Sandwich Range: Downes Brook Slide, Kate Sleeper, and Sabbaday Brook Trails

This was another hike from a few weeks ago that I'm again just coming around to writing. I had been interested in the abandoned Downes Brook Slide Trail, particularly the slide portion of the trail, so we decided to check it out one weekend. 

Beaver Pond near the Downes Brook Trailhead.

We arrived at the Downes Brook Trailhead early, and were soon on our way up the Downes Brook Trail to begin the day. While not the most exciting trail, it was a fairly quiet and easy walk alongside the brook. We reached the base of the slide at a little more than two miles into the hike.

 It was easy to pick up on because the debris from the slide crosses the trail, along with a small tributary running over slabs that looked like some pictures I had seen from other blogs. There were no immediately obvious signs of a trail so we followed the slabs uphill and away from Downes Brook. We soon passed a sign declaring maintenance of the trail illegal and I figured we were off on the right foot. The slabs were very slick at the bottom, so we were careful to follow some remnants of the path up along the left side of the slide. It became obvious that we were on the trail as there were several blazes that had been scrubbed out to remove prior maintenance, which really didn't do a whole lot other than blaze the corridor black instead. We continued up the old trail, which was occasionally slick with moss up to some open, dry slab. There were some decent views out towards Potash and its south peak, but we could tell that the views higher up the slide would be better. The slab was wide enough up here that we could comfortably walk on the side without having to worry about the water running down the middle. When we reached the top of this portion of the slide, we took a break and admired the now considerably better view out over Potash. The slide then reentered the woods, where it was sometimes easier to follow the trail and sometimes just easier to walk up the trough that it had carved out. After a couple of sketchy maneuvers, we reached what I believe Chris Dailey had called the "Downes Brook Slide Gem Pool". This pool marks the fork in the slide, and I had known that the trail followed the right hand branch of the slide from here on up. After poking through some brush and avoiding some more wet slab, we found the old corridor, which was pretty easy to notice because of an obvious gap in the spruce. The trail more or less ascended straight up alongside the slide, with only one somewhat confusing blowdown. Higher up, the trail crossed the highest slab of the slide and worked its way into the woods again. The view from the slabs was nice, but somewhat obstructed, as the pitch of the slide made it difficult to get the full view. I believe the Presis would have been in view but were clouded in. Oh well. 

Wet slabs on the Downes Brook Slide.

The "Gem Pool" of the slide. Head into the woods on the right here.

View from the top of the slide towards the Moats and Presis.

Above the slide, the old trailway was extremely easy to follow, again more or less ascending straight up the mountain. We passed some viewpoints once we reached a shoulder of the mountain, eventually popping out just above the northern viewpoint on Passaconaway. From what I have heard, the view spur for this is the only remaining open portion of what was once the Downes Brook Slide Trail. I had climbed Passaconaway before, but had never gone to the northern viewpoint and I clearly had missed out. The view was far better than I had expected. Continuing upward to the true summit was mostly a breeze and did not seem to go up as much as the statistics would indicate (maybe 200-300 feet over 0.3 sounds worse than it was). We briefly went to the eastern viewpoint on the Walden Trail, and then visited the true summit, which was off of a short spur trail. Not much excitement there, but the rest of the mountain makes up for it in my opinion. We went rather quickly down Dicey's Mill Trail and past the former site of Camp Rich, and then soon were on the Rollins Trail, which I had remembered as being kind of a drag last time I was on it. This wasn't really the case today, as I enjoyed some of the viewpoints along the way. 

Eastern viewpoint from Passaconaway.

Rollins Trail overlook.

View from the southern summit of Mt. Whiteface.

We took a short break at both the true summit of Whiteface and again at the southern summit, then backtracked and went down the Kate Sleeper Trail. It felt as if we had immediately stepped into the middle of nowhere once getting on this trail, as we only saw a couple of people along the way to the intersection of the Downes Brook Trail. I had heard of some campsites in this area, but did not take the time to look while I was up there. We continued on the Kate Sleeper Trail towards East Sleeper, passing through one of the largest blowdown areas I had ever seen in the Whites. After a decent climb up to East Sleeper, we took a short break. There was kind of wooded view back towards Whiteface here, but nothing particularly noteworthy. We were kind of drained from the ascent of East Sleeper, so we were dreading the climb up West, but it ultimately wasn't bad as I had thought it might be. The stretch of trail between West Sleeper and the South Tripyramid slide was through some nice spruce woods, and we popped out on a smaller slide adjacent to the South Tripyramid slide soon enough.

The view towards Sandwich from the South Tripyramid slide.

 The view from both of these slides gave an interesting perspective on Sandwich, particularly its double-topped summit, where Nick and I had been a couple weeks prior. We soon headed over to the main slide, which was difficult because most people were descending the slide while we were ascending. After a short burst of a climb we reached South Tripyramid, which was a first for me. As we headed over to Middle Tripyramid, we received a lot of questions asking if we were headed down the north slide, to which we replied that we were headed down Sabbaday Brook. We soon reached the middle peak and then not long after, the northern one, both of which had fairly modest views from their summits (with Middle being slightly better). 

The view from North Tripyramid.

Looking at North and Middle Tripyramid from near the summit of South.

We backtracked to the Sabbaday Brook intersection and began descending, which I had heard was steep but was unsure about what to expect. It dropped steeply at first but was pretty manageable until we reached an old slide track that consisted of dry slab dropping straight down the flank of the mountain (would not have enjoyed this when wet). This made for slow going, but soon enough we reached the base of the headwall of the ravine and the trail became level again. The upper stretches of this valley were gorgeous, with bright green moss seemingly everywhere. The trail continued to be easy for a while, and after crossing Sabbaday Brook a few times, continued in a straight line out of the valley. We made good time through this portion, which was nice. After a few miles of this, the trail crossed Sabbaday Brook three more times, which was now considerably wider. Luckily the water was low, but I would avoid these crossings in higher water. The trail passed an area that seemed braided with washouts and we soon were at Sabbaday Falls, which was a nice sight at the end of the hike. After taking a couple pictures we were back out at the Kanc and finished the hike with a mile roadwalk. This hike was long and may not be enjoyable for some people, but I liked the guessing game of finding the abandoned trail as well as the variety of the western end of the Kate Sleeper Trail. The hike was about 18.5 miles with 5800' of elevation gain and took us 7.5 hours with breaks. 

Sabbaday Falls at the end of the hike.