After knocking off another Pemi Loop adding in West Bond (#43) at the end of summer with Dani, I had only a few peaks left. With my long ultra already completed, I have been relaxing and not focusing on hard training/tapering. I thought that this past weekend would be a good time to get another trip up north, and another peak off my list.
I’m at the point in my journey to climb the NH 48 where I have a few left and have fond memories of many summits and many multiple summits. I have a lot of favorite peaks- Isolation, Moosilauke, anything on the Pemi, etc. where I am finding trouble motivating myself to get some of the less exciting tags out of the way (e.g. Hale, Cabot). With the changing seasons of summer into fall, and fall already into winter in the Whites, I went after little Mt. Hale on Sunday.
I was watching my roommate’s dog and thought a nice activity for him, myself, and Sky would be a hike. I thought about the peaks I have left and ruled out Owl’s Head because of the distance, then ruled out North Twin and Galehead because I want to grab those together which would be a lot in perhaps unpredictable icy/snowy/rainy conditions with an unseasoned dog (Buck). That left Hale and Cabot– not much to decipher between the two but Hale was a little closer and shorter so I went for it.
Not much to report, I went up and down the Hale Brook trail for 5.3 miles total. The trailhead looked like a beautiful fall with foliage and cool temps. While climbing, once I hit ~2700ft elevation, snow was steadily everywhere and it was almost like spring conditions– lots of slush and water. It wasn’t cold, a bit windy and a bite if you stopped moving but let’s face it, Sky and I never stop moving.
Overall, it was a beautiful day and just what I needed to wake my legs up and shake out. I hiked all the way up in my new trail shoes– inov-8 terraclaw 220’s — and ran all the way down. I’ll probably post a love letter to those shoes in another post but this was their test and they passed with flying colors! It was a beautiful hike, and a nice ease into winter conditions. Buck got to summit his first NH4k foot mountain and he was a gentleman the whole time.
I met one other solo female hiker on the trail and saw no other people. She was awesome and we both talked about being solo women and the fears and subsequent tranquility and confidence that goes along with that. She is also from MA so we exchanged phone numbers and hope to hike again, as she is also attempting to hit all 48.
Okay okay, here’s photos:
48 peaks 