08/20-08/22 The White Mountains Part III

Day 41

Friday August 20th

Kinsman Pond Shelter

373 - 377.9 = 4.8

Our hotel check out is early, at 10. We wish it was later but we manage to get out in time. We linger awhile longer outside our room sitting on our provided lawn chairs. The hotel breakfast was decent, we got orange juice and bananas, apples and oranges and some belvita cookies to take for later snack. We refrain from eating sugary Quaker oatmeal or any of the bread items, like bagels or English muffins. The hotel owner lets us store our backpacks in the breakfast room so we can go shopping without them. The co-op is across the street and I can’t wait to get to spend more time in there without having anyone waiting on me! We get sandwiches, peaches and more tap kombucha for lunch and lots of neat and healthy items to pack out for the trail.

Trevin picks us up at 1 and takes us back to the trail at Liberty Springs trailhead. It’s a mile back to the AT from the parking lot and we can immediately feel the heavy weight of our backpacks full of town food. It’s super hot out today and rather sunny. It’s a lot nicer out that we thought it would be, since we are possibly in between tropical storms. We take our time and go slow. We don’t have plans to go far. We are going up into the Kinsman mountains now, but the trail climbs gently along a creek.

A few miles in we make it to Lonesome Lake, where we have a neat view of a dome shaped mountain called the Canonball. We can also see across the lake to Franconia Ridge, which is surprisingly cloud free. Lonesome Lake is the site of our final AMC hut. We redeem our final baked good tickets for some gingerbread cake and stop to make a small meal. It turns out to be really delicious, peanut butter, banana and avocado tacos with a sprinkle of spices from the bulk jars at the co-op and some hot sauce and honey. The tortillas are stone ground and made in Vermont with corn grown in Vermont. Neat!

After our break at the hut we begin climbing more steeply. Our destination for the night is the Kinsman Pond shelter. The shelter is only half a mile from the peak, so we start to think maybe we should go up and over while it’s still so nice out. We don’t know what tomorrow will be like. But the terrain ends up being so rough that we don’t get anywhere fast. It’s almost 7 by the time we make it to camp and it’s 4 more miles to the next site. We don’t have enough daylight to keep going and we are tired anyway. We briefly enjoy the pond while filtering some water, then retreat to our tent platform in the woods. We further lighten our loads when we eat our luxury dinner consisting of bread slices from the Greenleaf Hut and pouches of curried beans made by Tasty Bite.

Outside our room at the Eastgate after check out time

Selfie Trevin took us of at the trailhead with the outhouse in the background just for fun!

A nice resting area under highway 93 in Franconia Notch

Cannonball Mountain viewed from Lonesome Lake, Franconia Ridge to the right

Really good trail meal: corn tortillas, peanut butter, banana, avocado, spices, hot sauce and honey + a yellow/orange tomato on the side

Lonesome Lake Hut, main building. It’s shaped like a hexagon.

Neatly stacked stones to help us up the big boulders

Kinsman Pond and Kinsman Peak on the right

Kinsman Pond

Day 42

Saturday August 21st

Beaver Brook

377.9 - 389.5 = 11.6

In the morning we go the final half mile up the first of the Kinsman mountains, North Kinsman. It’s early when we get there and the sun is still low in the sky causing the view of Franconia Ridge to be backlit and kind of hazy with the evaporating morning humidity. There’s a great viewing ledge though, so we stop for breakfast.

There is a little saddle between the north and south peaks, it’s a pretty easy mile, and then we are on South Kinsman. The view isn’t as good, it’s obscured by low growing trees with no exposed ledges. We move on and begin the descent. It turns out to be really difficult and time consuming. We are having to climb down steep rock slab and maneuver over rocks and roots and squeeze through trees and gaps in rocks. It takes a lot of mental focus and a lot of energy physically, as a result we feel exhausted all day. Once we get down the initial hard part, then there are endless bogs and mud to try to make it through without getting sucked into the muck. This requires rock and log hopping, carefully planning your next step and big long stretching steps. This is always easier for Jeff with his much longer legs.

In the afternoon we are making our way through a meadowy bog with sinking bog bridges. Jeff is ahead of me, like always, and sees a moose! By the time I make it through the moose has run away. It was off in the meadow near Harrington Pond, grazing. That’s our only moose so far. People expect to see a lot of moose in Maine, but we saw none. Now in New Hampshire with a lesser chance Jeff sees one. Our future chances are quickly diminishing as we go south. Oh well, we’ve sure seen plenty of them in Alaska. We’ve seen very little wildlife on the trail, mostly just squirrels, chipmunks and the occasional bird.

