This is an account of a trip Katy and I took the weekend of October 11-13 to the northern edge of The Pemigewasett Wilderness Area ("the Pemi") in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. As usual, clicking on a picture will get you a bigger version of the picture, suitable for printing.
This trip was Katy's first major outdoor adventure after her ACL replacement in August, and we weren't sure how well it would go. For this reason we decided to do a "hut-to-hut" trip, instead of a tenting trip; by staying at the Appalachian Mountain Club's Galehead and Zealand Falls huts, we could eliminate a tent, cookstove and fuel, cooking gear, sleeping bags and a lot of food from our loads. This still left us with a lot of clothing, safety gear and lunch food, but it was a lot easier on Katy's legs (and mine, too!).
Our route would take us up The Gale River Trail to the Garfield Ridge Trail to the Galehead hut for our first day; the second day would see us crossing South Twin Mountain, Mt. Guyot and Zealand Mountain via the Twinway and then down to the Zealand Falls hut; on our third and last day we would hike out to our car either via the Zealand Trail (if we were beat...) or the Lend-A-Hand and Hale Brook Trails over Mt. Hale (if we still had some steam). We wound up doing the latter, giving us a total elevation gain (and descent, of course...) of about 4500 feet over the three days - not especially ambitious under normal circumstances, but potentially a stretch given Katy's knee.
You can find a topo map of this area at the Microsoft Terraserver; this map can be panned and zoomed, but doesn't have our route marked. A static map can be found here with each day's route marked.
We left Cambridge early Friday morning and drove north on I-93 to Twin Mountain. Katy had arranged a shuttle van to pick us up at the parking area at the end of the Hale Brook Trail to take us to the Gale River trailhead. As usual, I felt myself relax as we reached the southern end of the White Mountains and motored into Franconia Notch.
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We rendezvoused successfully with the van and reached the
trailhead about 11. The AMC White Mountain Guide lists the trip
up to Galehead hut as 4.6 miles, 2200 feet elevation gain, and
about 3 and half hours of hiking, so we expected a fairly easy
first day.
We had a nice, fall day for hiking; it was cool, but the sun was out much of the time, and we were comfortable in shorts and gaiters over our polypro underwear. There was a large group of younger hikers ahead of us, and for the first part of the climb we played leapfrog with a multi-generational family group, eventually leaving them behind as the climb got steeper. Not far up the trail we crossed the Gale River at a substantial wooden bridge, where the next picture was taken by member of that family group. | 
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For most of its length, the Gale River Trail stays close to the banks of (you guessed it!) the Gale River, so our hiking was accompanied by the sound of running water. As the trail steepened, we also began to hear the "clickity-click" of Katy's hiking poles (a great help for tired knees!). We still had a lot of daylight left when we reached the Galehead hut, so after dropping out packs and selecting bunks we continued on up the Frost Trail (the spur that the Galehead hut is on) to the summit of Galehead Mountain, at 4024 feet. From here we had nice views to the southeast into the Pemi. We could also look back to the northeast, down on the hut, and over to South Twin Mountain, one of stops the next day on our way to Zealand Falls.
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We returned to the hut and got ourselves hot chocolate and tea; it was getting noticably cooler, and it was nice to be in the relative warmth of the hut. We were just sitting down to supper as the sun set behind Mt. Garfield off to the west; when I noticed the view out the window, I grabbed the camera and got this picture.
As is usual for hikers, we turned in pretty early to get a good night's sleep before our 7AM breakfast; we had a long stretch of trail ahead of us the next day.
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Saturday morning was cloudy,cold and threatening rain. We packed
up, left the hut and headed east on Twinway toward South Twin,
at 4902 feet the taller of the two Twin Mountain peaks. The
trail was considerably rougher than the terrain we hiked on
Friday and was damp, making the footing a bit tricky.
