On one of the two warm and sunny days during our week-long trek in the Waterville Valley, we decided to take the long drive along the Kancamagus Highway to Rocky Gorge. We had intended to stop first at Sabbaday Falls to enjoy the spectacle of the falls in full frothing rage down its forest cliffside into the forest stream below, but then changed our minds and made a mental note to stop there on our way back from Rocky Gorge.

 

The Falls is the attraction there in and of itself. We had once, many years ago, taken a long, undistinguished trail that led to a distant summit on a trip with our younger son, but hadn't enjoyed that expedition and felt no wish to do that trail again; too much of it was open; a narrow trail outside the forest environs, for too long before plunging into the forest and I seem to recall some switch-backs and boggy terrain.

 

So, at the Falls, there's a relatively short uphill trail from the parking lot to gain the landscape of the tumbling, roiling Falls, through a bit of forest alongside; on one side of which there is the stream fed by the Falls rolling downhill. For an enjoyable trek along a trail, we held out for Rocky Gorge and soon after passing the Falls arrived at Rocky Gorge.

 

For a change, the parking lot held few other vehicles, and we barely saw anyone else on the pathways leading to the Gorge, nor was there anyone in its near environs. It was a different story altogether by the time we had completed our hike for the afternoon, and ambling out of the forest, we encountered a veritable stream of visitors.

 

The gorge itself is quite the spectacle; carved by ferocious eddying and streaming water coursing off nearby mountain slopes, the horizontal rocky ledges invite the visitor to make their way over onto them (with care) to observe the water flowing in a series of falls flowing into the Swift River. There's a bridge that fords the river and from it sightlines left and right show the river winding its way along, while on the opposite side in the distance, mountains from whose slopes the water courses form the background.

 

Over the bridge a pathway leads to the small lake nestled within the forest, around which the Lovequist trail makes its way. Along the pathways of the forest, we saw white, glowing bunchberries in bloom, as well as wild rhododendrons in bloom and some azaleas as well. At the edge of the lake we were inundated with crowds of dragonflies of a type we'd never sen before. They looked stubby and black in comparison to the graceful, colourful ones we often see in Ontario.

 

And they were on the hunt, restlessly zipping about nipping mosquitoes and black flies. So we  blessed their enterprise. We had repellent with us, but we hate using the stuff and rarely do. By the time we had completed our circuit around the lake, we had been mercilessly bitten; with deep bites taking flesh from every part of our bodies; black flies particularly like the back of the neck, behind ears, and are skilled at making their pestiferous way inside clothing to reach body parts one might believe to be inaccessible to them; nothing of the kind.

 

The trail was fairly dry in most places, unlike large areas that we often find steeped in bog. There were several places with extended deep muck where we briefly picked Jackie and Jillie up to convey them across those areas, but for the most part the trail is a friendly one. There are the inevitable places where trees have fallen and detours are in order or clambers under/over; no challenge for Jackie and Jillie.

 

The trail mostly skirts the lake, while forested hillsides rise fairly steeply on the opposite side of the trail. By the time we completed the circuit, with its occasional ascents and root-and-rock-tricky challenges the day had heated up and so had we.