p2piper
New member
Stats:
Date: Saturday, July 14, 2007
Time: 12 hours
Weather: Sunny, light breeze, 60's-70's
Miles: 18.9
Steps: 52,749
Trails: Lincoln Woods Trail to Franconia Brook Trail to Lincoln Brook Trail to Owls Head summit herd path and back
We left Keene, NH at 5 am as usual and it was great to get to the trailhead in under three hours. What a treat! Another treat was a toilet at teh trailhead! It's the small things, you know. Anyway, Nancy and I saddled up and headed out the Lincoln Woods Trail with Dejah (2 year old yellow lab) at 7:35 am. The weather was perfect - mostly sunny, light breeze, temps ranging from upper 50's to mid 70's. The Lincoln Woods Trail is an abandoned railroad, so it was flat and wide. I had read someone's trip report on Views from the Top who missed the turn onto the Franconia Brook Trail and ended up adding another 4 miles to the 19 mile total. I did not want that to happen to us so I kept my eyes peeled for the trail signs. We moved right along, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence, making good time.
As we neared the summit herd path, we could look up through the tree canopy and catch glimpses of Owl's Head. As always our first reaction is, "We have to climb up that?" We laughed as we reached the two cairns and a blowdown decorated in rocks that mark the beginning of the summit herd path. We each added a rock and started up, very quickly finding ourselves on the slide. Now usually I like slides - but this one was the sketchiest I had been on. The loose rock made footing very difficult and as often as not I slipped backward half the distance I moved upward. Still, I liked it. Dejah had no trouble with the slide, the loose rock or the ledges. She just did her doggy thing and sat panting as she waited for us to catch up. Nancy was a little out of her comfort zone - she wasn't feeling her best and was moving a little more slowly than I was. Pretty soon we were off the slide and into the trees again, still steep but footing was not as sketchy. We reached the "false" summit where we met two groups of hikers and started comparing notes on which peak number Owl's Head was. All of them said some number in the 40's. No one chose Owl's Head as their first or second or even twentieth peak. I wonder why. One gentleman asked what number this was for us and we said 47 - he said that if it had been our 48th he would have had to go all the way back to the summit to celebrate with us. What a great thing to say! I love the camaraderie of hikers going for their 48.
Someone had kindly tacked a blue plastic arrow on a tree to mark the direction of the herd path that went to the true summit. The blowdowns were numerous and some had some pretty nasty sticks, branches, and nubbins sticking out of them so that neither of our legs got out of there without some blood being drawn. They slowed us down and we finally reached the summit at 1:35 pm. High fives and a hug, pictures, and out of there. We had decided to eat on the slide on the way back, but had not realized it was going to take us so long to get to the summit. We were pretty hungry. We met an AMC led group of hikers on our way down, one of them wearing a VFTT t-shirt. My parting words were, "We will be looking for your trip report!"
Down is never fun for me, but we slowly made our way to the best spot, took off our packs, and sat down to our sandwiches at 3 pm. They tasted great, and the view of the east side of the Franconia Ridge was different, unique, and quite beautiful. It was a relief even for me to finally get back down to "level" ground and start the long grind back to the car. I thought we were walking at a good pace, but it still took us close to four hours to get back to the parking lot at 7:23 pm. My feet, as usual after a long hike, were toast. Sore, sore, sore. I couldn't wait to get out of my boots and sink my feet into my tennis shoes. It felt so good to sit down and toast our day with a Diet Pepsi and a Diet peach Snapple iced tea. Yeah - life doesn't get much better than this.
We talked about how to make our final 48th climb up Jefferson a great one - started brainstorming ideas, but nothing really whacked us upside the head. I posted a note to the VFTT list and lots of folks responded. It was great to read all the different ways hikers have celebrated - solo, with friends, champagne at the top, champagne at the bottom, champagne at dinner, a great meal out. I was hoping to be able to climb Jefferson this Friday or Saturday, but the weather looks bad for the next five days. Not awful but I sure would like to get up there when the views are forever and the wind is kind.
