Elevation: 5,089 (New Hampshire's 7th Tallest, New England's 8th Tallest)
Route: Franconia Ridge Trail
Mileage: 1.0 from Mount Layfaette summit to Mount Lincoln summit
Arya's Take: It looks fun over there but Dad won't let me sniff over by the ledge. At least there are other dogs.
It's only one mile from the summit of Lafayette to that of Lincoln, and after some long consideration through the day, I decided that it might possibly be the best mile in the entirety of the White Mountains.
Especially on a bright warm sunny day like the one we had, since it's a nice gradual descent from Lafayette and a nice gradual ascent to Lincoln (with one or two scrambling exceptions), with amazing views in 360 degrees. I mean, if you really think about it, maybe it's the best mile in the Whites *only* on days like we had, since if you're in the fog you wouldn't be able to see anything, and the White Mountain Guide explicitly warns you NOT to hike that mile if the weather is poor, with either the prospect of being blown off the ridge in high winds, or struck by lightning in a storm, since there is no cover whatever to speak of. But at any rate, we'd timed it right.
I will say that I had a lingering apprehensive on our hike up and down
Lincoln, since the Guide used the words "knife edge" to describe sections
of the trail, especially the parts from Lincoln to a rounder non-counting peak
called Little Haystack. As mentioned previously I'm not super great with
heights to start with (damn you, Mad River Glen!), and with Arya on a tight
leash, I didn't want anything to happen. And there were a few moments
when my knees went weak, or there were ledges where I didn't want her heading
towards, so my apprehension was more warranted than it was when we were on the
shoulder of Washington looking into the Great Gulf.But on the whole, it was fine. It actually probably helped that we had to take frequent breaks to let other ascending hikers by, and so while it was a bit of a plod to Lincoln, we still got there right around 12:00, with enough time on our schedule to take more than an hour for lunch.
We had a bit of trouble finding the USGS cap, and Arya was much more
comfortable once I took her pack off for the duration of lunch, but on the
whole it was a grand old time. People came and went as we ate, and we
watched the clouds move silently over the Pemigewasett Wilderness. It was
honestly tempting to spend more time up there, as there were some trails that
would have gotten us back down to the Notch, but because we had our trailing
car at a specific parking lot, we really had not choice but to keep going.Honestly, it was a bit hard to plan this part, since most of the loops that the Guide or websites recommend for the Franks are either just for Lafayette and Lincoln, or just Liberty and Flume. They sort of offhandedly mention that ambitious hikers could do Lafayette, Lincoln, and Liberty in one swoop, but they don't really give you pointers on how to do it. I mean, the maps are sort of straightforward (but not always, we'll get to that later), but if Scott and I hadn't done this exact day's hike in our youth, I wouldn't have known where to start. Also pressing on my mind was my rather complete lack of memory of the specifics of the trail he had ahead, apart from the fact that we'd had amazing views. Today didn't quite live up to that memory, as if I recall correctly we'd had no clouds in the sky at all in 1996, and they were slowly creeping in for an afternoon thunderstorm in 2015. Also, I'd heard from another hiker that the haze was amplified by the fact that Alaska, Washington, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan are all presently on fire, so there's that.
So I was still nervous about the knife edge. There was one bald knob that gave me pause especially, since we scrambled up and up amongst some scrub, only to find that there really wasn't anything except cliff on either side. I reeled Arya in and locked the extendo-leash on its closest setting just to be safe, and off we went. It really wasn't super bad, though, since we then descended back into some rock and bushes that shielded us from the drop on our right. The drop wasn't life-threatening, either, though it would've kind of sucked to fall (with Arya) the 30 or 40 feet down to the next ledge.
We also only had to really deal with it down to the summit of Little Haystack anyway, and there were only maybe 3 or 4 places that I was nervous at all, and none that really got my heart in my throat. Arya was fine, of course, as I knew she would be, but I can't really help getting nervous in circumstances like that. Little Haystack was a nice place for us to take a bit of break and rest up, since we'd gotten spread out a bit from others in the group, and the summit of Haystack had a ton of different trails that would, potentially, lead to us getting split up. There were approximately 80,000 people on the top of it, though (which is one of the reasons we got spread out in the first place), and it was good to make sure that everyone knew where we were going. We still had Liberty to go, and unfortunately our nice afternoon of ridgewalking was about to end. Well, I mean, we were still going to be taking Franconia Ridge, but from Lincoln we were going to lose a lot of our elevation, and be walking mainly in the trees before we got to the summit of Liberty, and we wouldn't really be able to enjoy the views anymore. Though, i was getting a bit sunburned so I suppose that wasn't the end of the world. After some gradual descent we eventually were met with some rather steep sections, and had to pause a bit to either plan our attack (Arya was not a fan), or let people by, since they were ascending and could use the right of way. At any rate, on to Liberty!
-M
