After the fourth heat wave of the summer, it was a great relief when the weather broke, sending cool though still humid air over the White Mountains. It was finally a nice day for a hike!
For all the time I’ve spent in Franconia Notch, I hadn’t climbed Mt. Flume or Mt. Liberty until this weekend. My route was from point to point, leaving from Lincoln Woods and going up the Osseo trail to Mt. Flume, along the Franconia Ridge trail to Mt. Liberty and back down to road level via the Liberty Springs trail. Trailhead parking is fills up fast on weekends, so I opted to stage my car at the Liberty Springs trailhead late Friday night and get dropped off at Lincoln woods on Saturday morning.
There’s a surprising amount of water in the Pemi for late August
And surprisingly few hikers setting off along the Lincoln Woods railroad grade on the first cool Saturday morning in many weeks
It was a lovely day on the Osseo trail! Despite being part of the increasingly popular Pemi Loop, I met very few other people. I timed it so that the trail runners attempting the loop in a single day had passed through hours ago, and for most of its length I had the trail to myself.
As the trail topped the ridge, I was amused to come to a scenic viewpoint with a very clear and accurate label
And also a lovely view into the Pemigewasset Wilderness.
Osseo is a really nice trail— well maintained with sections of stone steps (which you can see in the downlook photo) and wooden ladders (which I appreciated but didn’t bother to photograph).
At the top of the ridge, Osseo intersects with the Flume Slide trail and I began to meet more people, but still took a moment to enjoy the breeze and views on the ridge just below the summit.
I didn’t care to linger in the crowd at the summit, so I kept moving.
Liberty Springs trail is part of the Appalachian trail, and just now the northbound hikers who started their trek in Georgia in April and the southbound hikers who began in Maine in July are crossing in the White Mountains. Most of the through hikers I saw were northbound. This far north, they all looked strong and were moving confidently over tough terrain, and the variety of 5-month-old trail beards was quite spectacular!
Total distance for the day was 10.6 miles, and 3,800 feet elevation gained.