If you’re visiting the Mt Washington area in the White Mountains and looking for easier hikes or you’re recovering from climbing Washington on the previous day, here are four easy hikes that are near to the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center and feature great …
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Hiking Mt Washington Gear List
Mt Washington is a serious mountain with unpredictable weather despite that fact that there’s a weather forecasting station on top. You can set out to hike it on a day which is supposed to be clear and sunny, but experience unexpected fog, …
Read More »Hiking to the Province Pond Lean-to
Province Pond is an easy hike, close to North Conway, NH and Evans Notch on the east side of the White Mountains. It’s a good family hike for young children and an easy stroll with very little elevation gain, along and easy …
Read More »Bread and Butter Hike to Mt Madison
There’s a phrase used by White Mountain hikers, “a Presi Day”, to describe the clear sunny days that are ideal for hiking a Presidential Traverse or climbing one of the Northern Presidential Peaks: Mounts Madison, Adams, or Jefferson. It’s hard to describe the …
Read More »Great Hikes: Albany Mountain Trail
Albany Mountain? “Where the hell is that? What’s wrong with hiking in the White Mountains?” asked my friends. “Albany Mountain is in the White Mountains,” I replied. “The White Mountain National Forest include areas in New Hampshire and Maine.” In fact, some …
Read More »Hiking the Speckled Mountain and Haystack Notch Loop
This hike started out as a one night backpacking trip climbing up Speckled Mountain and into the heart of the eastern White Mountains in Maine, down the Red Rock Trail, and looping back through Miles Notch and Haystack Notch, a distance of over …
Read More »Climbing Mt Meader and the Brickett Falls Trail
Dave said, “Mt Meader Trail is the most boring trail in Evans Notch”, but when I asked him for specifics he couldn’t remember hiking it. He was wrong. In addition to magnificent Brickett Falls, there is a great swimming hole near the …
Read More »Backpacking to Unknown Pond
The town of Berlin, pronounced “BURR-ln”, with the accent on the first syllable, has the feeling of a modern frontier town, where logging trucks, 4×4 pickups, and ATVs outnumber passenger cars. Located in the northernmost section of the White Mountains and New …
Read More »Camping Fears: Eastern Black Bears and Safety
Had a reader contact me recently asking me how I managed to get any sleep when backpacking solo. He’d gone on their first overnight trip in Dolly Sods (WV) and been freaked out worrying about eastern bears at night and being attacked …
Read More »Great Hikes: Speckled Mountain via the Cold Brook Trail Ledges
Speckled Mountain is a treeless summit in the Caribou-Speckled Wilderness, the newest and easternmost Wilderness Area in the White Mountain National Forest. The site of an old fire tower (the foundations are all that remain), it has wonderful views of the peaks …
Read More »Backpacking to Flat Mountain Pond
“I can’t imagine any fisherman hiking five miles to fish here,” said the fisherman I met at Flat Mountain Pond in the Sandwich Wilderness. Ironically, he and his buddies were the only people I encountered on a backpacking, packrafting, and fishing trip I …
Read More »Backpacking the Upper and Lower Greeley Ponds
Upper and Lower Greeley Pond are two backcountry ponds in Mad River Notch, a mountain pass that links the Sandwich Range to the Pemigewasset Wilderness. Bounded on one side by Mount Kancamagus and the other by East Osceola, the two ponds are …
Read More »Hike to Mt Ingalls and Ray’s Pond
Mt Ingalls (2242′) is a gem of a peak in the southern Mahoosuc Range (in New Hampshire’s White Mountains) with extraordinary views of the Northern Presidentials. I climbed it in late May while exploring the trail system near Shelburne, NH and Philbrook …
Read More »Bushwhacking North and South Huntington
Mount Huntington (North) and its three subpeaks, South, West, and East have a notorious reputation in New Hampshire’s off-trail hiking community (North and South are on the NH100 highest list) Dense spruce, blowdowns galore, steep climbs, and sheer cliffs keep most hikers away, since there …
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