Mount Garfield

Date: September 20, 2009
Crude map of route

Another perfect weather day. If I remember correctly, we were planning to do some part of the Presidential Range, but bailed because we ended up sleeping in until 8 o'clock or something. We almost bailed on hiking altogether, but the weather looked too good, so we picked something slightly closer to home: Mount Garfield.

For some reason I had a hard time understanding the notes in the White Mountain Guide regarding where the trailhead actually was, and where to park. Gale River Road makes a loop, with the trailhead closer to the western end. When we turned off US 3 to follow the road to the trailhead, the gate was closed with a sign saying ROAD CLOSED. There was only one other car in the parking lot, which was also surprising. Something was obviously up. It was after noon at this point, so we decided to just park there and hike the 3/4 mile up the road on foot, rather than try to drive down to the other end of the loop and go in that way, not knowing what the condition of the road was like. We were in a Corolla, after all.

Well, it turns out that the reason the road is closed is due to a number of bridge washouts that occurred in summer 2008. The washouts are pretty severe, and are obviously taking a while to rebuild. There were three washouts, one of which is shown here. It looked like one of the washouts actually occurred at the location of a previous washout -- there was fresh riprap and grass on one approach to the bridge, but of course, it was the other side that washed out.

Since it hadn't rained in a while, it wasn't too difficult to cross the river on foot using rocks. After that, we eventually reached the real trailhead, with a dozens of cars parked there. I guess access from the other end was OK after all. Anyways, the Garfield Trail is a pretty easy ascent to the summit, thanks to half a dozen switchbacks in the last couple miles. The grade is never more than moderate, until the last 1/4 mile up to the summit on the Garfield Ridge Trail. Once you reach the summit, you're treated to excellent views of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. I'll treat you to a picture of me this time.

Total distance was about 11 miles round trip (including the 1.5 miles on Gale River Road), which we completed in about 5 1/2 hours. Like Mount Osceola, this is another trip that is doable by people of almost any ability, although Garfield is a little bit longer (even when departing from the actual trailhead).

Hiking briefs

As in, trip reports. Although, I do have some hiking underwear too. For some reason, I feel I have to bang these out before posting any newer pictures from our more recent trips (like Hawaii), so here we go. (Also, I have to sort through the 600+ pictures I took.)

Mt. Pierce and Mt. Eisenhower: August 16, 2009 Crude map of route This was about 9 miles, via Crawford Path with side trip to Mizpah Springs Hut on the way home. I think it took us about 6 hours. Most of Crawford Path is a steady, moderate climb. You can skip the hut unless you need water, saving probably a half mile, and the side loop to the hut has one steep section. This was our first anniversary! The first image (one of many where Edith is looking impatient) is the view of the ridge from Mt. Pierce to Mt. Eisenhower and on to Mt. Washington. The other photo was taken for us by another hiker on the Eisenhower summit. You can see, it was hot and hazy that day. We almost did a lamer hike that day because it was so hot, but this turned out to be a good choice. The sun was beating down hard, but it was in the 70s on the summits.

Mt. Osceola and East Osceola: August 30, 2009 Crude map of route This is relatively easy for anyone, even with limited hiking skills. It's about 6.5 miles round trip, via Osceola Trail from Tripoli Rd. The parking area is at Thornton Gap. It's paved from Waterville Valley side, and the pavement ends at the parking area, so go in from the east. First half mile of the trail is a little rough (rocky) but the rest of the climb is pretty easy, wide and sandy gravel for a lot of the way. At the top there are no 360-degree views but there are several viewpoints. The best is an open rock ledge looking north to southeast. As you can see, we had a mix of clouds and sun that day. If you are not interested in peakbagging, you can turn around here, but if you are trying to complete the NH 48 4000 footers, you have to go over to East Peak (second photo). There are a couple of very steep parts on the ridge, but it took us less than an hour between them. The east peak is wooded and has no views, much to E's disappointment, so it's useful only for checking the box on your list. That's me sitting on the cairn marking the summit. The round trip was about 5 hours and we took a long lunch break and several other breaks.

Cannon Mountain and Kinsman Ridge: September 6, 2009 Crude map of route This long loop trip took us 9 hours and we were trying not to waste too much time. The weather was perfect, as you can see. We saw at least to Jay Peak about 70 miles away. I thought maybe Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks was out west, but I guess it was more likely to be Mansfield. Didn't try to take many good pictures from Cannon, since the summit is overrun with people who took the tram and it makes you want to just get off. :) The picture of Franconia Ridge is the view from North Kinsman, where there is an open ledge looking east (South Kinsman has a more 360-degree view). Cannon is on the left (with the tower on top) and the trail we took follows the ridge coming towards us there. Mt. Lafayette and the Franconia Ridge should be obvious in the right half of the photo. Mt. Washington (I think... maybe it's Mt. Adams) is just peeking over the left shoulder of Lafayette. The lake in the middle of the photo is Lonesome Lake, and there is an AMC hut there that is open year-round (self-service in winter). The photo from the lakeshore shows the view from near the hut, looking up towards Cannon. There is also a great view of Lafayette from there. We were originally going to depart from the Lafayette Campsite and make a loop up Cannon, across the ridge, and back down by the hut. However, the campsite parking areas were totally overflowing with cars (onto the highway) so we went further up to the Cannon Mountain Tramway exit, and took the Kinsman Ridge trail up the NE face of Cannon instead. This was a pretty good plan, but after traversing the ridge (and the 5 or 6 different humps along the way), I didn't want to go backover all those humps again. We went down to the hut and out to the highway, and followed the Pemi Trail back along the highway (yuck) to the tramway.

That covers 3 out of 4. Just a couple other items coming soon, then we can get down to Hawaii business.

Hey, over here!

There's something (ha ha) funny about this photo. Usually Edith is trying to get out of my photos, much to my chagrin, but not here. (This is from the summit of Mt. Osceola in NH.)

She has decided that she likes peakbagging, so we have hiked 7 of the 48 New Hampshire 4000+ foot peaks in the last 4 weeks. She has a ways to go on her list, but now I'm down to 18 left, after (at least) a two year layoff. I have a bazillion photos to process, and there will be trip reports eventually, but it's taking me forever to go through them all. Sorry.

Our new camera is pretty nifty. It's very portable and takes pretty good pictures, but it turns out to be easier to take pictures than it is to manage them. Actually, even the management isn't that hard, it's the selection, editing, color correcting, and so on. Having switched to Ubuntu Linux on all of my computers (and I don't miss Windows XP AT ALL), I'm currently using F-Spot for management. It's not bad, if not very sophisticated. You can see everything in your archives in a time-sorted preview, zoom in and out easily, do some rudimentary editing, tag photos with keywords, and do most of the other basic things you'd expect a photo manager to do. I'm not really a power user, but it's good enough for now. And it's free.

I'm editing with the GIMP, which is a free, open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It's very powerful and very competitive with Photoshop, and certainly more than enough for what I need, which is mostly cropping and fine-tuned color correction. The user interface surely confounds hardcore Photoshop users, but since I've forgotten almost everything about PS since I last used it 10 years ago, the GIMP is easy enough to re-learn. Still, the learning curve a little steep, and that's one reason why there is such a backup on the blog. Also, I'm lazy.

Spawn's encore ultrasound performance is next Monday. Stay tuned.