Before too long, we found ourselves appraoching tree line, as the trees switched over to nearly all spruce, and short spruce at that. We were also climbing above the cloud layer we'd been in at the hut; we could look west and north behind us and see a mixture of low clouds over the Pemi and sunlit valley to the north. When we emerged above treeline on South Twin we were greeted by cold wind, partly cloudy skies above, a cloud layer below, and generally spectacular, but constantly changing, views in all directions. |
| Looking southeast at Mt. Guyot |
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Looking east at the summit of South Twin; the Presidential Range is off in the distance |
| Katy, on the top of the world? |
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From the peak of South Twin we descended sharply, but briefly, back to below treeline, and then followed the ridge to a saddle just north of Mt. Guyot. We dropped out packs at the intersection with the Bondcliff Trail, intending to follow it a short distance to the green, open summit of Mt. Guyot. We hadn't gone very far, though, before it began to rain. We jogged back to our packs, quickly pulled on raingear and then proceeded east on Twinway toward Zealand.
The rest of the day I remember as essentially a long, increasingly uncomfortable slog through a cold drizzle. We made several fairly fruitless side trips. The first was to the north, on a short spur to the summit of Zealand Mountain. We discovered that the peak is in the middle of a ring of high trees, with no view whatsoever. The second was sharp descent to the south to Zealand Pond; by the time we got there, the fog prevented us from seeing more than 20 feet off the bank. By the time we got to the spur to the Zeacliff outlook we were too cold and tired to take it, and we knew that the clouds would steal the view anyway. A long, steep descent brought us to Zealand Falls and, finally, to the Zealand hut.
Inside we found a lot of equally soggy hikers, and wet clothes hanging everywhere. We added ours to the collection, changed into slightly drier clothes and started drinking hot liquids to warm up.
By supper time we began to collectively worry about a group of hikers who had been expected before dark. They straggled in very late that evening; they'd somehow gotten lost coming west from the Ethan Pond trail.
By morning the rain was gone. We left the bulk of our gear at the hut and retraced our steps back up to the Zeacliff outlook to take in the view we'd bypassed the day before.
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It was well worth it. There were still clouds around, but they
were mostly above us and the surrounding peaks, and we could see
deep into the Pemi and beyond. We stood around for a long time,
planning future trips into the Pemi, wondering what we were
seeing, but mostly just looking.
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The descent back to the hut seemed a lot easier this time than it had the day before; not having heavy packs and being mostly dry made all the difference. As we approached Zealand Falls, I noticed the birch trees I'd just blown past the day before in my desire to get to the hut. The Zealand hut is located just steps away from Zealand Falls, a nifty collection of interconnected pools and waterfalls. We wandered around over the rocks, basking in the sun and taking snapshots. |
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We now had to decide about a route for our last day of hiking: should we take the shortest path back to the car, or try to bag Mt. Hale, at 4054 feet just barely a 4000-footer?
Katy's knee seemed to be doing well, and we had lots of daylight left, so we repacked our gear and headed west on the Lend-A-Hand trail towards Mt. Hale.
If I had looked more carefully at the map I would have realized that we would be covering about 5 miles. The previous day's journey, which seemed endless, was a bit over 7 miles. While we had wonderful weather, this would again be one of those "are we there yet?" days where I was constantly thinking we were further along than we really were.
| We spent most of the day hiking in trees, with occasional views to the south and east. When we finally reached the summit of Mt. Hale we emerged from the woods into a large open ring with an enormous cairn at the center. Another couple of hikers had just arrived up the Hale Brook Trail, and they snapped our picture on the top of the cairn. |
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We admired the snow on Mt. Washington, munched on a bit of gorp and then began the final leg of the trip, the descent on the Hale Brook trail back to our car. This last bit of pounding finally got the attention of Katy's knee, and she was pretty happy when the trail leveled out a bit. We stopped for a rest before our last crossing of Hale Brook.
| The remainder of the trail was a nice, gentle downhill grade, enlivened by the colorful leaves and some dogs we passed going the opposite direction. As usual, it was nice to get back to the car, but it's sad to leave the mountains behind... |
Contact sheet with raw images. Caution! This is a LOT of images; be prepared for a long page load!
