When a person makes that fateful decision to hike all 48 of the White Mountain 4000 Footers, they probably don’t know about Owl’s Head.
But when they start planning their hiking trips, Owl’s Head will quickly loom large as the biggest pain-in-the-ass peak on the whole damn list. The shortest route to this remote summit is 18 miles round trip (although bushwhacking shortcuts can shave off a mile or two), is mud-prone, and has 3-4 mildly difficult brook crossings. The 1.6 mile-long Owl’s Head Path to the summit is not marked, not maintained, riddled with wet rocks and fallen trees, and runs literally straight up the side of the mountain. And the kicker: the summit is heavily wooded with no redeeming views. Sounds great, sign me up!
“Bring extra flashlight batteries,” is the joke about Owl’s Head, so we started early. We woke up in Boston at 5am, dipped in the shower, stuffed our backpacks with enough rations to support 18 miles of hiking, and hit the road. The radio programming at 5:30am is light and soft — even the hard rock stations were playing lite Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rod Stewart, and Beatles — until we got to central New Hampshire, where there are no qualms about breaking out AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” at 7am. Stay classy, NH.
By 8am we were on the Lincoln Woods trail, and by 8:05am, it had started to rain. The rain only lasted about 10 minutes and was not recurring, but it seemed ominous. Still, it was a gorgeous morning and we enjoyed the calm, scenic woods.
We walked and walked on the flat, muddy terrain. We bushwhacked a shortcut that may have saved us distance (~1 mile) but certainly not time, so we didn’t reach the Owl’s Head Path until noon. Since the path is unofficial and park rangers usually dismantle cairns, a permanent arrow is etched into a tree to mark the path:
We encountered a surprising number of hikers on the punishing Owl’s Head Path — all fellow peak-baggers, because who else goes to Owl’s Head? It’s notorious as the peak that everyone procrastinates bagging, but there were some hikers like us, who still have a dozen or so to go and wanted to get it out of the way.
The steep climb was agonizing, certainly one of the hardest yet.
Owl’s Head Path may have sucked, but at least we had a rewarding view of the east side of Franconia Notch:
The lack of trailmarkers confused us at times, but overall the path was well worn by other peak baggers and pretty easy to follow. Still, when we finally reached the summit cairn (which had recently been relocated .2 miles from an old false summit), I really wanted Owl’s Head to just kiss my ass.
After much nagging, I convinced Mr. Pinault to pose in a similar manner (“Come on! Tell Owl’s Head to kiss your ass!”), and if I ever needed confirmation that my husband is heterosexual…
As we made our way back down Owl’s Head Path (leaving several large groups of hikers at the summit — one woman exclaimed “Wow, it’s busier than Monadnock up here!”) we saw the most amazing, wonderful thing that made Owl’s Head totally worth it: A baby moose!
The baby moose was totally unfazed by our presence. In fact, she was most interested in us, and let me get very close to her. I thought maybe she has been fed food by other hikers, for she stared at us expectantly, so I tossed a tomato at her feet. It rolled away from her, so I inched closer to retrieve it and toss it again. This time it hit her hoof. She didn’t seem to notice it, but she began moaning at me. “Go ahead, it’s organic,” I said, but of course a moose doesn’t know what a tomato is, so we bid her reluctant goodbye and continued on our way.
We didn’t make it back to the car until 7pm. Our legs and backs ached, we were covered in mud and bug bites, and we had to drive 2.5 hours back to Boston. But bonding with the baby moose made the trip totally worth it.
