The Denmark Mountain Hikers climbed Pleasant Mountain via the Firewarden’s Trail on Friday, February 6, 2026. Hiking today were Greg Moulton, Greg Dean, Pat Marchetti, Jacob Schor, Janet Arens, Gordon Farrell, Kathy Huchthausen and Sheldon Ashby.
Temperatures at the trailhead were in the single digits, around 5 degrees. We had been concerned about hiking in such conditions, but it really wasn’t too bad. There was no wind, some filtered sunshine, and once moving uphill on the trail, we were generally OK. Over the course of the hike, the temperature warmed into the teens and even a balmy 20 degrees by the time we returned to the trailhead.
Seven of us started up the trail at 9:10 AM. Sheldon arrived late at the trailhead but did manage to catch up to us at some point past the halfway mark. (Late though he might have been,, he managed to purchase some raspberry filled puff pastries on his way, guaranteeing that we would be happy to see him.)
The Firewarden’s Trail is also used as a snowmobile trail, so the entire trail was well-packed. The first half of the trail up until the bridge crossing the creek had been groomed b a small version of a ski area groomer leav9ing us a wide well packed trail. Once the trail narrowed, the groomer had turned around and went home, but the the tracks left by snowmobiles still provided a solid well packed trail.We wore microspikes, which worked fine, and didn’t bother to carry our snowshoes. The first half of the trail is a gradual hike along a wide
woods road. After a while it climbs a little more steeply and gets a little rougher, but is never really steep or difficult. There were occasional ice patches, but easily avoidable or traversed with microspikes. The trail goes through nice open woods, with a few views between the bare trees.
We reached the open summit at 11:20 AM. There was a beautiful view to the west and northwest, including Mt. Washington and many surrounding mountains and lakes. We had the summit to ourselves.
We spent about 30 minutes admiring the view, taking pictures and eating lunch, snacks and sharing those previously mentioned pastries Sheldon had carried up. snacks. Most of us had managed the climb without breaking a sweat but started to feel a bit of a chill while lounging on the summit.We started back down the trail. [Sheldon was the exception, having run most of the way up it seems,]
The now eight of us didn’t dawdle on the way down, making good time and arriving back at the trailhead at 1:15 PM. It seems that it took us about two hours and ten minutes to make the climb up and only about an hour and a quarter going down.
We met only two snowmobiles all day and they were just starting up as we were nearly done with our descent.
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