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Hiking the Bonds in April and Gridding Out the Month

The Bonds

April is the most difficult month to hike the White Mountain 4000 footers and hiking out to The Bonds is one of the most difficult hikes to complete due to the distance and early spring snow conditions. This April has been particularly difficult since it snowed an additional five feet earlier in the month adding to the snowpack and prolonging winter conditions.

The Bonds are a cluster of three adjacent 4000-footers including Bondcliff, Mt Bond, and West Bond Mountain. They’re located deep in the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area and extremely remote requiring either a 22-mile out and back or a 26-mile traverse depending on the route (in winter conditions). Most people do the route in one very long day. While you can backpack it, the added winter gear weight would make it even more challenging. That said, it’s a delightful backpacking trip in warmer weather and I’ve done it many times.

With a hard frost forecast overnight, my friend Karen and I decided to head out to the Bonds early in the morning to try and summit the peaks before the snow warmed and turned to slush. The wind forecast was moderate, which is good because these peaks all have considerable wind exposure. Karen and I have been hiking The Grid together for several years and she’s a solid companion. The Grid involves hiking all 48 of the 4000 footers in each calendar month of the year for a total of 576 summits. This was to be my 12th and last hike to the Bonds for The Grid, while Karen still has a few more months to complete.

We met at the Lincoln Woods trailhead and started at 7:18 am. The first 4.7 miles are along the Lincoln Woods Trail and Bondcliff Trail, which are the gateway to the Pemigewasset Wilderness. The trail, which used to support a logging railroad, still has embedded railroad ties on the surface. But it’s a fast and flat stretch of trail and we chewed up the distance in 2 hours.

The Bondcliff Trail enters the Pemigewasset Wilderness
The Bondcliff Trail enters the Pemigewasset Wilderness

For this hike, we’d each packed winter hiking gear with extra gloves, layers, and lots and lots of food. We also brought Hillsound Trail Crampons and snowshoes, which together add about 6 lbs to a backpack load. We both carried about 2L of water but planned to resupply during the day at the stream crossings below the peaks. I haven’t drunk enough water on my last several Grid hikes and I was determined to consume enough on this one. I ended up drinking 4L and was still thirsty at the end.

We started climbing the Bondcliff Trail which was dry and snow-free, switching to Hillsound Trail crampons at 2400′ for more traction on the snow. The trail is well-shaded by trees down low and the snow was firm enough to support us without snowshoes. After several stream crossings and more climbing, we arrived at a rocky outcrop, known as the Hillary Step, at the south end of the Bondcliff Mtn summit. It’s usually a challenging scramble to ascend, but the snow at its foot was piled deep making it much easier to climb up.

The streams were running low and were easy to cross.
The streams were running low and were easy to cross.

The summit of Bondcliff was entirely snow-free, so we ducked out behind a boulder out of the wind and had lunch. Two women approached us from the north as we rested and came over to say hello. Both Karen and I knew Donna and her companion, who was the mother of another of my friends! If you hike in the White Mountains regularly, especially on the 4000-footers, you constantly run into people who do the same thing. That camaraderie is one of the charming things about hiking the big lists in the Whites. They’d spent the night at Zealand Hut and were hiking the Bonds from the northerly direction, the full 26-mile winter route.

The summit of Bondcliff was snow free
The summit of Bondcliff was snow free

We split up and continued with our hikes, Karen and I heading to Mt Bond next, which is the tallest of the Bonds. The trail to the summit climbs up the west face of the mountain and can get quite nasty if the wind is blowing because it’s completely exposed to the weather. We’d lucked out and experienced glorious weather sunny all day, with low wind.

The trail snakes up the west face of Mt Bond.
The trail snakes up the west face of Mt Bond.

Still, the climb to the Bond summit was a grind over a rocky trail and then back into our Hillsounds when we encountered snow higher up. As we headed toward the West Bond Spur, the trail to our to our final peak, we encountered a heavily post-holed trail. But the snow was still cold enough that it held our boots, so we didn’t add to the mayhem that post-holing can cause.

Bondcliff from the West Bond summit
Bondcliff from the West Bond summit

Once at the trail junction, we met another hiker, named Alan. I’d never met him before but we have a lot of mutual friends and we quickly put 2 & 2 together. We hiked out with him to West Bond and savored the views. It was 2:30pm and we’d been hiking for 11 miles in 7 hours, almost continuously, except for our short lunch break on Bondcliff. Now it was time to hike back the way we’d come.

The avalanche slides on West Bond
The avalanche slides on West Bond

This involved summitting Mt Bond and Bondcliff again, before making our way back to the Lincoln Woods trailhead. That took another 6:30 hours and we were wearing headlamps at the end.

Bondcliff from the summit of Mt Bond
Bondcliff from the summit of Mt Bond

But we’d had a great hike and I’d gridded out the Bonds. Not only that, I’d finished hiking all 48 of the 4000 footers in April, leaving only 5 more summits to climb in May to finish the Grid (571/576). It’s hard to believe that that multi-year effort is about to come to an end, and while I’ve loved it and the camaraderie of the hills, I’m looking forward to hiking new territory.

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7 comments

  1. It’s amazing just how deep the snow continues to be up there. I have a traverse planned in 3 weeks – I have no doubt I’ll be running into monorail still.

    Congrats on being SO CLOSE to finishing the Grid!!

  2. Hi Philip,

    I’m curious as to the reason or situation that caused you not to drink enough. I’m asking because I run into this myself. I have plenty of water, a filter to get more etc. but more often than not I find that I’m not drinking enough. It’s fresh in my mind because I was guilty of it last week on a Fliberty.

    thanks!

  3. Combination of factors, but mostly because it’s hard to get any water in winter because it’s frozen. I boil my water at home and try to balance how much I carry with what I need. For a 10 mile winter hike on broken trail and prehydrating, I can often just get away with carrying 1 liter. Generally, I try to limit myself to carrying 2, except when I’m in the northern presidential when I might carry 3 or 2.5L, mainly to cut down on water weight. In warmer weather, I have no issues staying hydrated because the water’s easily available.

    The reason I haven’t had enough water lately on grid hikes is that combination of much longer distances, less liquid water available, and group dynamics. I also hate bringing a filter when there is a danger of having it freeze and being destroyed. On this Bonds hike, the streams were running and I purified with Micropur tablets which still work when it’s cold. Karen was also interested in getting more water. That help?

  4. Yes, that helps, thank you. Your Northern presidential approach is the same as mine 2.5-3. I usually swap out that 3rd water bottle mid April for the filter. If I think that there’s a chance of it freezing It’ll go in an interior pocket close to my body

  5. It really is – early may isn’t going to be easy either! Still lots of snow. The monorail hasn’t even started to form yet.

  6. Can you explain what gridding out is?

    • Sure – it means that I’ve finished hiking all 48 x 4000 footers in April (across multiple years) (and in this case that I’ve gridded out the Bonds as well) hiking them in each month of the year.

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