NH Appalachian Trail: Mt. Moosilauke

Pretend there is a moose in this photo

All the stars aligned for our hike up Moosilauke. My daughter had wanted to join me for this hike after seeing some photos of the trail (she also wants to take up rock climbing), but her summer schedule left just one day available to do so: Monday, July 8. And what might the weather be that one day? Spectacular!! Unbelievable.

Rough steps drilled out of the rock

I hiked up Moosilauke in August 2000 and, according to my notes, it was covered in thick, blowing fog at the top and was "FREEZING COLD!!" We had brought sweatshirts and jackets and still needed to huddle in the rock shelter at the summit. A man at the top said he had hiked Moosilauke twelve times and only got a good view for one of those hikes. So I was fully expecting my Moosilauke experience to be cold and damp. But no! On the single day of the year we are able to climb this mountain together, the weather is absolutely perfect.

Beaver Brook is gorgeous

I decided to do this section southbound due to the many warnings about descending the Beaver Brook Trail, which is what thru hikers of the Appalachian Trail have to do while loaded down with a full pack. Bless them. This is listed as one of the "Terrifying 25" trails of New Hampshire. Over the winter I had pulled up some hiker blogs like this one and found myself  rather alarmed by photos looking down a series of wooden blocks bolted into shear, wet rock.  Check out that blog for a true sense of how steep it is. And it's always steeper than it looks in photos.

Wood steps drilled into shear rock

So we spotted a car on High Street at the western end of the mountain on our way up the night before, and began our hike on Route 112.  It seemed the most sane way to do it. (My previous hike up the mountain was via the Benton Trail, an easier route).  We got a very early start the next morning and wouldn't you know, most of the trail was bone dry. It still would have been a tense downhill, but nowhere near as difficult as going down if everything was slick.  Going uphill on the dry trail was a good workout, but I personally didn't find any part of it more technically challenging or scary than some of the CFPA trails in Connecticut.

Beaver Brook with Franconia Range in the distance.

I cannot say enough about how beautiful Beaver Brook Trail was. The first mile or so, you're climbing up very steeply alongside Beaver Brook, which is plunging down the mountain. It's cascade after cascade. The trail improvements are worthy of someplace like Acadia National Park. There are many types of steps: wooden steps drilled into rock, big rocks arranged into steps, and steps drilled out of shear rock. All of them are amazing work. Blossoms of Bunchberry and Clintonia lined the trail. It's like that all the way to Beaver Brook Shelter, 1.3 mile from the parking area, where the steep part ends and climb becomes more moderate.

At this point, the trail has climbed about 2000 feet. Let's put that into perspective for northbound NET-Cohos hikers: A hike up West Peak or Talcott Mountain in Connecticut or Mt. Tom in Massachusetts involve a gain of only about 400-500 feet, which is one reason why the New England Trail is so wonderfully accessible. Most people, even if they are out of shape, would be able to climb these ridges. Mt. Grace in Massachusetts was a good 1000-foot climb, and Mt. Monadnock was a solid 1800-foot gain. We've just gained more elevation than if we had climbed to the top of Mt. Monadnock, all in just 1.3 mile. And we've really just started this eight-mile hike.

Tree Dieback

We had about another 1,000 feet up to go, but it would take two miles to do it at an easier grade. Some parts were pretty easy and we could stretch our legs, but many other parts were a tedious boulder-to-boulder affair.

We noticed a few patches of dead trees, although many young trees were coming in. Later on we could see broad patches of dead trees across the surrounding mountains as well. These might be "fir-waves,"  linear patches of dead balsams that are oriented perpendicular to the prevailing wind. The die-back progresses in waves as the trees succumb to old age (living for about 70 years) and the relentless wind.

View from Mt. Blue

Mt. Blue is a lesser peak on the way to Moosilauke and it was a great place to stop for a short break. Black flies hit us for the first time here. It was about 50° when we started our hike, but the sun was warm, and that woke up the bugs. Some of these blackflies were the Mutant White Mountain Black Flies. One was burying it's head in my leg. These aren't the normal tiny gnats that dive bomb your eyes and fly up your nose. These giant black flies simply land and bite. I don't know if they are a different species or some mutant variety they grow in the White Mountains.  The last time I've seen them was in mid-June 2001, when my son and I climbed Mt. Jefferson on a freakishly hot day and were attacked for the entire miserable hike (there was not a wisp of wind at the top), no matter how much 99% DEET I covered myself in. That night I was covered with overlapping itchy welts that lasted a week. There were only a few this time. We covered ourselves with Picaridin and were fine for the rest of the hike.

