12/13/14

Liberty 4,459 Ft, Flume 4,328 Ft 

Whitehouse Trail, Liberty Spring Trail, Franconia Ridge

10:30am – 5:00pm 

10 Miles

This cloudy day hike turns into a spectacular day of sights from one of the best ridges in the White Mountains. A popular trail to the franconia ridge offers an easy hike. Bare booted all the way the summit of Flume. Cold winds on Liberty make for frozen hands and cold beers. My Friend Jay joins me as we take out my recently adopted dog Lucy out on her first snow filled hike in the mountains. It was a great hike to get our weekend of hiking started.

I pulled into Whitehouse parking lot and parked the car. I was to meet Jay here to start the hike. I got my things together and prepared Lucy. Jay arrived shortly after. We started our hike with the clouds all above us. It was a warmer day and we were moving quickly to the Liberty Spring trail. It was uneventful as we followed Lucy. We got to the ridge and it seemed as though the clouds were parting around the summit. Our pace seemed to quicken. I would say the whole trip up took us about 2 hours. 

The Summit was very windy and cold. We had to layer up to avoid freezing up. Lucy seemed to handle it just fine. On the Summit we enjoyed a beer while taking some pictures. The clouds parted just for us as we looked around at some great sights. We then came off the summit making for flume on a trail that was still very easy to bare boot across.

We came across some great folks and had some mountain chat on the way to Flume. The summit was covered and there were no views but we each had one more beer. We enjoyed it while chatting with folks who had done with flume slide. They had microspikes and trekking poles. One of them had an mountaineering axe. We gathered our thing and made our way back over Liberty on the way out. When we got back to White House It was dark. Jay and I enjoyed one more beer. It is always great to get together with old friends over a great hike. We parted ways and Lucy and I made way for Lincoln to have some dinner. The plans were wide open but with our first hike we were both a bit tired. Tomorrow is another day.

Flume Ridge