunteer trail maintenance efforts were put on hold this past spring and early summer.
The Wonalancet Out Door Club’s summer trail days for May and June were not held due to concerns for safety and the emergency order on group size limitations. Thankfully the July Trails Day was held in July and work cleaning the drainage and brushing the Cabin Trail was performed by Club volunteers. Volunteer trail maintainers went back to work too.

Ellen and I contacted Jack, WODC and Trails Chair and asked for an assignment for brushing and light trail clearing for our Trails Day work. Ellen and I enjoy clipping out brush that has grown into the paths and removing limbs and smaller trees that have blown down blocking the way. Jack offered us a few options and we selected the Red Path to Tilton Spring.
The trail begins with a short road walk beginning near the lovely and quaint Wonalancet Union Chapel. There is no parking on the gravel road to Ferncroft, please park off the pavement on Route 113A near the church.
The Red Path begins on the left about 150 yards from 113A, maybe you can spot the Red Path sign, follow the one lane gravel road past a field and look for rock cairns and a telephone pole on your left with a blue blaze. When we arrived we could see the pile of rocks on the right,side (there is no trail on the right side) but the brush hid the cairn on the left next to the obstructed view of the telephone pole blaze. We made quick work cutting back the thick greenery to make the trail visible where it enters the woods.
The Red Path is just 7/10ths of a mile and ends at the Tilton Spring and intersects the Pasture Path. From the spring it is another half mile up the Pasture Path to reach the ledgy summit of Mount Katherine.

Ellen and I started at 8:30 am, it wasn’t cool weather for long and we were dripping with sweat immediately. Thankfully we were in the shade of trees once we cleared the entrance. I used my loppers and Ellen used her folding saw. She went ahead of me and cut the bigger limbs back while I followed up snipping and clipping the smaller things in the way. I also removed the limbs off the trail that Ellen worked hard to drop.
When we removed some trees that were less than 4 inches in diameter and gathered all their limbs to brush out the herd path that was formed to go around the blow down we felt like champions. Yeah, that was an effort and now look how nice the trail is again!
About half way up we came upon a Birch tree, almost a foot in diameter. It was about waist high across the trail. It blocked the trail. It was difficult to go under or over and tough to get around. We discussed if we should call in someone with a bigger saw to get it another day. We pulled out our saws and the two of us went to work. We sawed and sawed. Then I jumped on it and it still wouldn’t break. We sawed and sawed more down from the top and more on the cut offset up from the bottom.
Finally we heard it crack. We jumped back and WOOF it was on the ground. The other end of the tree had rolled too and it rested on the ground. Now the tree is what we call an easy step-over. This was an excellent result.
As we neared the spring we could hear voices and drat we came across another mess. Thankfully this tree was already laying on the ground but a herd path off the trail around the tree was beginning to get established. We cut the limbs and turned this tree into another easy step-over and used the debris to brush over the herd path.

At the Tilton Spring there were three backpackers filtering water. They said they were headed out for a few days and headed to Flat Mountain Pond and the Tripyramids but didn’t say much more.
It was afternoon now and we were hungry and tired. We decided to put our tools away and just toss sticks and whatever we could drag off the trail on our way to Mount Katherine. There were a couple of trees that were duck-unders but they could wait for another day.
We could see the church’s white steeple down below and Mount Chocorua was big in our sight. Mount Katherine is named for the founder of the WODC, Kate Sleeper.
We finished off the last of our water and dashed down the trail. Oops I led us in the wrong direction but luckily Ellen quickly pointed out I had missed the hiking trail. I think I would have figured it out but was sure glad one of us was paying attention because I was hungry.
Have fun.

Amy Patenaude is an avid skier/outdoor enthusiast from Henniker, N.H. Readers are welcome to send comments or suggestions to her at: amy@weirs.com.