AMC Hut Hiking

Last week we had a family hiking trip: I reserved a spot at one of the Appalachian Mountain Club huts (the Greenleaf hut at Franconia Notch), so we drove up on Friday to begin our expedition.

When I was planning the trip, I tried to get a reservation for the night of Saturday Jul 21st, but by the time I got organized, the hut had already filled up.  We opted for a reservation on the night of Friday Jul 20th, which meant that I had to pull the kids out of Fenn day camp early so that we would have enough time to drive up and make it to the hut in time for dinner.

The drive was fairly easy; it's a straight 2-hour shot from our house to Franconia Notch. We got to the trailhead around 2:45, packed up our gear, and started in.   Normally on these sorts of jaunts after a couple of hours or a couple of days I find some bit of gear that I forgot to pack, but this time I discovered right off the bad that my hiking boots somehow never made it into the car (eek).  So it was running shoes for me (which wasn't such an ordeal, given that we didn't have very heavy backpacks).

At the trailhead:

The hike in was pretty steep and rather sweaty. The maps and the trail guides describe it about a 3 hour hike (2.9 miles with a lot of elevation gain), and the AMC guides tell you that dinner at the huts is at 6pm sharp, so we figured that we would be able to make it right on time if we didn't dawdle. Partway up:

We did indeed make it for dinner (with plenty of time to spare); the one annoying thing about the hike was that when we were about 2/3 of the way there we happened to run into another hiker who assured us that we "only had another hour and a half to go", which turned out to be wildly off base (at that point we only had another 45 mins it turned out).

Game of cards before dinner:

View from the hut looking east, up towards Mt Lafayette:

The AMC huts have a good reputation when it comes to meals, and this time around we were not disappointed: nice big dinner with salad, black bean soup, chicken w/ mustard sauce, corn, cous-cous, and an applesauce cake for dessert. Yum. The hut staff was very entertaining and friendly-- it looks like a fun job.

Sunset watching that evening:

AMC huts in theory have a lights out at 9m, and we were all pretty tired at that point, but I can't say it was the most restful night of sleep I have ever had in my life. We were sleeping in a very large bunk room, and from 9pm until well after midnight there were people clunking around, shining their headlamps, banging the door on the way to the bathroom, etc. Oh well-- at least we got a little bit of sleep.

Breakfast the next morning was another good meal, and the hut crew put on a very entertaining skit as a means of reminding us about the various rules (ex: pack out your trash!). The skit had a Star Wars theme, and featured a realistically acted Yoda wrapped in a blanket, a Luke Skywalker character armed with a potato masher, and a cross-dressing Darth Vader (extra-scary). Good stuff.

View to the north setting out after breakfast (cool "sea of clouds" effect):

Our goal for the Sat hike was to climb up to Mt Lafayette, then walk along the ridge trail past Mt Lincoln and a ways farther, then take the so-called "Falling Waters" trail back to the parking lot (total distance of around 6.2 miles). It was a lovely day for a hike-- literally a hundred miles of visibility, warm sun and cool breezes (not too windy). View back to the hut from the trail:

Partway up Lafayette, looking back towards Canon Mountain (you can still just make out the hut nestled just below the ridge):

Top of Mount Lafayette:

View to the east from Mt Lafayette -- this whole valley is a wilderness area: no roads, houses, or any habitation as far as I could see:

More photos from the Lafayette summit:

Looking south along the ridge trail:

This shot caught my eye for some reason...

Partway along the ridge:

We made it to the top of the Falling Waters trail around 11:30 ish and decided to have lunch somewhere a ways down the trail. At this point there were huge numbers of hikers coming up the trail in the opposite direction-- very crowded. The trail itself is very steep; it was tricky going on the way down. We stopped for lunch at the "Shining Rocks" -- a big stone face that has a bunch of streamlets coming down it:

The Falling Waters trail is a lovely one, but at this point I think the downhill was really starting to take its toll on our legs. Amy and I were hobbling along trying to distract ourselves by thinking about things like hot baths and soft couches; Lydia was keeping us company and being (mostly) a good sport. Ethan, meanwhile, was bounding along without any discomfort at all (I guess that's what it's like when you are a fit 14 year old...).

The bottom sections of the trail run along a series of brooks, and there are some lovely waterfalls. It was nice to be able to dunk your head into a cool brook every now and then. Photos:

It was at this point in the trip that I had my second equipment-related disaster, however; I slipped while coming down a rock face and fell.  The corporeal bruises and scrapes were minor, but I managed to drop my camera on a rock, and in spite of it being in its case, the lens was pretty badly damaged (it is a total loss as far as I can tell). Bummer. So no photography for me for the time being, until I can figure out what I want to do to replace it.

When we finally did make it down to the trailhead, I was floored at the number of cars there -- not only was the lot completely full (it had been about half empty when we arrived the previous day), there were cars parked on the shoulder of the highway up and down for a good 1/4 mile. So I think hiking in on Friday turned out to be a fortuitous choice. We drank some water, change socks and shirts, and then hit the road back to Lexington (with a quick ice cream stop for the kids).

It was good that we had an extra day to recover, because Amy and I had incredibly sore legs for the next couple of days-- we were hobbling around for quite a while. Still, it was a fun and memorable trip. Ethan is very enthusiastic about planning another hut-to-hut hike-- he had a blast (not sure how many other family members I will be able to recruit, though).