Northeast Trip - White Mountains Day 1

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More photos at: Picasa

Making up for lost time, I headed out to do some hiking today. I started out first thing going to the Mt. Washington auto road, but they turned me away because the winds at the top were 93 mph. Instead, I headed to Wildcat Mountain ski area, not to go skiing but because the hike to Thompson Falls starts there. It is not a very long hike to the falls, and I was able to get good pictures of the first two cascades. Both the guidebook (Thanks Kris!) and the sheet I got from the ranger's station suggest that I should have been able to follow the trail higher, but I never found anything beyond the second cascade that I'm convinced was the designated trail (although I did find lots of things that were not the trail)

After Thompson Falls, I headed to the AMC Pinkham Notch Visitor's center for a couple of hikes that start from there, but the parking lot was totally full and the side of the road (which is marked "No Parking") was getting pretty full as well, so I passed it by and headed for the Glen Ellis Falls trailhead instead. Two hikes I was planning to do start at this trailhead, the first of which was the Glen Boulder Trail. Glen Boulder Trail was another ~1.5 mile steep climb to a rock outcrop with great views. It turns out that Glen Boulder is in an alpine area with few trees, so while the winds weren't 93 mph like they were on the top of Mt. Washington, they were still pretty stiff. The last bit of the trail was a scramble over steep, smooth rock (in the wind), and I wouldn't have minded having hiking poles, but the views from the top were excellent. I was also able to get pictures of a couple waterfalls along the way. If I'd planned it better, I could have followed the trail beyond this point all the way to the top of Mt. Washington, but I didn't realize this until after I'd come back down.

Heading down, I crossed under the highway to take in Glen Ellis Falls. This is a really short hike that takes you to the near vertical 64 foot Glen Ellis Falls along with several other nice drops above and below it. Back at the parking lot, I considered just walking to the Pinkham Notch visitor's center (it's only a mile) but decided to drive back up instead. I was in luck and it was now late enough that more people were finishing their hikes than were arriving, so I was able to get a parking spot this time.

From Pinkham Notch visitor's center I took two hikes, the first of which was up to the Crystal Cascade. Getting to Crystal Cascade actually follows the same trail as the most commonly used path up Mt. Washington, but it is only about half a mile to Crystal Cascade. This is another falls that I suspect most people turn back before seeing the best part. Coming up from the visitor's center there are some relatively small drops along the way, and then a bridge crosses the river below another small drop. A lot of people turned back at the bridge, but on the other side of the river the trailed turned to parallel the river. Not too far beyond the bridge there was a viewing platform for the absolutely spectacular main drop. It starts as a long, broad cascade into a pool, then two streams drop straight down from the pool into a 90 degree turn slot to continue down the mountain.

Back at the visitor's center, I crossed the road for another steep, but shorter, climb to Square Ledge. This rock outcrop juts nearly vertically up from the mountainside, steep enough that people will go there to climb on the vertical faces. Unlike Glen Boulder the ledge here faces Mt. Washington, so I was able to get some nice pictures of it and the surrounding peaks.

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