It takes us all day to go the 11.6 miles that we planned. We get fully off the mountain and down to Kinsman Notch and NH Route 112. There is a resupply option here, you can get into the towns of Lincoln and North Woodstock. There’s a very popular hostel there called the Notch hostel. We brought enough food with us to get up and over the next mountain though, in case the weather was good and it appears as though it will be.

We camp in a flat clearing in the trees near the highway and the trailhead parking. Today we hike until it gets dark, around 8, which we haven’t had to do yet. It was a really long day! We eat snacks all day, every 2-3 hours, and instead of dinner tonight we just had more snacks on the way. We collapse into our tent and manage to get to bed pretty early, considering how late we had to hike.

View from the fine ledge on North Kinsman, looking North

View South from South Kinsman, the cloud bank is over the Connecticut River Valley

A clearing in the view on the way down, the big mountain in the distance is Mt Moosilauke, the one we’ll be climbing tomorrow.

A section of trail that goes directly over the roots of this poor birch tree.

Harrington Pond where Jeff saw the moose. The meadow is full of carnivorous plants

Eliza Brook and a fine swimming hole where we cooled off after the difficult descent

Day 43

Sunday August 22nd

NH Route 25

389.5 - 398.9 = 9.4

We managed to get to bed by 9 last night in spite of hiking until after 8. I fell immediately into a very deep sleep and stayed that way until 5:15 when I woke up naturally. We had set an alarm for 5:45 so we could be out of camp before many day hikers started coming back. We technically camped where you’re not supposed to and didn’t want any trouble for it, but it is an establish site where many AT have slept before and many more will. It is convenient that we are near the highway and parking lot as we get to go back to the trailhead and use the toilet before we head out.

We are walking by 7, and gaining elevation right away. With how tired and exhausted I was yesterday, I figured today would be miserable. We’ve been hearing about this mountain since the beginning like it’s some big horrible ordeal. Many of the NOBOs slackpack it. We had a lady at the hostel in Gorham tells us that her and her husband didn’t slackpack it and that it was one of the biggest mistakes of their hike and that she almost quick that day! So we were expecting a truly horrible and even scary hike!

We climb steeply on a very well built trail for about a mile alongside the steep cascades of Beaver Brook. There are wooden steps, ladders and rebar. Each step is a normal step. This is the first “hard” mountain for the NOBOs, but if they think this is bad, they’re in for a very rude awakening when they have to continue hiking over the same kind of terrain with the ladders, steps and railing! We keep waiting for it to get hard, but it never does. It just keeps getting easier. After the initial steep mile, it the grade eases and the footing becomes level and we practically fly up and over. It’s the easier terrain we’ve had in while.

It’s cool and misty this morning. There are low clouds on the mountain tops. When it’s damp like this the air smells so strongly of the fir trees that line the trail, it’s wonderful. We breath it in deep. The fir trees will be going away for awhile in the lower elevation stretches to come.

The last few miles are so easy that we are able to do a few consecutive miles at close to 2 miles an hour and full stride length. We rarely make 2 miles an hour! We can’t believe it! We feel great all day, with good energy, such a relief after yesterday. We are in the cloud at the top, but get a view from the South Peak of the rolling green hills to come.

Down the other side we make it into a forest of tall old trees, mostly maples and birches, but there are pine trees too! We haven’t seen any pines in quite awhile! It’s a pleasure to walk on the soft pine needle litter that covers the trail. Just before we reach the highway, NH Route 25, we stop for a final break at the Jeffers Brook Shelter. There is no one there, so it’s quite peaceful and surrounded by huge pine trees. The campsites are on soft beds of pine needles and we long to camp on them! We made a reservation for a shuttle pick up at 4:30 and hostel stay though because of the possibility of the next incoming tropical storm, Henry. It looks great out now, but we fear getting poured on all night and waking up in a puddle. We could sleep in the shelter, but it will probably get packed. We have enough food that we could get keeping going to another road crossing, but the storm holds us back and we head for cover at the Barn Door Hostel in Rumney.

The hostel is about a 30 minutes drive off the trail, but they come to get us. Somehow they are over booked, but they have an extra staff dorm that they put us in. That’s fine with us being separated from the hikers! We’re the only southbound hikers and are happy to be away from the NOBOs. The hostel is in the middle of nowhere. They are supposed to take us to Walmart for resupply, but we don’t go tonight. We are able to get some food from the free area and I put together some vegan macaroni and cheese with tomatoes for dinner with a a salad. Past hikers left a lot of fruits and veggies.