Dunbar
New member
With the nice weather forecast, I wanted to get out and explore the White Mountains. I'm pretty new to the area - spent a week there back in '07 and that's about it. But I just moved to Lebanon, NH so I expect I'll become much more familiar with these hills. Friday night I pulled out my map and put together a plan that (I hoped) would keep me away from the Columbus Day crowds. The goal was to hike the Tripyramids and some of the surrounding 3000' peaks from the Kancamagus side.
I arrived at the Pine Bend Brook trail at 7:30 AM. I was surprised to find no other cars there. I suppose I had made a good guess on what the quieter trails would be. I cruised on up the trail to the Scaur-N Tri saddle. I then turned right and found a decent herd path that had me on Scaur in a little over 5 minutes. Nice woods along the way. There wasn't much to see so I quickly backtracked and rolled up to North Tripyramid. Not much to see there either. After eating some food I continued over to Middle Tripyramid. Here I ran into the first people for the day, a group of girls from Boston.
After looking around a bit to familiarize myself with the area, I cruised over to South Tri and then continued on down the trail. I didn't know there was a slide over there, so I was pleasantly surprised when it opened up. Shortly thereafter I was reminded that the tread on my Hardrocks suck as I tried to descend some of the rock.
I found the trail junction to the Sleepers and headed that way. This is a nice section of trail through some great moss-covered woods. It was a quiet stroll over to West Sleeper where I dropped my pack before cruising over to East Sleeper. Now it was time to backtrack. It would have been easier to finish my loop on the Downes Brook trail, but I wanted to climb The Fool Killer on this trip. I mean, how could you not want to climb a mountain with such an awesome name? So I headed back over the bumps to the North-Middle Tripyramid saddle. The only place I saw people the entire day was on the section of trail going over Tripyramids - everywhere else was empty. From the saddle I headed down the Sabbaday Brook trail to the base of The Fool Killer. From there I took a straight shot uphill and was pleasantly surprised to find the woods were open and easy walking all the way to the summit.
On the summit I debated the merits of retracing my steps to the trail since I knew it was easy 'whacking there. But part of this trip was a scouting mission to see what bushwhacking is like in the Whites, so I opted to bushwhack south off the summit until picking up the trail further down the valley. I took an approximate bearing off my map and dialed it into my compass before starting down. As I left the summit ridge I checked my compass and it indicated I was about 60 degrees off of where I intended. Seems like my compass is always telling me I'm going the wrong direction. I don't like all it's negativity. So that was the last time I looked at it. I proceeded downhill wherever the woods were most open. It was easy going at first but it kept getting thicker as I went down. Isn't that the opposite of how it's supposed to work? I was just getting tired of having the skin ripped off my arms when I stepped out onto the Sabbaday Brook trail. I proceeded downhill toward the road. Didn't see anyone until Sabbaday Falls and then there were 200+ people between that and the road. I ended the hike with a noisy road walk back to the car. All in all a fun and fairly quiet day to bag six peaks.
I took a few pictures, but they weren't all that great so I'm not going to bother posting them.
I arrived at the Pine Bend Brook trail at 7:30 AM. I was surprised to find no other cars there. I suppose I had made a good guess on what the quieter trails would be. I cruised on up the trail to the Scaur-N Tri saddle. I then turned right and found a decent herd path that had me on Scaur in a little over 5 minutes. Nice woods along the way. There wasn't much to see so I quickly backtracked and rolled up to North Tripyramid. Not much to see there either. After eating some food I continued over to Middle Tripyramid. Here I ran into the first people for the day, a group of girls from Boston.
After looking around a bit to familiarize myself with the area, I cruised over to South Tri and then continued on down the trail. I didn't know there was a slide over there, so I was pleasantly surprised when it opened up. Shortly thereafter I was reminded that the tread on my Hardrocks suck as I tried to descend some of the rock.
I found the trail junction to the Sleepers and headed that way. This is a nice section of trail through some great moss-covered woods. It was a quiet stroll over to West Sleeper where I dropped my pack before cruising over to East Sleeper. Now it was time to backtrack. It would have been easier to finish my loop on the Downes Brook trail, but I wanted to climb The Fool Killer on this trip. I mean, how could you not want to climb a mountain with such an awesome name? So I headed back over the bumps to the North-Middle Tripyramid saddle. The only place I saw people the entire day was on the section of trail going over Tripyramids - everywhere else was empty. From the saddle I headed down the Sabbaday Brook trail to the base of The Fool Killer. From there I took a straight shot uphill and was pleasantly surprised to find the woods were open and easy walking all the way to the summit.
On the summit I debated the merits of retracing my steps to the trail since I knew it was easy 'whacking there. But part of this trip was a scouting mission to see what bushwhacking is like in the Whites, so I opted to bushwhack south off the summit until picking up the trail further down the valley. I took an approximate bearing off my map and dialed it into my compass before starting down. As I left the summit ridge I checked my compass and it indicated I was about 60 degrees off of where I intended. Seems like my compass is always telling me I'm going the wrong direction. I don't like all it's negativity. So that was the last time I looked at it. I proceeded downhill wherever the woods were most open. It was easy going at first but it kept getting thicker as I went down. Isn't that the opposite of how it's supposed to work? I was just getting tired of having the skin ripped off my arms when I stepped out onto the Sabbaday Brook trail. I proceeded downhill toward the road. Didn't see anyone until Sabbaday Falls and then there were 200+ people between that and the road. I ended the hike with a noisy road walk back to the car. All in all a fun and fairly quiet day to bag six peaks.
I took a few pictures, but they weren't all that great so I'm not going to bother posting them.
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