Mark and I took a week off to go hiking in the White mountains. This was the 3rd such trip and also the 3rd time to be there the last week in June. Of almost two weeks spent at various huts over the last five years I have always had sunny clear days. This year, not so much. As we approached Franconia Notch we could see that Cannon mountain summit was in the clouds and about the top third of Lafayette was hidden. It was to be this way for the week due to a weather pattern from the south and east that was not moving other than rotating counter clockwise.
This year's goal was to hike into
Galehead hut for a couple of nights and then to hike the Bonds which are a spectacular ridge that is surrounded by the Pemi wilderness. The various other ridges (Franconia, Twin) make for some great photography highlighted by
Bondcliff which has long been a target of ours to duplicate its impressive photo.
We started up the twinway (1200ft up in .7 mile) in a cloud. It was welcome as it kept you cool during this "waker-upper" of a climb. The summit of South Twin was socked in and the wind was howling. Our summit photos look more like ghosts. From there it was a mostly downhill walk to MT Guyot and the Bonds trail. We hiked out as far as Mt Bond but as visibility was almost nil we decided to stop there. It was a shame that the weather did not cooperate but it was still fun to stay at the huts as you always meet some interesting people there and the hike itself was great.
We crossed paths along the way with a few interesting folks:
- a runner who was doing a 30 mile jog across the Bonds, Twins, Garfield and the length of the Franconia ridge before descending back to the Pemi trailhead. Note that he didn't say what he was doing AFTER lunch :-)
- a grouse that did not do the broken wing or attack Mark (I had the camera rolling). Instead it trotted along in front of us as if it wanted to join our crew. OK by me as it moved at my pace and we could always eat it if we got stuck out all night!
- the huttie we met in the parking lot after hiking out. In between hiking out a full pack of garbage from the hut and carrying in a full load (40-50 lbs) of food to the hut she went for a several mile run for fun!
No luck with the weather this time but we will be back.
Labels: Gale River Trail, Galehead hut, Mount Bond, South Twin, White Mountains
2 Comments:
Bad luck about the weather but eventually that's bound to catch up to you. Looks like you had a good trip of it regardless. Also good to see Mark back up in the hills - the bionic knees must be treating him right ;)
Yeah, his knees held up just fine and would have been up to a bigger peak on Thursday. One benefit to the weather was that there were plenty of empty bunks in the hut and therefore less snoring!
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