Mt Flume, Liberty, Lincoln and Lafayette Day Hike

Panorama

Bits

hike map
  • Pho­tos: Photo gal­lery
  • Trail: Pemi Trail to Flume Slide to Franconia Ridge to Old Bridle Path
  • Trail­head: La­fay­ette Camp­ground
  • Mileage: 14.4 miles
  • Hik­ing time: 9.5 hours hik­ing, 12 hours on trail
  • Weath­er: 60 de­grees to 80 de­grees, clear, very sunny
  • Con­di­tions: Spring con­di­tions. Wet trails, ser­i­ous mono­rail in the shade at high­er el­ev­a­tions, mainly the ridge.

Journal

We had planned on do­ing a 6-day back­pack­ing trip start­ing yes­ter­day, but it looked like there was still melt­ing snowpack at the high­er alti­tudes, which you really don’t want to deal with while car­ry­ing a 40-pound pack. Plus snow­shoes.

So we de­cided to day hike in­stead. Trail re­ports sug­ges­ted that the Franconia Ridge around Mt. Lin­coln was in good shape, and that’s on our New Hamp­shire 4000 to-do list, so we went there.

Looking west from Mt. Liberty

The Route

We star­ted in La­fay­ette Camp­ground, where there was plenty of park­ing at 9 on a warm Fri­day morn­ing.

(We would have ar­rived earli­er, but traffic had stopped on the way up due to yet an­oth­er fatal mo­tor­cycle ac­ci­dent. Shivers as we drove by the bike on the side of the road.)

From there, we took the bike trail along the river to get the flat val­ley part of the hike out of the way first. We went up Flume Slide trail, then north on the Franconia Ridge, even­tu­ally com­ing back down Old Bridle Path. In ret­ro­spect (a) that was too long and (b) ex­cept for that, it was the right call. Up the steep­est part and down the best des­cent of the op­tions on that face.

Brian, in front of the eastern view from Mt. Lincoln

The Hike

Ri­dicu­lously hard. Al­most cut it short. We stuck with it, but man it was long and tough.

Flume Slide trail is crazy steep - up rock faces, ba­sic­ally. And wa­ter was flow­ing down it, mak­ing for un­re­li­able foot­ing and a few scary mo­ments. I was pretty tired by the time we were to the top - it’s been a pretty ex­haust­ing few weeks and I’m not in my best shape.

Franconia Ridge had lots of snow on it, mak­ing pro­gress dif­fi­cult. We had brought our snow­shoes, which seemed silly in the val­ley, but were needed at the top. We had miles of snow hik­ing across the day, which was really tir­ing.

Once the ridge opened up, it was gor­geous. Some of the best views in the Whites.

I al­most bailed early, due to be­ing so tired, plan­ning to head back down the AT after Mt. Liberty. How­ever, the des­cent looked a lot bet­ter on the farther north trails, and I really didn’t want to re-walk the bike path in the val­ley, so we stuck with the snow­bound Franconia ridge.

Once we got to Little Hay­stack, the trail was clear north. So we fin­ished off the en­tire loop. Seemed smarter, des­pite be­ing tired.

We sum­mited La­fay­ette around 6… pretty late in the day, and we still had 3+ miles to go down. The des­cent was rough for a while. We had to stop to re­load wa­ter at the pond by Green­leaf Hut - SUCH a gor­geous area. Def­in­itely con­sider stay­ing there at some point.

On our way down, we had to use mi­cros­pikes for a while due to the icy mono­rail in the shaded areas. Even­tu­ally it dried out and we could hike nor­mally. We passed an in­jured hiker who had fallen on some ice. He had called for moun­tain res­cue, so we moved along. On our way down, as the sun set, we passed about 20 search and res­cue folks who were go­ing up with a stretch­er to carry him down. What an amaz­ing feat…. and ap­par­ently, they had over 40 “carry outs” last year.

We fin­ished after dark, ex­hausted and just sort of amazed at how much ef­fort this hike took. The steeps, the length, and the snow. This one prob­ably sets up up­per lim­it on what we’ll try to pack in­to a day, es­pe­cially with un­cer­tain con­di­tions.

And, no ques­tion: call­ing off the 6-day back­pack­ing route un­til later was def­in­itely the right call.

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