| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2006-08-06 21:19:37 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Franconia Ridge++: 8.5.06
Mike Kokko Looking for a way to spice-up the standard Franconia Ridge loop? Heres a suggestion: throw Owls Head into the mix. Although not a Pemi Loop in the traditional sense, this 30-mile, 14-hour trek was a terrific way to spend one of the summers finest Saturdays. Some patchy clouds and a light wind held-off the usual August heat leaving the weather nearly perfect for hiking. Owls Head was the only target for the day, but after summiting at 10am I realized that it would be a shame not to enjoy the beautiful conditions. As Stephen Kellogg says, When the good day comes, youve got to do as the good day demands. In this case the good day demanded a Franconia Ridge traverse, so I complied. Plunging farther into the Pemi Wilderness, I was pleasantly surprised to run into a friend from high school nearly 14 miles from the car. What are the odds?! Although I do appreciate the solitude of the wilderness trails, it was nice to get up onto the ridge where there were some other people around. After Lafayette, however, it occurred to me that I needed to do less talking and more hiking if I was going to have a shot at getting out before sunset. I kicked it into gear over the pointy peaks and flew down the Osseo trail. Back at Lincoln Woods I met two guys who had just done a counter-clockwise Pemi loop and we all agreed that descending Osseo is much preferred to slogging out the railroad bed. From there I grabbed some ice cream in Lincoln and headed back to Camelot to recover for Sunday's jaunt up Moosilauke. The Rundown (according to my camera): 06:44 00.0mi: Pushed out of Lincoln Woods 09:24 08.0mi: Started up Owls Head Slide 10:05 09.1mi: Owls Head 10:44 10.2mi: Back at Lincoln Brook 12:18 13.4mi: 13 Falls 13:53 15.9mi: Lunch on Garfield Ridge 14:07 16.3mi: Garfield 15:51 19.8mi: Lafayette 17:20 - 23.6mi: Liberty 17:53 - 24.8mi: Flume 19:18 - 30.3mi: Lincoln Woods |