Elevation: 2,860 ft. (overall) 3,113 ft. (total)
Time: 2:26 (Taft Lodge) 4:06 (Summit) 6:44 (Total)
Trails: Long Trail, Profanity Trail, Skier Path, Ski Trail
Mt. Mansfield was the last peak I needed to complete my goal of hiking all 67 New England 4Ks in the course of one year. Today was also the last possible day to do this as well. Tomorrow would be one year after my first hike of the 67. I picked Mt. Mansfield to end on for a couple reasons. First, I didn't want to end on a peak without a view. Second, I decided I wanted to finish my initial round of hiking the New England 67 at the same time as I did my NE67 in one year.
The road into Smuggler's Notch is closed in winter, but you can park at the ski area lot nearby. The snow on the closed section of road was well packed from skiers, snowmobiles, and foot traffic. As soon as I got to the actual trail though, I put on my snowshoes. Shortly after starting up the trail, you run into tracks from lots of skier traffic. This hides where the actual trail is some as there are so many routes to choose from. I found blazing on the trail to be poor in many places and this was one of them. I took a wrong turn and quickly starting looping back before I found the correct trail. There was a blaze in the area, but even on the way down when I knew the route I still had a hard time seeing it.
Nice section through open hardwoods
Continuing up the most obvious path worked well for staying on the hiking trail. Before long it left the ski tracks to the right. This was a nice open section of woods with an easy to follow snowshoe treadway. Eventually it was back onto a mix of ski and snowshoe tracks though. As mentioned, blazing was poor along this route. I tried to follow the main skier path and my own estimate of where I thought the trail should be. This ended up working pretty well since I wasn't running into any other hikers yet.
Lots of skier traffic making the trail hard to follow
The skiers access the woods/hiking trail by a short path off the side of a ski trail. The hiking trail gets very close to the slopes, so if you follow the path too far, you will come out on the slopes. The hiking trail heads uphill to the right just before you reach the ski slopes. I didn't run into any ski tracks from here until just after Taft Lodge. The trail leading up to the lodge was again easy to follow and a good snowshoe packed route. It took a bit longer to reach the lodge than I expected, but I didn't know what the distance would actually be ahead of time.
Taft Lodge
Looking down the Profanity Trail
At Taft Lodge I talked with a few other hikers that were now catching up to me. One of them expressed how icy the Long Trail could be going up to the summit and that he turned around earlier this week on that route. He guided the rest of us withot crampons to where the Profanity Trail was in relation to the lodge. This was helpful because I never saw a single sign for it. I decided to avoid the ice and take the Profanity Trail to the summit. I was behind a couple of hikers that chose the same. Unfortunately, the Profanity Trail had seen very little hiker traffic up it and lots of skier traffic down it. This made for deep snow with no packed route to start. Because of this, the couple in front of me went off to the right to try and join back onto the Long Trail.
I kept heading up what I thought was the trail. I say "thought" because I saw only one blue blaze on this entire route. And I thought the Long Trail up to here had been poorly blazed. The ski traffic coming down the trail had packed the snow well for them, but not for hikers. In places you could take a few steps on top of the snow, but then all of a sudden you would sink knee deep with your snowhoes on. The steepness of the trail made it hard to get back up on top as well. Making it so you had to compact some snow down each step in order to have something firm to stand on. With encouragement from the hiker/skier behind me that I was now hiking with, I was able to make it to the ridge line at the top of the trail.
View across the notch from the summit
Summit view to the south
The quick hike to the summit from here was easy again. Hard snow and an established route were nice to have back. On the summit I talked with a few people and told some of them what I had just accomplished (67 in one year). After a nice long break, some snacks, and plenty of pictures it was time to head down though. My concern now was that the Long Trail was supposed to be icy and the Profanity Trail was steep with poor snow conditions for hiking back down. I had to come up with a safe route down. Luckily I talked with a couple skiers that told me about the foot path that the many skiers make up to the summit from the top of the lift. I decided to take my chances going down this and using the ski slopes to get back to the Long Trail. At the top of the lift I went inside and talked with ski patrol about my plan to hike down the side of the trail. They didn't like the idea of me hiking all the way down the trail, but were OK with hiking part way down until the two are close to each other. I would recommend asking them yourself before just doing this. If nothing else it gives them a heads up about hikers on the trail if any skiers complain about it to them.
Skier footpath to the summit
I went down the ski slope without any issues and ducked into the woods as soon as I could. Knowing the route now, I was able to made good time down the trail without guessing which path was correct. Even with all the ski traffic seen through here, I actually only saw a handful of skiers. Before too long I was back down to the road and going back to my car. Once back at my car I was officially done with my quest of 67 4Ks in one year. I wasn't sure what I would do to celebrate or how I would react at this point. In the end, I just put my gear away and smiled to myself. Hiking alone for almost every peak, I didn't really have anyone to share with anyways.
For all the pictures from the hike, just go HERE
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