8/19/12 Little Moose

A beautiful day- sunny and 70s. Decide to make the longer than usual drive to Grenville and Little Moose. We started from the Moose Mountain motel parking lot. The trail almost immediately starts climbing and there were several spots for Kelley to work around making it more difficult than I remembered . Once on the ridge you get glimpses through the trees but no really open views

And the trail for awhile is relatively flat and pretty

It then became more of an up and down affair and we hit some even harder sections for Kelley. This one almost made us turn back but with a couple of boosts we made it up

A bit further on and we came to this drop through a very narrow slot and I decided we would turn back. I took a picture to show where we were stopped and then looked down to see Kelley- she had found a way down through the woods

The goal had been to reach the overlook with the great views but as we headed down toward Papoose Pond  and were almost 2 hours into the hike I realized climbing back up to the ridge after the pond might be overdoing it for Kelley and decided to turn around there and not have to climb all the way back up from the pond. But Kelley had caught a scent of the water ( it had been a dry trail) and was getting excited so we continued on down to the pond where she got into the water before we turned back. This had not been easy either as the pond seems to be closing in.

On the way back we spotted this gnome in a deep crevice of a large rock formation.

A challenging but good hike. Kelley was still enthusiastic at the end 3  3/4 hours

When I got home I checked old posts and found we had done that trail 2 years ago. At the time I noted there had been some work arounds for Kelley but didn't mention the difficulties we encountered today. Perhaps conditions have deteriorated.