After some reconfiguring, and on the recommendation of a family we’d met yesterday, we decided to hit the long but mild Mount Garfield trail after a quick run into Dunks. It was nice to be back up near the Presidentials and we were low-key hoping to bump into my friend’s coworker’s son who just so happened to be in the area at the same time we were while on his AT thru-hike.
We set off around 8 am, the trail mostly gradual with some steeper sections but even had some switchbacks thrown in (a rarity in New England.) Quite a few people were out there day hiking for similar reasons, hoping to meet up with a friend thru-hiking before heading into the Presidential Range. After many ‘are we there yet-s’, we’d completed the first 4.8 mi and reached the junction of the Garfield Ridge trail that continued on to Galehead Hut.
We stayed to the right for the last 0.2 mi, the only real steep and bouldery section of the entire trip, up to the summit of Garfield. The trail, like many others in the Whites, spits you out way up above tree line offering breathtaking views seemingly out of nowhere. There are remnants of a fire tower we clambered our way up toward, sprawling out on a rock ledge facing south. From there, the famous Franconia Ridge was in plain sight along with Owl’s Head standing alone in the center of the Pemigewasset Wilderness and the Prezis to the East in the distance, almost completely socked in.
We spent a good hour and a half up there, basking in the sun, snacking on our lunches, and drinking celebratory summit beers. At one point, a group of thru-hikers rolled through and we took the chance to talk to them and ask about the hiker we knew. It turned out we’d just missed him by about a mile. I asked them about their own journeys, expressing that I’d started planning for my own thru-hike a few years down the road. An older gentleman in the group reminded me of the importance of that commitment to myself - “write that date down”, he said, and those words echoed in my head for the rest of the day. I wished them all luck and off we went down the scramble.
We made - for our standards - record time coming back down, despite the trail lingering on for a full 5 miles back to the road. We grabbed beer, poutine, and ice cream in town and when we got back to the AirBNB, I did exactly as the man on the mountain said. I wrote that date down. And I’m sticking to it.
NH 9/48
New England 14/67
New England 19/100 Highest
Northeast 16/115
