Route: Franconia Ridge Trail/Liberty Spring Trail
Mileage: 4.8 in total from Little Haystack to the Car
Arya's Take: Daaaaad I'm hot and I can't move and I need you to take the pack off of me and....SUCKER!
And so we started the long slog across the rest of Franconia Ridge to nab Mount Liberty, the last of the three 4,000 footers on the docket for the day. The only firm memories I have of this part of the hike that I have from 1996 is that it lasted forever and I hated it, and I also had a necklace that I was wearing break and I lost it. It was carved from a Mercury Dime and I really liked and and thought it looked cool, and was really really mad for most of the rest of the summer. Other than that? Nothing.
So for most of the hike, things went exactly as I remembered. The hike itself wasn't too bad across to the Liberty Spring Trail, as we would be taking it to the summit and saying farewell to the Franconia Ridge Trail for the first time since 11:00. The scene was what you'd expect right below treeline; small and sparse coniferous trees and moss everywhere, and a stillness that belies the lack of leaves. It was a nice and pleasant slope, too, which allowed us to have a flowing conversation that eventually devolved in grilling a friend of mine as to how the hell he can afford to deck himself out in Arcteryx everything (he used to work at REI, and spent most of his paycheck back at the store). We also talked a lot about hiking in general, and what potential hikes we could all go on together in the fall.
This was a telling sign, since eventually when you're on the downswing of the day, you get sick of talking to each other and eventually trudge on in silence until the hike's over (we'll get there in a bit). At any rate, the pack thinned out a bit, and Arya actually started to slow down. For the first time since we started this whole endeavor, I started to get a little nervous about her. I mean, it WAS a hot summer day, and she IS a black dog, and she DID keep refusing to drink water out of her dog dish that I bought explicitly for this purpose. So I kept an eye on her.
The other thing worth remarking on as we closed in on the Liberty summit cone and started gaining our elevation were a couple of Appalachian Trail Thru-Hikers that we met. Now, we've met a couple in our travels before, and even a few earlier that day, but we were lucky enough to run into a guy who was hiking with his Doberman.
Now, you might know a thing or two about how things work on the AT. It's long, most sane people go south-to-north and start in Georgia around March, and Harper's Ferry, WV is the official halfway point. What you might not know is that things can get a bit weird when you're off and isolated from the world for 6 months. Often as people make their way along the trail, they acquire Trail Names, nicknames of a sort that they use to sign into registries as they go. Often certain people become renowned by their Trail Names, and their fame precedes them. For instance, I had a couple of friends from summer camp that became "Skywalker and the Dude", which now that I think about it sounds like a fantastic name for either a drive-time radio show or some kind of buddy-cop comedy. At any rate, the reason I mention this is, when we reached the junction of the Liberty Spring Trail, we met The Fuzzy Missile.
Arya loved the Fuzzy Missile. She wanted to play with him for the rest of her life, and while he did wag his little stump of a tail at her, he was a bit done after a while and they had many more miles to go before they could rest. I just couldn't get over the fact that a dog got a trail name, which I didn't know was a thing, to the point that I can't for the life of me remember the name of his owner. He had a nice pack, too, which was apparently a new buy in March, though it looked like it'd gotten quite a bit of use in the interim. I spent most of the rest of the day wonder what it'd be like to guide a dog this far, and what it would be like to head with a dog through the 100 Mile Wilderness in Maine, which is apparently the hardest single stretch of the AT.I learned later that Baxter State Park in Maine, where Katahdin is and thr AT ends, actually doesn't allow dogs, so the Fuzzy Missile will be unable to fully complete the trek. This has nothing to do really with anything on Mount Liberty. It's just horseshit, is all.
Mount Liberty actually kind of came out of nowhere, which was good because I was starting to get sick of hiking through the scrub and was beginning to teeter into "Why Are We Not Done" mode. The peak itself actually is quite lovely, though there is a MASSIVE cliff on one side that Arya really, really, really wanted to investigate. We broke out the turkey jerky and GORP again, and chilled for a nice little bit, apart from an interlude involving a gigantic wasp that decided to hang out with one of our friends. Arya did seem to slow down even more, though, and drank a ton of water in one go. She tried to get into some shade, and began to reallllllllly worry me. I actually dumped some water over her head, and talked with one of my friends who works well with dogs just to make sure there wasn't something that I was missing.
