woodland wanderings: Potash Mountain

My original intent was to hike Hedgehog Mountain. I Googled Hedgehog and it sent me to Oliverian Brook Trail Rd. When I parked, I realized it wasn’t the main parking lot for Hedgehog. I didn’t mind adding some mileage and decided to head down the old logging road and cut over to the UNH trail. After a mile in, looking at a posted map and my GPS, I told my husband if we continued down the logging road there may be an unposted trail to the UNH trail. If not, we can just bushwhack to the trail. My husband looked at me and said, “What the h*ll are you talking about, I’m not bushwhacking anywhere, I’m going back to the parking lot and we are driving to the right trailhead.” :)

We drove to the trailhead and he sees the big sign that says Potash and asks me why can’t we do Potash? We can, there is a river crossing and I don’t know how high the water is. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it”. “There is no bridge”, I said. I hear him grumble. Luckily, the water crossing was just a rock hop and presented no issues. After that, it was smooth sailing to the summit.

It’s a lovely trail, mostly below treeline with views from the first ledge and peak-a-boo views off and on from there. There are a couple of areas of steep slab-face that made me glad it was a dry day.

During our entire outing, we only saw two couples who were on their way down as we were hiking up. We had the summit to ourselves so we took the opportunity to relax a while, soaking up the perfect weather and beautiful views. I was thankful we ended up hiking Potash. It was a great hike, with only a few people even on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and had great views! What else can a hiker ask for?