Rosey Twisted Stalk

Most of the hike was through lovely "High Elevation Balsam Fir Forest," which occurs above 3500 feet. Most of the trees are balsam, and there isn't much plant diversity at these elevations. It being early July, we saw a lot of Mountain Wood Sorrel, Canada Mayflower, Blue Bead Clintonia, and Starflower in bloom. The unexpected find was some Rosey Twisted Stalk, which looked a lot like a red Solomon Seal.

Alpine Zone

The alpine zone was spectacular. Flowers were blooming and the views were gorgeous in all directions. It was maybe 70° with a light breeze. Perfect.

Three-Toothed Cinquefoil (top) and Mountain Sandwort

I enjoyed seeing the Three Toothed Cinquefoil in bloom.  I first came across this plant on the M-M Trail on Gap Mountain and Mt. Monadnock, where it grew in rock crevices at the top.  It was autumn and not blooming at the time, and it took me awhile to figure out what the plant was. I next saw it at Holt's Ledge and Smarts Mountain, and now on Moosilauke, always growing in the cracks between rocks in full sun. Nice to see the flowers.

Unidentified heaths

What a different world it was up here.  Most of the plants were foreign to me.

What a sky

We had started out by 6:30 am, and until hitting the alpine zone had encountered only one other hiker, which was a surprise.  By 11:00 am, though, there were hikers converging at the top from all directions. Mostly day hikers, from the looks of it, but a few backpackers as well. It actually seemed a bit crowded.

Moosilauke summit

I had to laugh at the little square of rock wall near the summit that serves as a shelter from the wind. It's where my son and I had huddled back in mid-August 2000 to escape the cold, blowing fog. No need for that today.

The shelter I took refuge in last time

Looking more closely, there was a tiny but dense patch of flowers growing in the shelter, seemingly from bare rock. Mountain Sandwort is said to thrive where hikers tread, and even benefits to some extent. It grows on ledges and bare summits, and is also found in Greenland.

Mountain Sandwort growing in the shelter

After hanging out for half an hour or so, we continued west on the Appalachian Trail, now following the Glencliff Trail. There was a nice long section that descended slowly through the alpine zone, where the summits of Mt. Cube and Smarts Mountain where visible straight ahead.

Smarts Mtn and Mount Cube in the distance

Several times along the hike I had stopped to exclaim, "This is the most Bunchberry I've ever seen blooming in one place!" and then would take a bunch of pictures. It became a running joke, because we kept finding locations further up the trail that would have even more Bunchberry.  Finally there was an open meadow filled with blooming Bunchberry in the Krummholz. Gorgeous.

Bunchberry blooms in the Krummholz zone

Back in the trees, the iconic swallowtails were all over the Blue Bead Lily (Clintonia) up and down the trail.  I knew them as Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, but it turns out they've been reclassified as a separate species per DNA testing, and are now called Canadian Tiger Swallowtails.

Canadian Tiger Swallowtail on Clintoni

I didn't spend much time looking at the rock during our hike since most of it is covered in lichen. The rock on Moosilauke is very similar to the rock that makes up Mt. Monadnock. Both consist of very resistant rock from the Littleton Formation, especially the Littleton Schist with Sillimanite. At Mt. Monadnock I had taken photos of the Sillimanite crystals, a mineral that was first discovered at Mt. Monadnock. And here they were again on a boulder in the trail. Same thing, different mountain. There were other similarities, I thought, between the two mountains. Both stand off by themselves (the definition of a monadnock). There are dozens of 4,000-footers in the White Mountains, but Moosilauke, at elevation 4802, stands off by itself. It's not part of a ridge and it's not surrounded by mountains of equal height.

Sillimanite crystals in Littleton Schist

At any rate, the hike down the mountain became more of a slog as we started thinking about the things we'd like to do after we finished the hike. We only had this one day before we had to head back. So we tried to pick up the pace, but after passing through the krummholz, the trail steepened into a boulder-to-boulder affair. It wasn't as steep as the Beaver Brook Trail, but it was still tedious and slow. I had packed two rubber-tipped trekking poles and was glad to have them on the way down. My right knee started to act up, and then my daughter asked for one of the poles because her right knee was also causing trouble. The White Mountains are brutal on knees. Eventually the trail did start to angle down the mountain a bit instead of going straight down and the grade became progressively easier as we decended, but it seemed like a long downhill (3.8 miles, 3300-foot decent).  Mostly we talked about Game of Thrones.

We were down at the car by about 2:15 p.m., hot and tired. It was a good long drive back to the first car, but then we stopped for ice cream sandwiches at a camp store on Rt 212, and were back at the Mt Liberty Motel on Rt 3 by 3:30 pm for a swim in the pool. Wonderful! After that we had time for a game of mini-golf in Lincoln, a delicious dinner at the Public House in Woodstock on Rt 3, and then did some gift shopping in Woodstock before head back to the motel to play in the river behind the rooms. What a day!

Mini-golf!