May 18, 2009 - Lye Brook, North Branch Pond, and Old Rootville Road Trails

I get up at 5:30 am on Monday, May 18th 2009 in order to have plenty of daylight for a long day hike. I arrive at the trailhead of the Lye Brook Trail just outside of Manchester Center at 8:30 am. The weather is cool (low 40s) and overcast but the forecast is for no rain so I take off. From the trailhead (760 feet above sea level) it is 2.3 miles up an old railroad bed and old woods roads to a turn off heading south to Lye Brook Falls.

The climb is steady but not too steep and the falls were the nicest I have ever seen along any trail. As majestic is to Niagra, beautiful is to Lye Brook Falls. The falls tumble over a rock ledge at least 150 feet. The side trail I am on intersects the falls well below its bottom. Unfortunately, the angle and the trees keep me from getting a perfect angle in order to capture a nice image, but I highly recommend the 5.0 mile round trip hike to anyone that likes a waterfall - this is one of the best!

From the Falls I return to the main trail and continue up the south side of an unnamed mountain in the Lye Brook Wilderness. I reach the height of my hike about 200 feet from the summit at about 2,700 feet by my calculation. At this point the trail flattens out and I actually enter a very marshy area.
I cross numerous areas of muck but I am usually able to find submerged rocks and/or logs that keep me from sinking to my knees in the mud. I've attached a picture of the typical sinkhole. I arrive at the intersection of the trail with the Branch Pond Trail after 8.1 miles of hiking. It is 12:10 pm. This intersection is the point at which last year, on July 19th, I came to from the east along with my son Jon. At that time he and I turned south and completed the southern half of the Branch Pond trail. This time I turn north. Along the way I cross several streams and find a particular type of flower growing over about a one mile stretch of trail. I provide it for you to identify, if you can.

I turn north and skirt the eastern shore of Bourn Pond passing two primitive tenting areas along the way. The trail is rather flat now and stays this way for several miles as I work my way 3.5 miles north to a shelter. Along the way I come to a point where the trail disappears into a flood plain. It is cool out and I do not relish the idea of wayding through the water so I decide to try and bushwhack my way around the obstacle. It takes about five minutes, and I begin to get nervous about finding the trail again, but it all works out well and I'm on my way again.

After hiking along Bourn Brook for about a mile, I arrive at the William B. Douglas shelter (built 1956, sleeps 10) a log lean-to renovated in 2005 with a nice sleeping platform inside the shelter. There is a refreshing piped spring providing clear-cool water, but my water supply is in good shape so I don't pump any. I rest in the shelter for about 10 minutes, taking my shoes off and replacing the inserts with a spare pair in an effort to fool my feet into thinking they are refreshed. It works for a short while.

I now hike 1/2 mile north from the shelter where I intersect with the Long Trail. From this intersection it is a short hike to Old Rootville Road, a passable but poor road that the LT follows for 0.9 tenths of a mile before turning north. I continue past this LT turnoff for 1.8 more miles down the Old Rootville Road until I arrive at a home and an intersection with East Manchester Road. The last two miles have been fairly steeply downhill and my quads are telling me they are tired of hiking. I finish the trail at 3:20 pm. At the intersection I find an older man in a GEO Tracker who stops to ask me questions about the trail. After answering him, I tell him about the Lye Brook Trail and the falls that he simply must see. He does not know where this is so I volunteer to let him drive me to the trail head where my car is. By doing this he gets information about a hike he is going to take and I save about 3 miles of extra hiking on a blacktop road. In the end I've hiked 14.5 miles in just under 7 hours and I've marked three more side trails of my list.