Hanover is home to Dartmouth College and thus, it is flush with bars, so it can be quite a tough vortex to escape from. After staying at a trail angel's house I hung out in town for the morning before resupplying my food bag and hitting the trail. Fun fact: The Dartmouth Outdoor Club maintains the trail from the Vermont border to the start of the White Mountains. In the afternoon I caught some photos of a Blue Heron and then camped on top of Moose Mountain, although there were no moose. What a misleading name. The next day I climbed up a fire tower and was completely surprised that when I lifted the hatch I was surprised to find an old friend, Trail Mix, just chilling up top. I happened to be recording my climb so it became a hilarious video of our reactions to having run into each other after about 1000 miles. We camped at Brackett Brook and then had a short hike the following morning to reach Carl, The Omelette Guy. He set up a campsite right at the official start of the White Mountains and hangs out all day cooking omelettes for passing hikers...as many eggs and as many toppings as you want. The record was a 27-egg omelette!!
Blue Heron in the marshlands.
The terrain keeps getting more and more rugged, I enjoy that.
This cracked me up!
Omelette Guy smokes a cigar while he cooks and if you don't like it then you can get out!
I had a seven-egg omelette with all the fixuns which gave me plenty of energy to crush some miles and hike up to the summit of Mount Moosilauke in time for the sunset. I set a time lapse and was so amazed with the 360 views that I wanted to camp nearby and view the sunrise as well. The only issue was it was extremely windy, above treeline, and would be dropping into the 30s that night. I mostly took cover behind a big rock that sheilded the wind and decided to hike North on the trail and camp at the first two trees I could find. I had a miserably cold night and around 3am I gave up on my sunrise plan and began hiking down. I got to Beaver Brook Shelter as the sun was rising and I ate breakfast before hanging my hammock and taking a four-hour nap. I still wasn't feeling that great as I started hiking down the ridiculously steep stretch that paralleled Beaver Brook which contained about a mile of continuous water falls.
Almost to the peak of Mount Moosilauke.
The descent of Mount Moosilauke was crazy, steep, and had tons of waterfalls.
The following is an eight minute video showing a lot of actual hiking I did in the Whites. I am trying something new since I am now editing videos and updating the blog on a real computer at home VS on my phone at a hostel with bad wifi. So it is a bit longer than my usual clips but I hope you enjoy it.
I hiked on to the base of Mount Kinsman where I camped by a brook and woke up to rain so I didn't get any photos. There were a ton of slippery rock scrambles on the way and the views were completely whited out. On the descent on the other side you hit the first of the White Mountain "huts" that have heat, indoor plumbing, and a crew that packs in food to cook for the guests... but at over $100 a night most thru-hikers skip them or do a work for stay and sleep on the dining room floor. This hut, Lonesome Lake also had a dock, an amazing view of Franconia Ridge (not today) and I met a local who offered another thru-hiker and I a ride to town but we soon found out he was parked down at another trail head. I continued down the mountain, took the one mile side trail to the Flume Visitor Center and we found it was nearly impossible to get a hitch. The center is off a small road next to a highway so all the tourists are hopping on the highway while none of the locals need to go there. We begrudgingly called a shuttle, paid for a ride to town, and stayed at the Notch Hostel. Some friends were also there and we decided to take the best Zero-Day ever which included a delicious lunch, cliff diving, and mini golfing!
Franconia Ridge was absolutely beautiful and extremely windy which inspired some pilots to take to the skies in gliders and ride the wind currents all around the mountains. I found a cool rock column that I decided to climb but to get the angle I wanted I first had to shimmy out on a ledge to set my camera up for a time lapse. A crowd formed to watch me scramble out and I was glad to get an awesome photo because on the climb down I cracked my phone screen. My phone issues continue! Without a working phone I was glad to find the Notch Hostel crew by Garfield Pond where we had an awesome campfire and chilled for a couple hours. The White's are so steep and rugged that your are completely beat after 8-10 miles.
The start of Franconia Ridge.
Enjoying the view, from atop a sketchy rock pillar I just climbed. See the ascent at the 5:20 mark in the White Mountain video above.