Trail to Middle Moat

 On May 1st, most of the 4K mountains still had snow above 3,000', and I was looking for a smaller mountain. I hear Moat Mt. Trail had melted out, so off we went. This was about as easy a hike as you can get and still climb a mountain. Saw more people than I expected, including the people who maintain the trail. Was glad I didn't have to lug a chain saw, like one of them did, on such a hot day.

Before we knew it, we were at the top of So. Moat. The summit is odd. All bare rock, but the knob has sort of a natural notch cut out of it, running north/south. The notch probably isn’t more than 6 feet deep. If you climb up on the right knob, you look out over No. Conway. If you climb up the left knob you look to Chocorua. Go straight through the notch and quickly you come out into total open.

We looked over to Middle Moat and decided it was worth the walk. And what a great walk it was. There’s a little col, with a few trees, between the two summits, where you could take shelter from a thunder storm, but mostly it’s a bare ledges ridge walk. Out and back totals 1.2 miles of what feels like Top of the World Ridge Walking.   Fantastic!

We could see people over on Middle Moat, and soon met one of them coming back. The rest must have gone on to North Moat. Two of them would have been the trail crew we saw. One was a guy in a white tee shirt who had passed us. Boy, does a white shirt show up from a distance. No wonder they used to wave white to surrender. It’s hard to miss.

When we got to Middle there were no people there. We dropped packs and ate lunch, sunning ourselves on the rocks. You really couldn’t ask for better weather. No bugs, a strong breeze, and sun.

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