water along pemi loop

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Billy

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Wondering about water sources on pemi loop route.

Assuming a counterclockwise trip, these are the potential sources based on memory and maps:

- Fill up to start
- Black Brook, a few crossings with the last crossing at the ravine (approx 3100 ft)
- Guyot
- Galehead Hut
- Garfield campsite
- Garfield Pond (heard it sucks.......true?)
- Greenleaf Hut (1000 ft drop...ouch)
- Liberty Spring (300 ft drop)
- Along upper portions of Osseo....are there any?

Probably missed some. Any others? Thanks.
 
The drop to Guyot is pretty significant as well, I wouldn't want to drop down for that. The first guaranteed water on the Osceo trail that I know if is fairly low, but I may be forgetting something up higher.
 
Was just there (part of it): There were storm remnants atop the Osseo col, and it follows the brook a fair way at the bottom.

The Guyot two-tenths isn't too onerous if you drop your pack and maybe are willing to take a break. With the recent rain, there were plenty of little streamlets all along the Guyot Twinway.

I thought I remembered something usable at the Garfield/Franconia Brook col.

Boy, that ridgeline is dry, though, huh?
 
All the water on Osseo is down low. Garfield Pond isn't great, but it's wet. Skip Greenleaf and tank up there.
 
When I did the loop last August under fairly average conditions, there was water easily available on Garfield without needing to go over to the campsite. It runs copiously right down the trail, in fact. Garfield Pond is, like someone said, wet but kinda gross. There was water on the Osseo not too far below the summit -- just below that flat area before the ladders start. It was a small seep, but I was able to refill from it. It helps to have something to dip with. There were also some good storm puddles near the top of Lafayette. Filter or iodize ...

It's a pretty dry ridge, all in all.
 
The water supply for Garfield Ridge shelter is right next to the Twinway, and it runs pretty solidly through the summer.
 
From memory. OK. Counter clockwise.
- Frequently some trickles on/near the trail down to Galehead Hut below South Twin. Not significant unless you want to stay up on the ridge for the night.
- At least one water crossing between Galehead Hut and the Garfield Shelter water source (on trail, as has been mentioned). Never remember not being able to water in between GH Hut and GR water source.
- G Pond is fine. Either filter, or coffee filter and iodine. If you're squeamish, the flow into the Pond is around to your left a few hundred yards.
- Two sources between G Pond and climb to N Lafayette, never seen them dry (though sometimes only tiny pools). A third source is a trickle uphill to the left when you just start climbing up from a low point through a very dampish area, though this can be hard to find.
- The AT Guide refers to water "under the moss" off-trail to the right (westish) in a col a quarter of a mile or so before the climb of N lafayette begins in earnest. I've looked for that water, off and on, for 20 years and have never found it.
- Lafayette Spring (about 200 yards or so down towards the hut. On the left of the trail up in the rocks. Sometimes just a drip, but never seen it dry.
- On the spur to Shining Rock, halfway+ toward the Rock. On the left in the brush. I scoop out a depression every time to create a tiny pool, but either nature keeps filling it in or else the Kops.
-Little Hay Gap: this is a stretch. If you look at your topo and head towards first water leaving trail in the low point between LH and Liberty, kinda NE, you'll hit some streams fairly soon, but we're talking bushwhacking; and while I've never NOT seen water running, I've done this only a half-dozen or so times so that's not a reliable sample.
- Osseo high: if recent rains, look hard on the plateau (and listen hard for some rarer just off-trail but unseen in the scrub trickles just above and just below the plateau).
- Osseo further down: Just below the very last of the rock steps, when the trail turns hard left, the trail is very near the stream to your right. All the access paths (or water runoffs) are filled in by nature or the Kops, but the woods are reasonably open. The final scramble down is frequently a vertical 30-40 feet but if you look close there are easy ways, a little further down the trail there is a huge rock boulder/outcropping to go around, that flattens the terrain for that last drop.
- Osseo even further down: several pencil-thin "streams" across or near the trail if there's any recent moisture in the ground at all; but at this point you're probably only 30 minutes from trivial access to the stream (and immediately after that you're _at_ the stream).

EDITED TO ADD: I keep a stiff plastic "envelope" in my shirt pocket, kinda like the flat paper cups they used to have in railroad cars. This will scoop water out of the tiniest, flattest pools or trickles. I repeatedly dump that into a "dirty" ziplock bag, which I eventually filter out of (or pour into a "clean iodine" water container, leaving most of the sediment behind).
 
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There's enough water. You're doing a Pemi Loop ~9000' elevation gain so the 250' you have to do to go to Guyot Spring is worth it if you're out of water. Or even the Liberty Spring. There's sometimes a few pee-pools along the way but I'd filter from those.

-Dr. Wu
 
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