We rented a Ford Expedition so that we could all fit in a single vehicle and headed out at 7:30am on Saturday morning. We stopped by the Hookset pit stop and got some cider donuts.
We parked at the trailhead for West Rattlesnake Mountain and hiked to the summit where we ate lunch with fine views over Squam Lake and beyond. There was only patchy snow on the ground, but some sections of the trail were icy and tricky to cross.
Since the temperature was in the low 40s, the dirt road to our usual parking spot for camp was too muddy. Instead, we started our hike to camp from driveway of the Russ family house. The hike to camp was about the same distance. Since there wasn’t enough snow, we didn’t build snow trenches and setup tents instead. Then we prepared camp by splitting logs for firewood.
We hiked down the roads to BeeDee Falls which wasn’t frozen this year and just had some ice on the outside edges of the stream. A scout hiked slowly which slowed the group, but we made it back to camp in the twilight.
We got the fire going well in the cabin stove using the split logs, scraps of wood and some charcoal that we brought. We were able to boil water fairly quickly and got the cabin up to a toasty 80 degrees. We had Mountain House meals for dinner which the scouts really enjoyed especially after all the hiking that day. The scouts also did Jiffy popcorn on the stove which was fun and tasty. The scouts also played card games. Meanwhile the weather outside got colder and started snowing.
We settled into our tents around 10pm. One scout setup a hammock instead of a tent which it didn’t work out well because the hammock wasn’t fully secured and slid down to the ground during the night. Overnight the snow was thick and heavy. Around 3am, snow fell from a tree branch onto the tent of an adult and smooshed his tent. The adult had to dig out of his tent and shelter in cabin. The other tents made it thru the night fine although buried with the 8 inches of snow overnight that piled up around the tents.
In the morning, the snow switched to light drizzle. We hiked thru the snow back to our car. Russ kindly came by with his front-end loader to dig out the driveway for us. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast on our drive home.