More to the point, as we started to descend, Arya hung back, not wanting to walk and generally slinking back to the end of the group. I mean, we were pushing 11 miles at that point, and this was by far the longest hike she'd ever been on, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do in the moment, save transferring gear from her pack into mine to help lighten the load.
Even that didn't really work, and as we started down the Liberty Spring Trail towards (SPOILER ALERT) Liberty Spring, she really started to freak me out. She was sitting, and then lying down, on the trail, and as the trail began a steady and seemingly unending descent, I panicked and just took her pack off of her completely. I have a giant carabiner on my pack and used it to attach hers to mine, and she was off like a shot.
(Fun fact! I just learned in confirming the spelling that the word carabiner comes from German, and is a shortened version of Karabinerhaken, meaning spring-loaded hook. It was designed for use by riflemen using Carbine Rifles to attach things to their belts. The more you know!)
Seriously, though, I'm half convinced that Arya was duping me the whole time she was a sad sack of potatoes, because as soon as I took her pack off, she went back to being her usual, insane, self. Right back to the front of the group with us! With my younger brother, I was able to discover that the Liberty Spring Trail basically just goes down at a 35-45 degree angle, straight, for 3 miles or so. It was murder on my feet and knees, and Arya would whine and whine whenever we took a break, which we started to do whenever we noticed that the rest of the group was no longer within earshot.
And it got really old. Not the waiting part, mind you, since as my usual position in a hiking group pre-dog was in the back, and nothing made me more cross than finally catching up to everybody and then having them go "Whelp, let's get a move on!" before I could take a drink. Of course, I experienced the flipside of that with it seeming like most of the late afternoon that day was spent with an impatient dog who wouldn't stop crying. So there are drawbacks to both.
Eventually we met up with a brook, and things started to flatten out a bit. Which is usually a good sign that your day is about to come to an end, and we did start to open up our strides and make some better time, but after 12 miles, even the flat stuff can be a bit of a challenge. Especially when we emerged at what used to be the Liberty Spring Trailhead, and where I remember our day ending back in 1996. At some undetermined point in the last 19 years, they decided the eliminate the parking lot there, which meant that we still had another 1.2 miles to go before we could go home.Not only that, but the trail that we needed to take was kind of horrendously marked. You might remember me lamenting the poor signage in Vermont as compared to New Hampshire, but this particular stretch of Franconia Notch had a slight problem: there were SO MANY trails in this small area that the maps we had couldn't give us a good read of where the intersections to individual trails were. They have juuuuust started putting the mileage in between sections of trail (so, between the trailhead and a junction it will say 2.4 in red. Super helpful), but they didn't have any in this part, and so we actually went about 0.3 miles in the wrong direction to start out. It didn't exactly ingratiate me to the other people who had slunk to the back, but still.
ALSO, this is why you bring the entire White Mountain Guide with you. Sure, it's bulky and takes up a surprising amount of space in your pack, but I'd been having a friendly argument with one of our party all day about this, as she had just written down the pertinent junctions and mileage to save space. I was able to whip out the guide, read the description of the trail we were *supposed* to be on, and we realized that we needed to head back. Also an example of why having the most up-to-date guide is a good idea, too.
At any rate, we did eventually make it to the cars, and after some juggling of them (as we'd left some back at the Cannon Tram parking lot to start the day) we were on our way back to the Farm, with a brief detour at Lincoln, to grab some ice cream. Trip treat is important, especially after hiking 13+ miles in mid-July. I had soft-serve vanilla sundae slathered in fudge and peanut butter sauce. I regret nothing.
Of course, our original plan was to head back to the Farm, have a nice dinner, and then hang out, have a few beers and play Cards Against Humanity or something, but we were all ready for bed about 40 minutes after dinner. Arya didn't even want to wake up for her morning walk the next day, and we ended up sleeping until 10:45. After that, she hobbled around the Farm and wasn't really her energetic self, so much so that I let her off her leash and she just slept in the shade all day. Even after we returned home to Vermont, it took her 3 days to power back up. Almost enough to make me nervous, but eventually she was fine.
I guess 13 miles is a lot even for a 2-year old dog.
-M
