Owl's Head Day Hike, 9/2/05

[elvios lincoln]

Owls Head Trip 9/2/05

This was Santarpio’s 48th. He is 16 and started when 6. We brought along his 17 year old friend from the cross country team. She is 17 and this was her first hike. I told her that she was probably the first person in history who could claim that an Owl’s head death March, was their first hike.

We started on the Lincoln woods trail at 8:00 am. The forest service had posted signs at the trail head about flooding and impassable rivers. I quickly decided to do the Franconia falls bushwack, following the west side of the rivers as described in the AMC guide. I was able to follow the obscure remains of an old trail most of the way. I believe the distance covered by this was approximately 1 mile and it took 1 hr.

The second brook, coming off Franconia ridge , caused us to remove our boots and wade across, as did the Lincoln brook crossing that is 0.4mile before the Owl’s head slide.

I was surprised to find a large cairn at the base of the Owl’s head slide. It was perhaps 3 feet high. The slide rose immediately behind the cairn and the herd path was easy to follow. We saw where the Forest service has been scraping the blue blazed off the trees. There are tree scars, where the blazes were.

( Brief Editorial Tirade: These people are crazy. It makes me angry to realize that my parking pass dollars are paying for this over-zealous activity. I hope no one gets lost or injures because of the Forest Service’s irresponsible activity. I wish the Forest Service had some sense of history. This area was burned over and raped, by the 1940’s. A brief sixty years has turned it into a veritable jungle. This is not really Wilderness, no matter what any designation says. It is barely 8 miles from a busy interstate highway. No amount of trail obliteration is going to change this. Hiker injuries are the only likely result of obliterating Owl’s head human touches.)

At the traditional summit there was no sign and the large cairn was gone. I noticed that the rebuilding of a new “summit” cairn has begun at the base of the tree that used to have the sign. (By the way , the bolt holes from the old summit sign are still visable. Perhaps the Forest Service should fill the holes with wood-putty, or cut down the tree entirely.)

I had a GPS which told me that the much talked about “real summit”, was about 0.2 miles North. Unfortunately, the difficult stream crossing had eaten my schedules margin.
I wanted to get back across all of the difficult stream crossings and onto a well defined trail before I lost the light. We met a couple on the summit who had come across the Franconia brook and first Lincoln brook stream crossing. They reported that while they had to knee-deep wade, the crossing were not dangerous. They also said they had seen no evidence of trail flooding; so we stuck to the main trails on the way back. We had 4 stream crossings, where the boots had to come off. We arrived back at the car at 7:20pm, ten minutes before sunset, and 11hr and 20 minutes after we started.. A splendid time was had by all.

EL

 

[arghman]

similar hike Sat 9/3/05 -- warning: high water still

Tuco (who graciously offered me a ride to the Whites) and I did mostly the same trip yesterday (we did the Franconia Falls bushwhack both ways, although we lost the defined herd path in the middle, picked it up at the ends). Water was still high.

Note to those considering the Franconia Falls bushwhack to avoid the large crossings of Franconia Brook and Lincoln Brook: Even if you lose the herd path, it's easy to go in the right direction as long as you stay within earshot of water. There are no major tributaries of Lincoln Brook between Franconia Falls and where the "real" trail picks up. Lincoln Brook splits into some "threads" at spots, which may at first glance appear to be tributaries heading away from the main brook. Don't cross them and try to stay near the main brook; these are just islands and you'll have to cross back. We almost did this on a narrow section about 5' wide where there was a downed tree, we were going to throw our packs across and then shimmy across the tree. I went to throw my pack, and a split second before letting go I knew it was going to take a short parabolic arc into the water. Yanked it back at the last minute but ended up putting one boot into the water. Sploosh. In an alternate reality my pack and food and water and $500 camera went floating down the brook; I still am a bit nervous about how close that came to happening.

Good observations on the cairns and scraped-off tree blazes. (The latter had to have been done recently; there are still blue flakes beneath those trees. One tree near the top of the slide had not been "scraped" but rather was cut at the base and just left there, happily and almost defiantly sporting its blue blaze.)

I attempted to find the funny sign that Papa Bear mentioned in his trip report, but had no luck.

The shoreline west of Lincoln Brook had been scoured on Thursday. There are so many plants where the stems have been stripped of leaves and much of the roots have been stripped of soil. I'd guess the brook swelled to 4 or 5 feet vertically above normal.

Elvios -- I have some pictures I can post if you want, I didn't feel right writing another trip report on the same general hike the day afterwards, or putting too much into this post w/o your permission.

p.s. what saved this trip from total dismal hatred (besides the general gratitude of successfully negotiating the bushwhack and the two "easy" crossings, and of course getting to the peak and getting back to the car) for me was the Owls Head slide. Great views of Franconia Ridge (Lafayette was in the clouds most of Saturday but Lincoln peeked its head out in the afternoon) and the nearby valley, an interesting climb that was not too difficult, just laborious, and this was the spot in which the botany was most interesting. Labrador tea, some plant I couldn't quite identify with tube-shaped berries (sheep laurel? honeysuckle?), a few tiny patches of mountain sandwort (Minuartia groenlandica), there were some others of note but now I can't remember.

 

[sapblatt]

congrats

Everyone -
Glad you all had safe trips - and I am real glad I did this during a low water time in July...it was tricky enough. Glad your hiking again Tuco!

 

[Tuco]

Enjoyed hiking with you arghman.

Quick lessons for the day for me- bring the stupid gaitors or pants bottoms when a chance of bushwhack is near. Legs took a nice whipping.

I am VERY slow on the ascent- towards the top of the slide I felt like that Tim Conway character on Laugh In shuffling along.

I will always step in the water- both feet- no matter how good I think my foot plan is on a rock.

The long walk back on the Wilderness trail can have a person talking to themselves.

I am unlikely to see the summit of Owls' head again.

Stats- 5:15 to the Summit
45 minute break
4:40 back to trailhead. 10:40 for the day

All in all a beautiful day.

Saplatt- hope to catch you on the trails soon.

Elvios- hope you don't mind my coupling onto your thread.

 

[arghman]

This was Santarpio’s 48th. He is 16 and started when 6. We brought along his 17 year old friend from the cross country team. She is 17 and this was her first hike. I told her that she was probably the first person in history who could claim that an Owl’s head death March, was their first hike.
... We arrived back at the car at 7:20pm, ten minutes before sunset, and 11hr and 20 minutes after we started.. A splendid time was had by all.

!!!! Congrats to the Young Turks. (should have said this earlier)

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

Tirade about USFS? Really?

We were told by the USFS that they would be closing the Sugarloaf Road to the Zealand trailheard beginning on September 6th until the end of December (so next summer) for bridge repair. But, instead the USFS closed the road as of 4 pm on September 5th, with threats that we would be fined and our cars would be towed to a "far-away" place if we were not out in time. The bridge in question is the one across the Ammonoosuc River right off Rt. 302. There is nothing wrong with the bridge; a friend who is a civil engineer and inspected bridges for the state highway department told me so. I later heard that the USFS needs to replace the bridge with a much heavier duty one. Why? Because the USFS made recent timber sales in the area to loggers who demanded to use heavier equipment than the bridge can support. It is bad enough that we the taxpayers cough up $1.50 on average for road building and the like for every $1.00 taken in for the timber sales. But, I suspect that our parking fees are being used to pay for this bridge reconstruction, as the USFS refuses to answer my questions about how they are paying for the bridge replacement. Someone in the USFS office in Laconia told me "it was none of my business."