ORFORD — For the fourth time since August, rescue teams were dispatched on Thursday to help evacuate an injured hiker off Mount Cube in Orford; this time, rescue efforts were slowed by having to trek through snow that remained on the mountain after recent spring storms.

Rescuers responded on Thursday afternoon to a call from a 56-year-old woman from Merrimack, N.H., who had “fallen on slippery, wet rock and sustained an upper leg injury” which prevented her from going on, New Hampshire Fish and Game said in a news release.

The hiker, stranded about 2.2 miles from the trailhead on Baker Road, was placed in a rescue litter and carried off the mountain. She was then transported to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon for assessment and treatment of her injury, according to Fish and Game.

The trip down took nearly two hours as rescue workers had to trudge through snow.

“At least half of the 2.2-mile trail was snow and ice covered with deep snow in some areas, causing rescuers to post hole through much of the higher elevations,” Fish and Game said in the news release. (Post-holing refers to a hiker’s leg sinking into deep snow.)

New Hampshire Fish and Game rescued injured hikers from Mount Cube in October, September and August.

Nick Masucci, a conservation officer with Fish and Game, said on Friday he could not think of anything in particular that would make hiking on Mount Cube riskier and lead to a higher incidence of rescues than on other mountains in New Hampshire.

“Each one of those injuries and rescues were different,” he said, noting that “snow and ice on trails” was widely reported at higher elevations around the state this week and hikers should take precautions.

Indeed, that had been the case with Thursday’s Mount Cube hiker.

The woman and her hiking partner had been “well prepared for a winter day hike and were wearing micro-spike traction devices,” Fish and Game said in the news release, adding “that winter conditions still persist at elevation throughout New Hampshire’s White Mountains and to prepare accordingly.”

New Hampshire Fish and Game was assisted at the scene by rescuers from the Upper Valley Wilderness Response Team and fire crews from Orford, Wentworth, Hanover, Lyme, Thetford and Fairlee.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.