Wednesday, we awoke to near freezing temperatures.  The weather was predicted to be below freezing wind chills on top of Cannon and the Kinsmen that day, and the peaks are exposed peaks.  We called an audible and went to Tom, Field, and Willey instead since they would not be exposed peaks.  This trail started at a station for the Conway Scenic Railway, and an AMC facility, parking though was on the road.  We saw frost covered fields on the way in to the trailhead, and it was a brisk 34 degrees F when we parked the car.  After bundling up in appropriate layers, we started across the train tracks and up the Avalon trail.

Overall, these trails were some of the most beautiful trails I've hiked.  We went up the Avalon trail and turned on to the AZ trail until we hit the ridge.  Nothing too unusual here, it was a typical trail and nothing horribly difficult.  I did break my treking pole on the way up though, somehow pulling the end of the pole off... I could still use it, but I didn't have the guard and tip on the pole, so I had to be conscious of what I did with it.  We got to the ridge and it was absolutely beautiful.  The entire ridge was a traverse in moss covered and evergreen (spruce?) forest that in many places looked like it had severe storm damage not too long ago.  Many of the trees were only about 10 feet tall, and that was in the col, not on the peaks!

First up was Tom, which was a pretty straight forward 0.6 miles that had zero views at all on top.  Backtracking back down, it was then on to Field, which was just past the trail junction with the Avalon trail again.  There were a few herd paths here that lead to beautiful views.  We then went on to Willey which again, didn't have a view on the peak, but just before it there is a small scramble/ledge and gorgeous views to the south and west.  Backtracked again to Field and then down to Avalon, which is a lovely outcrop of rock that had by far the best views of the day.

While on the ridge trails, I did notice that there were sections of trail where I could swear they flew in rocks just to line the trail.  There were rocks around the size of softballs that just were the trail.  It was literally about 2 feet wide and linear.  On the sides of the trail, no signs of there being this many rocks in the area.  The rocks were loose, and didn't look like it was the result of erosion.  Very weird, and if it was intentional, it's a different way of dealing with erosion on the trail.  One that I'm not a fan of as it's easy to slip and twist an ankle.

When we got back to the bottom, the trail had pulled in.  As we reached the tracks, the engines had decoupled from the train cars and pulled a bit down the track.  I'm assuming that it was going to couple to the other end and bring it back to Conway, but people were still exiting the train.  Overall though, this was an absolutely beautiful hike, and while it had limited views, there were plenty of views if you just paid attention.

In the end, 9.55 miles and 3615 feet of elevation over nearly 8 hours.  Year to date 272 miles and 12.75 miles of elevation over 181 hours.  This also brings me to 6/48 and 54/115.  This is 12.5% of the New Hampshire 48 and 47% of the NE 111 (115).  I'm not likely to add any more to that number this year, but if I do, it will likely be one or more of the 5 in Vermont.