Peak Above the Nubble at 3,855 feet has no trails to its summit and is one of the hundred highest summits in New England. With temperatures around 9 degrees, wind speed at 30 mph and a wind chill of 12 below zero, the hike presented itself with new challenges.

Rick, Jim, Jon and I drove up the gated and closed Haystack Road at 9 a.m. As we started to put on our clothing and equipment, the forest service ranger pointed to the sign "No Parking" and told us that if we left the car there, it would be towed. He suggested that we park at the Seven Dwarfs Motel instead at the Little River Road. It's down a side road, the end of which comes fairly close to Haystack Road. We knocked on the door and the owner drew us a great map as to how to use the snowmobile trails to get to Haystack Road. We left him $5 for parking and began the hike at 9:30 a.m.

We saw a driveway with two large boulders on both sides and a plow, crossed the Little River on a bridge, and then took a left following the river until we came upon another bridge crossing the river. We ran into a group of hikers who were hiking up to North Twin. We told them we were going to climb Peak above the Nubble and were looking for a spur logging road with three boulders off of Haystack Road. To our delight, they told us they saw the three boulders and pointed us to the snowmobile trail we needed to take to get there.

The start of this snowmobile trail had us pass an old bus, an enormous fireplace and a old cellar hole. We checked out the cellar hole on the way back and it was in excellent condition. It was filled with trash and camp chairs. The trail led us through woods to Haystack Road. Turned right onto Haystack Road, went a short distance and saw the logging road with three boulders coming down from the left. We took it and after a short distance, another road, rougher than the one we were on, had the heading of 210 degrees on our compass so we took it.

This road pointed toward a prominence that appeared to be at the end of a ridge leading to Peak above the Nubble. It also led into a large clear-cut area with great views back to Twin Mountain, the Presidentials, and Mt. Waumbek. We picked our way across dead branches toward the woods at its upper end.

These woods were quite open at the start. There wasn’t much snow. We did not have to take the snowshoes off our pack. I saw some large spruce trees up ahead so I decided to stay to the right of it and ran into another ridge that led us uphill. We continued our climb and reached the ridge crest at around 3,100 feet. However we found lots of spruce and decided to get off the ridge crest and slab the westerly side.

From here to the false summit at around 3,500 feet we had to force our way through thick spruce. This side of the mountain was brutally cold as the 30-mph winds were hitting this side of the ridge with all of its might. With the temperature reading nine degrees I calculated the wind chill to be 12 degrees below zero. Our feet and hands were starting to get cold; the trip stopped being fun.

While pushing ourselves through the spruce we found ourselves on a small highpoint and all we could see was more spruces. It looked real discouraging. To Jim’s credit, he suggested to climb back up to the ridge to see if it was better. To our delight, the woods were more open.

It was 11:45 and we could see the real summit up ahead. The route was obvious (head uphill), although I found myself slabbing to the right (west) to get around downed trees and spruce. Just before the summit all we could see was blowdowns and it didn’t look hopeful that we would find the canister. The canister denotes the highest point and has a register to record your name.

I decided to head into the blowdowns and saw a small opening with views in about 50 feet. I turned my head to see how everyone was doing and within 2 feet from my face, I saw the canister hanging from a partially downed tree! When I told the group, we were all so happy. We were on the summit at 12:30. The top of the canister was frozen shut so were unable to find out the last time someone was here.

There's a nice view of North Twin, Mt. Hale, and Mt. Willey. We could tell that the Presidentials were under a cloud cover. The most amazing thing was that the summit had no wind and it was sunny. It was probably one of the warmest spots on the entire trip. So we sat down and had a nice lunch. It was a quick lunch because we didn’t want to start getting cold again.

To return, all we did was follow our tracks in the snow. However the wind did obliterate our tracks in certain sections but we were able to find them. We eventually hiked down to the clear-cut and took the logging roads back to the bridge. We followed the Little River Road and found ourselves back at the Seven Dwarfs Motel. We pulled away at 3:45 p.m. so the hike took us a little under six hours.

A very strenuous hike with fun people – a bushwhack we will most likely not attempt to do in winter again!