SNOWSHOEING from inn to inn in the snowy woods and fields of New Hampshire sounded romantic and adventuresome all at once, and the town of Franconia, nestled up under the wing of the Kinsman Range of the White Mountains and thick with inviting inns and public trails, seemed the perfect place to give it a try. But it’s often the nature of romantic adventures to be complicated by reality.
A few phone calls revealed that some Franconia inns were so thinly occupied this winter that dinner was not always being served — an alarming prospect if you’re arriving ravenous and on foot. And then a trial tramp nearer to home with a heavy winter pack suggested that one night’s supplies would be enough to carry at a time. So evolved a compromise plan: a couple of days of short training trips while based at a single inn, the Franconia, followed by a grand and ambitious traverse of the Kinsman Range with an overnight at a cool-sounding trail stop called the Lonesome Lake Hut.
Two friends had agreed to share the adventure. None of us had serious snowshoeing experience, but we arrived full of enthusiasm at the Franconia on a crystalline Saturday evening in early February. The immaculate 156-year-old inn, with its grand views of the mountains, nearly 40 miles of groomed cross-country ski trails, ice-skating pond and basement Ping-Pong table, is a one-stop shop for active winter travelers.
The next day we snowshoed two and a half miles up the Coppermine Trail to the massive and multi-hued ice sculpture that is Franconia’s Bridal Veil Falls in winter. It’s a steady and popular climb, mostly alongside a cheerful brook that periodically appeared from under the snow. We’d heard a rumor of an enigmatic plaque on a boulder where the trail first meets the brook, and after a bit of hunting brushed the snow off the right rock and read.... read more>>>
