A spur-of-the-moment July 4th hiking and camping trip in the White Mountains turned into a 3-day affair when our legs proved to be restless and the blue skies filled with high fluffy white clouds proved to be perfect for peak-bagging 4 toughish 4000-footer summits.
On Friday, as we drove to New Hampshire, I tricked Mr. Pinault into agreeing to take on Mount Flume. He had wanted to do a short, easy hike, and the isolated Mount Flume is 11 miles round trip via the Osseo Trail. “But 3 miles are on flat ground,” I pointed out, “and 6 miles are along an old logging road with switchbacks, leaving really only 2 miles of work.” Indeed, the trail was very nice, gradual, and free of rock slabs — gotta love those old logging roads, sort of — and the views at the summit were splendid, but 11 miles is 11 miles. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
On Saturday, we woke up in the Lafeyette Campground and walked 20 feet to the trailhead for North and South Kinsman, which are popular mountains that lay on the Applachian Trail. The elation of seeing a moose near Lonesome Lake (see yesterday) carried us through the morning, which was fortunate because the Fishin’ Jimmy trail — which sounds so fun — was a difficult and tiring 2 miles in swampy, rocky woods. We reached the summit of North Kinsman first but headed straight to South Kinsman to eat lunch in the plentiful noon sun next to dreadlocked college kids, one of whom spent five minutes extolling the virtues of Nutrageous candy bars. We backtracked to North Kinsman and sat on the ledge with a crowd of hikers that dispersed soon after we arrived. “It’s a rare thing to have the summit of North Kinsman to yourself on a Saturday, so enjoy it while you can,” the last man to leave said to us with a wink in his voice. I enjoyed it by jumping for joy (see me below, right). The whole hike took about 7 hours, including the 30 minutes during which we breaked for the moose.
On Sunday, we woke up early at the campground and sure, we could have headed home, but the weather was still nice and our muscles were not completely screaming, so we drove north to the foreboding Presidential Range to take on Mount Eisenhower via the Edmands Path. This finely-engineered trail has been said to provide the best views in the Presidential Range for the least amount of effort, and indeed, it was a steady 3-mile climb that took us only 2 hours from the parking lot to the top. The rocky alpine Eisenhower summit provided an excellent view of Mount Washington (see Mr. Pinault below, left) and it occured to me belatedly that we should have bagged nearby Mount Jefferson on July 4th instead of Mount Flume, but that’s a hard hike — it’s a vacation, after all.
