The sec­ond of three sched­uled New Hamp­shire trips this sum­mer took us to the White Moun­tains’ Sand­wich Range—specifically a 13.6 mile loop over Mt. White­face (4020 ft) and Mt. Pas­saconaway (4043 ft). I’d never been to this part of the Whites before, which is not sur­pris­ing because we chose this route specif­i­cally to avoid the usual week­end crowds.

The hike up White­face along the Blue­berry Ledge Trail was chal­leng­ing with long, steep ascents and plenty of rock scram­bling, con­sis­tent with the AMC Guide’s descrip­tion as “one of the more chal­leng­ing climbs” in the Whites. Hav­ing encoun­tered only a depart­ing hiker in the park­ing lot, we spent the night alone near the wooded sum­mit of Mt. White­face. (Our seren­ity would prove fleet­ing the next morn­ing when a pack of shirt­less teenage boys arrived on an ori­en­ta­tion trip from a New Hamp­shire board­ing school.) Con­nect­ing to Pas­saconaway on the Rollins Trail, we saw sev­eral men hik­ing with what turned out to be sec­tions of a large flag­pole; they were part of a “Flags on the 48” pro­gram com­mem­o­rat­ing vic­tims of ter­ror­ist attacks in 2001. Per­haps due to the day’s lim­ited visibility—the “dra­matic” view­points offered noth­ing but opaque clouds—the most remark­able scenery was that of Square Ledge and the fields of pink and blue gran­ite strewn about on the rougher Square Ledge Trail. Still, the ledge is prob­a­bly the most beau­ti­ful thing I’ve seen in the White Moun­tains, and com­pletely jus­ti­fied the long trek. We headed back on Kel­ley Trail.

There is one more high­light to this trip: the Sand­wich Cream­ery, the first stop on our impromptu New Hamp­shire ice cream crawl. It’s hard to get to but worth the trip—it really is true that happy cows make bet­ter ice cream.