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| Mount Flume (and the famous slide) from Mount Liberty Summit |
Last year, I made the rough climb from Greeley Ponds to the Osceolas, which one writer calls one of the toughest trails in the Whites. Scratch that. Flume Slide Trail in the Franconia Range is equally hard. After a pleasant, gradual ascent that skirted the lower face of Mt. Liberty from the hiker parking area just north of the Flume Visitor Center, I finally reached the notorious "slide." From there, one faces a 1/2 mile of unrelenting, hand-over-hand climbing up a steeply-pitched rock face - the remnants of an age-old mountain slide. Since the slide occurred many years back, the area around it has long since been overtaken by forest. This proved a godsend, as the trees provided much-needed hand holds on the dicey climb.
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| Looking down on a section of the slide |
At one scramble point, my Nalgene bottle got knocked from my pack and bounded down the slide. It traveled so far, in fact, that as it disappeared from view I could still hear hear the sound of it clattering off the rock face far below. I seriously considered leaving it... I had another full bottle... but decided to stow my pack and go find the damned thing. As it turned out, it came to rest all the way at the bottom. After re-climbing the slide, I enjoyed pleasant summit views from both peaks and descended just in time to meet the hoards coming up the significantly-easier Liberty Spring Trail.
Fortunately, I had left early enough (6:30 AM) to have the summits to myself. Plus, a 12:45 PM exit time meant that there was still a chance to hit Polly's.
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| Mount Liberty, View from Summit of Mount Flume |
Peak: Mount Flume and Mount Liberty
Elevation: 4,328 and 4,459 feet (Gain: 3,750 feet)Distance: 9.9 miles
Route: Loop, via Whitehouse Trail to Liberty Spring Trail to Flume Slide Trail to Franconia Ridge Trail to Liberty Spring Trail to Whitehouse Trail
Conditions: Pleasant, Sunny, Clear
