Bailed on the boys again. With winds really high in the Whites, I wasn't too comfortable going up, so that left me with needing something to do, and after the long trip last weekend, this fit the bill. I had spotted on Google Earth another possible viewpoint, this one about 500 feet higher, but a couple of miles away. It was a gorgeously sunny day, and the wind wasn't bad at all here, so I took the usual route up towards Chandler Mink, making a turn southwest before the plateau onto the Cross Minks Trail. Sort of. I never can seem to remember where this goes, and thought it was abandoned. I'm always tempted to go into the valley, but that goes southeast, so I meandered up to the ridge top and spied flagging, just like on the White Trail.
The trail follows the ridge to the nearest bump and then dumps out to a road to the west. For the most part I could follow it, but lost the flagging in several places, stayed on the ridge, and kept finding it again. In some places the corridor is rather obvious.
I tried to stay on trail until over the bump, and decided it was time to head SE towards the waymarked point. It's on a rather steep side of the next Mink, and immediately, indeed I saw steep.
Remembering falling on my ass the last time I went up to the other view, I went around this. I went up until I realized I was pretty much at the elevation I needed to be, so I had to fight the natural urge to keep going up. Slabbing is not particularly fun, but the going was decent for a while, and I came across a small view looking to Chocorua, Whiteface and Passaconaway.
Things got a little trickier. The woods thickened a bit (really just moderate, but I'm not used to that here), and blowdowns got in the way. I could soon see an open area ahead and went straight to the point I had marked on the GPS. Well, ok. Not bad, but really nothing stupendous. Actually, less of a view than the other one, although the extra height added to it a bit. Washington and Jefferson were the only peaks I could see that had any clouds, bummer. But I did get this spiffy view of the Osceloas and Carrigan.
I also spied the south slide of the Tripyramids. Gawd, I had just gone across that in misery last week! Ah well, not much more to see, and I didn't feel like adding in Stewart's Peak today. The snow was getting soft, and it involved going up steeply some more, so I headed straight down from the view, having to go real carefully in a birch glade. I spied an ice flow on the way.
Once off the steep part, I slabbed back, mostly on my tracks, but at the sign of any thickness, went down to more open woods and would eventually join my tracks again. Back at the trail, I took great care to follow the flagging so I could map this portion out well. I came to this, which with the help of Brian, was ID'ed as moose food.
I had a feeling moose were up here, first confirmation. So, a nice day to get out, the only real wind was stretches on the ridge, and I got a so-so view. Definitely worth the exploration, though.