7/6/16

Parking: Bradley Pond trailhead at Upper Works
Group: Mom, Shawn & Emily

 

With only one day of rest after our grabbing Tabletop, Marshall, and Redfield over the weekend, we headed back out to Upper Works to visit the infamous Santanoni Range.  This range includes Panther, Couchasagra (or Couch, which is pronounced “Cooch”, unless you’re Shawn and you pronounce it “Couch” in hopes that there will be a couch on top of the mountain), and Santanoni peaks.  It is known for being muddy and buggy, and additionally frustrating because Couch was measured incorrectly way back when the High Peaks were first created, and it’s not even actually 4,000 feet tall.

We decided to leave Murph home for this one; the weather was hotter than it had been all summer and we knew he was still tired from the long weekend.  We were glad we did; it would have been a long, hot, buggy day for him.

The trailhead was pretty empty when we got there (it was a week day) and we were on the trail by 6:30am.  The trail follows a road for the first part, but after about half an hour of walking it turns right onto a marked Blue Trail.  This is the Panther Brook trail, and I honestly think it might be one of my favorite trails in the park.  It’s a nice paced trail, not too rocky, and goes along a gorgeous brook.  You cross two veryyy worn down bridges (the first bridge was actually out when we were there, I’m not sure if they’re planning on fixing it) before coming to the cairn for the Santanoni Expressway.

We reached the cairn (pictured below) 1.5 hours into the hike, and this was the way we were planning to come back down – we were doing the loop counterclockwise, starting with Panther and finishing with Santanoni.

We continued right past the Expressway cairn and stayed on the Blue Trail for about 20 minutes until we reached a junction.  Here, if you stay right on the blue trail, you will reach Bradley Pond and the lean-to.  Shawn had read in the register that there was a group of eight staying there for six days the day we were there.  However, if you are hiking the range you turn left and head down the Unmaintained trail to Herald Square and Times Square.

The path here gets pretty steep, and while it follows the brook for a little it does start to veer away and get dry.  I recommend refilling your water now.

After almost an hour and a half of climbing, we reached Herald Square where there was a friendly group of boys from a local camp sitting and enjoying a snack.  They said that they had been hiking and camping out all week, and had come from the Seward range. This was their last day and they were just there to visit Panther, so we chatted with them for a few minutes before starting towards our first summit of the day.

There is a rock with the name “Panther” and an arrow pointing to the right – so we followed this trail and were at the summit of Panther in ten minutes!  We knew this would be our only chance at having any real views for the day, so we spent a few minutes enjoying it before heading back down to Herald Square.

Times Square is maybeee 30 seconds past Herald Square (and in my opinion, it was kind of a disappointment…not really sure how it got it’s name as you can see below).

Here, you can either go left or right.  Right brings you to Couch, and left brings you to Santanoni.  Begrudgingly, we turned right and started the descent to the col between the mountains.  This section of the hike brought many bruises- one straight to the head- and a boot that was completely submerged in mud.  However, we were pretty lucky because the mud was not anywhere near as terrible as we expected it to be (probably a combination of the heat and dry weather we’ve had recently).

We reached the summit of Couch after almost an hour after leaving Times Square, or 5 hours and 10 minutes after starting our hike.  We enjoyed our pizza lunch and rested for 20 minutes, and then headed back down the way we had just came.

We arrived back at Times Square over an hour later, took a break for ten minutes, then started towards Santanoni, feeling better than we had expected to about our time and progress.

The trail over to Santanoni wasn’t terrible, and we were there in 40 minutes.  I was glad that I wore leggings for this hike, as the trail was thin in a lot of places throughout the day and the sticks were constantly scratching against our skin.  Again, as expected, there was no view from the summit, so we were on our way in less than ten minutes.  The trail for the Expressway is the only other break off that we saw (there is no cairn though) and it is about five minutes backtracking from the summit (so you will see it on your way up – it’s the left trail where the path splits).

Expressway to the left; Santanoni summit to the right

It took us an 1 hour and 40 minutes to reach the trail where the Expressway breaks off.  However, we stopped for at least 20 minutes on the way down to filter six liters of water and to cool our feet off in the brook.  If you don’t stop, you could probably make it down in under an hour and a half.

Once we reached the Blue Trail again, we made good time and were back to the car in just an hour and ten minutes – we were all officially one peak away 46!

Total hiking time: 10.5 hours

 

Shawn would like to note that there were no panthers on Panther, no taxis in Times Square, and no couch on Couch.