My cousin and I just got back from a chilly overnight at Peaked Hill Pond in Thornton, New Hampshire. What a beautiful place! And very easy to get to.

Getting there
I have the 26th edition of the AMC White Mountain Guide, published in 1998, and the trail description gave some confused directions on how to get there. But it really is quite easy. From I-93 take exit 29 to Route 3 north. You'll go a few miles. Your landmarks: A railroad track on your right hand side will follow the road for a while and then diverge. After it diverges, keep your eyes out for a brown sign saying Peaked Hill Pond Trail and a road sign indicating the same. Go in, follow the sign right, and follow alongside Route 3 until you get to the gate.

The Trail
Peaked Hill Pond Trail begins on the other side of the gate. There is a sugar shack and a few roads to choose from right after the gate. Pick the road (washed out into a shallow gully as of 10/17/2015) to the left of the sugar shack. Signage on the trail is unpainted and a little tricky to see. You follow the road most of the way, excepting a short trail that bypasses an open field that the road goes into. When you are almost to the pond there is one more slightly confusing area - an open field where you keep right and go downhill towards the pond. All in all it's 1.7 miles and 400 feet of elevation gain. The guidebook gives you an hour to hike it - we got there in 45 minutes and hiked out in 30 minutes the next morning. Very easy trail.

The Campsite
What a beautiful place! The trail ends in an established camp site with half a dozen or more prime hammock sites. My cousin and I were the only two at the pond, so we had the pick of the sites and ended up hanging our hammocks in a V formation tucked among mixed spruce and hardwoods. There are two established campfire rings and plenty of flat ground to do your cooking. But the real gem is the view from the shore of Peaked Hill Pond. We got to the pond with about 30 minutes until sunset. A light wind blurred the pond's reflection of the very picturesque Peaked Hill rising behind the pond. A crescent moon hung above the pond for an hour or so before setting. I live in a fairly rural area that is right next to a city, so I don't get to see too many stars on a daily basis due to light pollution, so it is always a treat to spend a night in the mountains seeing many more stars, but it was an even greater treat to stand right on the shore of a now glassy-still pond and see stars above, and reflected beneath you too! In the morning the bright dawn sunshine lit up Peaked Hill like it was on fire with all of the vibrant fall colors, mainly oranges and yellows. Can't beat a New England fall!!

The Hammocks
Mine is a Hennessey Expedition Asym Classic model. I use ENO Atlas straps for suspension, and I've got Snake Skins on the hammock. Set up was a breeze! My cousin's is an ENO Doublenest with Atlas Straps, bug net and rainfly. He took more time to set it all up, but didn't have any trouble with it at all. For insulation we both had mummy style air mattresses and mummy bags rate for around 30 degrees. My cousin had a piece of space blanket under the torso of his mattress and I had half of a car windshield sunscreen under my torso. It was a frigid night, around the freezing mark, and we both ended up wrapping a spare jacket around the feet of our sleeping bags. My cousin also had a nice silk liner that he added to his bag. My cousin slept warmly, but I suffered some from cold. My feet were blocks of ice! I have rather poor circulation in my feet to begin with and they often get cold quickly even on a good day. I wonder if I may have felt warmer overall if I had managed to keep my feet warm, but while falling asleep and whenever I stirred and woke a little during the night I felt a thin chill creeping along me. Even so, cold feet and all, it was a nice night's rest. No pressure points, no soreness, and I got a nice 4 hour stretch of undisturbed sleep before my feet got super cold, then I had to relieve myself, etc etc. A little light rain around 3 or 4am sounded nice on the tarps and didn't wet us at all, and only made for a slightly soggy packing up in the morning.

Questions for the Community
This was my first time camping in a hammock aside from a two-night stint in the woods behind my house in ideal, warm conditions (sleeping in shorts with the sleeping bag wide open). So I have a few questions, if I may

1) The whole cold feet thing... I understand from my research that you're supposed to hang your hammock with the foot end higher than the head end to prevent your body from sliding towards your feet. Yet I can't help but think that elevated feet combined with poor circulation combined to be a major contributor to my very, very cold feet. Does anybody have any advice on this front?

2) Dealing with the cold was a major concern, and I read that hanging your hammock lower is better when you think you'll have issues with cold. I hung my hammock so that when I was in it I was maybe 5-10 inches from the ground. Did I do that right, or do I have wrong information?

3) Using your rain fly to hold in heat... does this work? Due to a nearby tree the right side of my rain fly was snugged pretty close to the hammock with only an inch or two of airspace between it and the side of my hammock, but I rigged the left side fairly high, and I got to thinking that maybe if I had rigged that side down low as well I may have kept a little more heat in... Would it have had any effect?