Mt Moriah day hike

Panorama

Bits

hike map
  • Pho­tos: Photo gal­lery
  • Trail: Mt Mori­ah from Stony Brook (loop)
  • Trail­head: Stony Brook Trail­head, NH
  • Mileage: 10.9 miles
  • Hik­ing time: 4.5 hours hik­ing, 7 hours on trail
  • Weath­er: 50 de­grees to 70 de­grees, clear, sunny, calm
  • Con­di­tions: Fall col­ors in full glory. Mostly dry. Some mud on the trail, nev­er really bad.

Journal

The week be­fore this hike, I was sit­ting at my com­puter, work­ing from home in Cov­id mode, feel­ing kinda sorry for my­self be­cause I’d broken my rib the week­end be­fore out play­ing on my moun­tain bike. Mov­ing was pain­ful. Sneez­ing was ex­cru­ci­at­ing. Bik­ing through the woods in the amaz­ing Fall col­ors start­ing to show up in New Eng­land was im­possible.

Bri­an slacked me, “hey, let’s go hik­ing in the Whites next Monday, maybe cross an­oth­er 4000er off our list”.

Pain, sch­main. I was in.

The Route

After look­ing at re­main­ing hikes on our list and the weath­er, we de­cided to climb Mori­ah. It’s a fairly long drive from home, but the climb was mod­er­ate (help­ful for my rib) and the views were good.

Starting out

The usu­al routes up Mori­ah are out-and-backs from Stony Brook or Gorham. On the re­com­mend­a­tion of the Sec­tion Hiker, we de­cided to make a loop out of it by start­ing in Stony Brook, first hik­ing the mile+ down in­to Gorham, and then go­ing up via the Gorham route, even­tu­ally des­cend­ing Stony Brook to ar­rive at the car.

That was the right call. Do a loop. Get the road part out of the way be­fore the real hike. The as­cent up Gorham was great, the des­cent down Stony Brook was great.

Note: do NOT do the Gorham leg in slick or wet con­di­tions. Some fairly steep rock face sec­tions would be pretty scary if slip­pery.

The Hike

Looking out into the distance

As usu­al, it was a steady climb. Noth­ing su­per-hard or su­per-scary. Great views of Mt. Wash­ing­ton on the way up.

The trail was a little busy on the way up (maybe 10 folks), quite busy at the small peak rock on Mori­ah, and then we saw no one on the way down.

While eat­ing lunch on the ridge, we watched gliders sail.

We en­joyed the fact that this trail touches and briefly over­laps with the Carter Ridge loop we’d been on a year be­fore.

View from the peak

(On that hike, we had planned to head north briefly to pick off Mori­ah, but there was just no way to do that and still make it to camp on time. So, in­stead, we had this day hike a year later to climb Mori­ah. Which turned out to be fant­ast­ic.)

On the way down, the trail goes in and out of the brook at the top, which is an­noy­ing, muddy, and slip­pery.

Even­tu­ally, it mel­lowed out in­to a gor­geous trek through open forest along­side a busy stream.

Summary

The col­ors, the trail, the views - def­in­itely a can­di­ate for best Whites day hike we’ve done.

Moriah's peak through the leaves