FINALLY! Backpacking happened in my life! It's been a while, but the weekend of June 16 I went on a grand expedition with Sarah "I like peanut M+Ms" Holland and Sterling "The" Wall to the White Mountains to backpack what's called the Pemigewasset Loop. I don't know if there are enough synonyms for the word "awesome" to describe this adventure. I'll assume there aren't and will just say "we had fun."
|
|
| Sunrise from Mt. Bond over Mt. Washington. Meh. |
Friday night we got out of work, and after equal parts of raw oysters and traffic, were on our way to the Tufts Loj, blasting Lonely Island all the way there. You know your weekend is going to be great when you have soup and brownies waiting for you. So my night included a few "5-minute mysteries," organizing our backpacks, and burning the absolute fuck out of my mouth on delicious, boiling soup.
We woke up on Saturday, gorged ourselves (well, at least I did), and drove to the nearby Lincoln Woods trailhead to start the loop. Even though our packs were heaviest at this point, we had a lot of... I don't know... spunk? Whatever you want to call that "adventure excitement energy" (adxcitergy?), we summited Flume before we knew it. The weather was perfect and the views were amazing. Have I ever mentioned that urinating off the top of a mountain is like one of the top things you can do? Well it is. And this would be the first of many such excretions of liquid waste.
 |
| Peeing off mountains. Like... one of the top things you can in life. |
A couple more miles (and a couple more conversations discussing the vast wealth of Sterling's gear knowledge) and we were at Liberty. Another great view, and at this point Cannon is starting to come into view. Awesomefest 2k12.
|
|
| Two summits down and morale is still high |
The rest of the Franconia Ridge is pretty great, because you get views on BOTH SIDES. To the west: Cannon and the Kinsmans, to the east: the entire Pemi loop and Washington beyond that. And hiking along an exposed ridge... with GOOD weather (being inside a pingpong ball while hiking the Presidential Ridge is a little lackluster)... is amazing. After summiting Lincoln and Lafayette, I started getting a little annoyed by how many times I said "this is the coolest thing ever" to myself, but then finding that I was wrong after hiking a little more. Needless to say, the views from Lafayette were astounding.
 |
| The Franconia Ridge is preeeeeeetty great |
|
|
| I don't have a sassy comment for this picture |
Then came what was probably my least favorite part of the trip: the long, painful downhill from Lafayette and the following uphill to Garfield. My knees exploded so many times, like, you don't even know. But the view from Garfield was totally worth it. Just as clear and windy as last time, but this time it isn't the winter. With our bodies banged up and an army of hungries knocking at our stomach doors (this is a sentence I'm proud of), we made our way to the Garfield campsites, which were actually farther than we were hoping. But oh man! Filling up on water, making some dehydrated dinners (which actually turned out DERICIOUS), it was good to just sit and not use our feet for a little bit. Once we cleaned up a little, we played some card games in a cozy three-person tent, which devolved into reading "Marmot Facts" on Sterling's deck of cards from the gear company Marmot. Ughfest.
We woke up Sunday morning in time to see sunrise just as a big fog cloud was creepin over the mountains.
 |
| The morning fog rolls in right after I take this picture |
The rest of the morning's hiking was accomplished inside a humid cloud. We refilled some water at the Galehead Hut, but a view from Galehead just wasn't possible with all the fog. It was a nice break though, because it was just a short round-trip mile out-and-back up to the summit, so when we dropped our packs, it felt like we were nimble little forest critters or some shit like that. We then rampaged up a fairly steep segment of the trail up to the South Twin summit. Luckily, it was above the fog-line, so the view was pretty amazing. We just saw a ring of summits, with clouds creeping over the lower parts and filling the Owl's Head valley. So cool to see.
![]() |
Sarah loooooooves those super steep hills
|
Similar to Galehead, we dropped our packs and made the longer out-and-back to North Twin with just a little bit of water. Views weren't as good as from the South Twin summit, but by the time we got back to South Twin, the fog had all cleared up and it was sunny skies and awesome views for miles.
|
|
| There is a very good reason for why I am doing this. |
We then did some more trekking to Guyot Mountain for another out-and-back with no packs to Zealand. The hike AND summit of Zealand were annoying, painful, and disappointing. Which leads me to think that after hiking 41 of the 48 4000 footers, Zealand might be my least favorite. SO GLAD it was just a short out-and-back, part of an already awesome loop. Because if that was actually our destination for a day hike, that would be so shitty that there aren't any words in existence to describe exactly how bad that would be, so I'm forced to make one up: tunfortunate. It's like a ton of unfor- you know what? Don't worry about it. It's a word now and it describes a hike to Zealand.
 |
| This is the best that Zealand has to offer |
It was a pretty short hike to Guyot campsite, where we would make our homes for the evening. We arrived fairly early. I suppose you could continue on to all the Bonds and finish later in the evening, but... no, you wouldn't enjoy the Bonds as much and your knees might actually explode rather than the type of exploding that I use in my hyperbole. Plus, after hiking all that in one day, you'd probably finish at about... oh just kill yourself because it's going to be damn late. Luckily, taking the 3-day-backpacking option, we had some time to relax a bit at the shelter we decided to occupy (rather than set up a tent again). NAPPYTIMES ENSUED. And then food. We then decided to try to see sunset from West Bond. Unfortunately, there were some seriously low-hanging clouds that blocked most of the view, but what we were able to see what pretty amazing. Awesome views around the valley with parts lit up as some of the Sun's rays got through the bottom of the clouds. Not the best sunset in the world, but it was all Jurassic Parky and cool looking.
We woke up Monday morning at fuck o'clock, still dark out, so we could hike up to Mt. Bond to catch sunrise. And holy crap, that shit ruled
so hard. It comes over Mt. Washington. I don't think I can describe the sea of clouds and the mountain tops appropriately, so here are some pictures.
 |
| wat |
![]() |
| What. |
Yeah, what the fuck. Also, I ate like a
whole bag of honey-nut cheerios waiting for the Sun to come up. It was a pretty cool hike along an exposed ridge to Bondcliff, but unfortunate that fog started rolling in as we got there. Still an awesome summit, so I'll probably have to go back.
![]() |
| It was definitely a fun place to romp around |
 |
| The fog started getting SERIOUS |
After that, it was just... 9ish miles on a relatively flat, long hike back to the trailhead. Ok, the first mile was steep, and then the rest was COMPLETELY flat. And by the end of it, I had about a million bug bites and my feet were killing me.
Overall: great hiking, finally got to backpack, and the views were phenomenal. And a shitload of frogs and toads EVERYWHERE. We did not taste them however. But we
did opt for a huge BBQ meal after the hike. Best decision ever.
