Hiking the Lake Helen Mackenzie and Battleship Lake loop using Alltrails

 

by Keith and Heather Nicol

Alltrails is a great app for hikers to know about even if they know the trail they want to hike and have been on it several times. Alltrails has a free and paid version of its app and although the free version has lots of utility the pro version allows you to download maps and use them off line as well as off route notifications etc. But if you already know the trail and have hiked it a few times why would you go to Alltrails to get route info etc? The main reason is to find out what conditions are like at the present time. Since users provide regular updates you can find out if a trail is muddy or full of mosquitoes at the present time if people have posted updates on conditions recently. Note that not every trail you want to hike will be on Alltrails or would have had recent posts about trail conditions but it is always our first "go to" .

                         View of the ski runs at Mount Washington with Battleship Lake in the foreground 

For instance, we hiked the Helen Mackenzie and Battleship Lake trail on Saturday, July 25 with our daughter Kristie and her boyfriend Eric and used the app to find out what conditions were like.  We have done the hike previously so didn’t need the route info and trail description that Alltrails supplies. It turned out that any people had done the hike in the past week and posted info to Alltrails.  Although one perosn suggested bringing bug repellent, several people said bugs were not a problem so we opted not to bring it and we weren't bothered at all by bugs. This might also have also been due to windy cool conditions!  With temperatures in the mid teens it turned out to be perfect weather for hiking even though the clouds restricted out views. Overall the hike took us about 2 and 1/2 hours which included about 15 minutes for lunch at Lake Helen Mackenzie. Our total distance was measured at 9.4 km which is higher than the Alltrails distance of 8.2 km. But we recorded our distance from the Raven Lodge Parking lot and we did an extra small loop around a small peninsula sticking out into Lake Helen Mackenzie which might account for some of this difference.   The elevation gain is about 165 meters and be prepared for some rooty and rocky trail sections although much of it is smooth gravel or board walk making it a relatively easy hike. 

Of course the main application of Alltrails is to get trail info about hikes that you have never done and it is a great tool for this. In this case, the paid version might well be worth it. For information on Alltrails https://www.alltrails.com/