With the last Friday of ‘Summer’, Clark and I headed back to the New Hampshire to finish off the Franconia Range 4,000 footers. Our plan was to go up Mount Flume (4327′) on Flume Slide trail, then cross over to Mount Liberty (4459′) and come down the Liberty Spring trail. There was some warnings about the Flume Slide trail being tricky and treacherous – not advisable to do when raining or if trail was still wet, and not advisable to descend via the trail. I wasn’t sure what we were in for and allowed myself to get a little bit nervous, but we managed the route without much trouble.
We had a couple of pre-hike things to navigate. My directions weren’t clear and instead of parking at the Flume visitor’s center I ended up at the Basin parking lot. I thought we would find the trails by the Basin, so we checked out that (small) natural wonder, but couldn’t find the trail. A little bit of googling and we headed back to the parking lot and walked about a mile down a paved bike trail (the Franconia Notch Bike Trail) where we found the Whitehouse Trail to start out actual ascent.
One nice thing about the loop is that there was very little traffic. It’s basically a one-way road for the first half, so other than one woman who passed us (and gave me the fun memory of the day when she asked if we were the crew from Plymouth State college – not sure who was more pleased, or offended, with that comment between me and Clark!) we pretty much didn’t have too many hikers to contend with – and another strong day of people wearing masks! On the way backdown we did see about a dozen people along the way who were probably staying the night on the mountain.
As the AllTrails reviews prepared us for, the Flume Slide trail is relatively easy for the first few miles, and then you hit the flume, or rock slide. Lots of crawling and using hands and feet to go up the rocks, which in the end seemed to be easier on my body than a couple of miles of steep climbing. A few spots were wet and definitely made it trickier, but there were always alternatives we could use to keep ascending. Abruptly the rocky part ends when the trail meets up with Osseo Trail/Franconia Ridge trail. There is some more climbing to be done but it was still surprising when we burst out of the short woods to find us on top of Flume. Very small peak, and very windy when we arrived. With a handful of people already taking a break and not much else to do, we didn’t hang around long and started the decline through the col and up Liberty which was about a mile away. Lots of nice views when you are out of the trees, but for most of this hike you’re below the treeline.
Liberty provided us a nice peak with views and a good spot for lunch. As seems to be typical, we finished our ascent at around 3 hours so had our PB&J sandwiches at 1:00. A little bit of shelter from the wind but it nice, and didn’t need to put on long sleeves. It was nice to see Lincoln and Lafayette right next door (some people bring in Liberty when they do Lincoln), and recognizing them from our last hike a few weeks ago. I think we’ll keep doing peaks by range for the familiarity you get over a couple of hikes. After a slightly longer than normal rest we headed down Liberty. I was trying to be aware that we both have a tendency to rush on the way down, so we took a couple of stops along the way, but it still seemed longer than expected (at least to Clark’s standards). We got a little lost on the way down but ended up on the right path, and got back to the car with 9.8 miles on the Strava. I walked around the lot a few times to get to an even 10 miles and call it a day. Made it home for dinner!
That will probably be it for hiking this year, but we had a good run once we got started. Moosilauke, Lafayette/Lincoln, and Flume/Liberty. Who knows what life will be like next year, but we’re looking to start with Mount Cannon and eventually do Washington at least. I think we decided Moosilauke was an enjoyable hike that most people could handle, Lafayette was the hardest/hurt the most, but had the best views, especially coming down, Flume/Liberty was a challenging hike with the scrambles but not too difficult, and the views weren’t quite as good as Lafayette. It is a specific mindset you need when doing two peaks though, the Up, Down, Up, Down can be a little discouraging at times!