47 out of 48 NH 4,000-Footers
53 out of 67 NE 4,000-Footers
57 out of 100 Highest
Date: Saturday, July 14, 2007
Time: 12 hours
Weather: Sunny, light breeze, 60's-70's
Miles: 18.9
Steps: 52,749
Trails: Lincoln Woods Trail to Franconia Brook Trail to Lincoln Brook Trail to Owls Head summit herd path and back
We left Keene, NH at 5 am as usual and it was great to get to the trailhead in under three hours. What a treat! Another treat was a toilet at teh trailhead! It's the small things, you know. Anyway, Nancy and I saddled up and headed out the Lincoln Woods Trail with Dejah (2 year old yellow lab) at 7:35 am. The weather was perfect - mostly sunny, light breeze, temps ranging from upper 50's to mid 70's. The Lincoln Woods Trail is an abandoned railroad, so it was flat and wide. I had read someone's trip report on Views from the Top who missed the turn onto the Franconia Brook Trail and ended up adding another 4 miles to the 19 mile total. I did not want that to happen to us so I kept my eyes peeled for the trail signs. We moved right along, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence, making good time.
As we neared the summit herd path, we could look up through the tree canopy and catch glimpses of Owl's Head. As always our first reaction is, "We have to climb up that?" We laughed as we reached the two cairns and a blowdown decorated in rocks that mark the beginning of the summit herd path. We each added a rock and started up, very quickly finding ourselves on the slide. Now usually I like slides - but this one was the sketchiest I had been on. The loose rock made footing very difficult and as often as not I slipped backward half the distance I moved upward. Still, I liked it. Dejah had no trouble with the slide, the loose rock or the ledges. She just did her doggy thing and sat panting as she waited for us to catch up. Nancy was a little out of her comfort zone - she wasn't feeling her best and was moving a little more slowly than I was. Pretty soon we were off the slide and into the trees again, still steep but footing was not as sketchy. We reached the "false" summit where we met two groups of hikers and started comparing notes on which peak number Owl's Head was. All of them said some number in the 40's. No one chose Owl's Head as their first or second or even twentieth peak. I wonder why. One gentleman asked what number this was for us and we said 47 - he said that if it had been our 48th he would have had to go all the way back to the summit to celebrate with us. What a great thing to say! I love the camaraderie of hikers going for their 48.
Someone had kindly tacked a blue plastic arrow on a tree to mark the direction of the herd path that went to the true summit. The blowdowns were numerous and some had some pretty nasty sticks, branches, and nubbins sticking out of them so that neither of our legs got out of there without some blood being drawn. They slowed us down and we finally reached the summit at 1:35 pm. High fives and a hug, pictures, and out of there. We had decided to eat on the slide on the way back, but had not realized it was going to take us so long to get to the summit. We were pretty hungry. We met an AMC led group of hikers on our way down, one of them wearing a VFTT t-shirt. My parting words were, "We will be looking for your trip report!"
Down is never fun for me, but we slowly made our way to the best spot, took off our packs, and sat down to our sandwiches at 3 pm. They tasted great, and the view of the east side of the Franconia Ridge was different, unique, and quite beautiful. It was a relief even for me to finally get back down to "level" ground and start the long grind back to the car. I thought we were walking at a good pace, but it still took us close to four hours to get back to the parking lot at 7:23 pm. My feet, as usual after a long hike, were toast. Sore, sore, sore. I couldn't wait to get out of my boots and sink my feet into my tennis shoes. It felt so good to sit down and toast our day with a Diet Pepsi and a Diet peach Snapple iced tea. Yeah - life doesn't get much better than this.
We talked about how to make our final 48th climb up Jefferson a great one - started brainstorming ideas, but nothing really whacked us upside the head. I posted a note to the VFTT list and lots of folks responded. It was great to read all the different ways hikers have celebrated - solo, with friends, champagne at the top, champagne at the bottom, champagne at dinner, a great meal out. I was hoping to be able to climb Jefferson this Friday or Saturday, but the weather looks bad for the next five days. Not awful but I sure would like to get up there when the views are forever and the wind is kind.
47 out of 48 NH 4,000-Footers
53 out of 67 NE 4,000-Footers
57 out of 100 Highest
