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Day hiking Mounts Lafayette & Lincoln |
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This day hike started at the parking lot for the Old Bridle Path and Falling Waters Trail off of Interstate 93 (Franconia Notch Parkway) in Lincoln, New Hampshire. From the parking lot we took the Old Bridle Path to the Greenleaf AMC hut. From the hut we took the Greenleaf Trail to the summit of Mount Lafayette and then the Franconia Ridge / Appalachian Trail to the summit of Mount Lincoln. From there we continued south to Little Haystack Mountain and then descending via the Falling Waters Trail back to the parking area.
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We started this hike at the parking area for the Old Bridge Path and Falling Waters Trail off of I-93, just across the road from the Lafayette Campground. Mounts Lafayette and Lincoln would be #42 and #43 for my New Hampshire 4000-footer winter list. This was one winter hike I had really been looking forward to for a long time. The views going up the Old Bridle Path and along Franconia Ridge were fabulous and I was saving this one for a nice winter's day so I could have those views. We lucked out and had a beautiful day for it. My hiking companion for this trip was Alysia who I had last hiked with back in the prior November doing a pre-winter hike to North and South Kinsman with her and her friend Chris.
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We met at the trailhead and started hiking at 8:00. It was very cold at the trailhead with a temperature of only 7F but there was no wind so it really didn't feel so bad. I was very worried during the drive up as the temperature had plumeted to only 1F at one point and I actually called Alysia to see if she still wanted to go. She said the temperature was supposed to get up into the mid 20s during the day and she did still want to go. The sky was a little overast at the start but it didn't take long for the sun to burn through the thin clouds. We were in mostly bright sunshine by the time we finished the forest portion and broke out on top of the ridge that leads to the Greenleaf AMC Hut. The trail was in good condition and we wore our snowshoes on the way up tp the hut but we probably didn't need them since the trail was pretty well packed.
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The sky continued to clear throughout the morning and we had some awesome views of Franconia Ridge on the way up. We also had some very nice views of some of the mountains on the other side of the notch: Mount Moosilauke and the Kinsmans.
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We took a short break at the Greenleaf Hut to eat some food and switch from snowshoes to microspikes. We really didn't need the snowshoes on the lower portion of the trail and there was likely to be a lot less snow and more rock on the final ascent to Mount Lafayette.
The views from the hut were amazing. I had hoped for a day just like this to do this hike and I was relishing in the experience. And I could not have asked for a better hiking buddy to be doing it with.
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We left the Greenleaf Hut around 11:15 and it took just a little more than an hour to do the final climb to the Mount Lafayette summit. We probably could have done this a lot faster if we were not stopping so much to enjoy the views but we took our time and enjoyed ourselves.
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The views from the top of the mountain were incredible but we noticed that there were a lot of clouds off to the south moving slowly in our direction. They were very thin clouds and not very thretening at all but still it looked like the bright sunny day might be coming to an end. There were only a few hours of daylight left at this point anyway so it really wasn't an issue. It was also very windy and felt a lot colded up on top and we knew it was going to be an interesting hike along the ridge to Mount Lincoln and Little Haystack. Still it was sunny and a very nice day.
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The hike along the ridge was very windy in places but it was only when we were very close to the west side. As soon as we got away from the edge the wind would die down considerably and it wasn't bad at all. The wind was blowing from the west hitting the ridge and then just being blown up over it. There was not a huge amount of snow up on the ridge as the wind up there tends to blow most of it off. The snow that was there was well packed and or frozen solid and there were also lots of bare rock areas. We were fine with microspikes but probably could have bare-booted it as well.
We had wonderful views all along the ridge and of the Pemigewasset Wilderness and Presidential Range to the east.
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It was very windy on top of Mount Lincoln and we didn't stay there long at all. We arrived there right around 2:00 and knew we only had a couple of hours of good daylight left at that point and we still had a few more miles to cover to get back to the parking lot.
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It was just after 2:30 by the time we got to Little Haystack Mountain and we adrly even stopped there. I just took some photos of the sign and then we started down the Falling Waters Trail.
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We managed to get some good butt sliding in on the way down. Alysia had brought little sleds with her but we were afraid to use those because you can really get up some speed with them and there were lots of twists and turns in the trail. It was easier and more controllable to just sit down and slide on our snow pants.
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Once we got to the lower portion of the Falling Waters Trail it was really not steep enough to do any butt sliding so we were back to walking. It started getting dark once the sun went behind the ridge on the other side of Franconia Notch and the trail seemed to go on forever. It was just 4:30 when we got to the parking area and it wasn't completely dark yet but we knew it would be soon.
After packing our gear into our cars we headed for a post hike dinner to celebrate. We ended up at the Common Man Restaurant in Ashland and we both had the exact same thing: some lobster and corn chowder followed by a crab cake sandwich with sweet potato fries. And a couple of beers. Yummy. It was a great hike with a great hiking companion and now I had winter peaks #42 and #43 under my belt and only 5 more to go.
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