Date: 2007-08-22
From: Glencliff, NH

To: Kinsman Notch
Miles today: 9.5
Weather: few clouds

Folks at the Hiker Welcome Hostel got up early and by 5.45 AM nearly everyone was up and drinking coffee. It was a very entertaining early morning as people sat around the large living room table eating breakfast and telling hiking stories. Bobcat, Bag of Tricks and another hiker left about 7 AM to slackpack Moosilauke southbound. This would allow them to go up the steepest rock stair section rather than abuse their knees doing it downhill. There was room for me to go along and end up back at the hostel for another night but I have just enough of a traditionalist knothead streak in me by this point in my hike that I don't see the point in starting to slack this late in the game.I left the hostel about 9 AM and headed up the road back to the Trail. It wasn't until 10.00 AM that I began the actual climb of Moosilauke itself. From that point on it would be 4.1 trail miles and 3,300 ft of continual climbing to reach the alpine summit. After about half an hour I caught up with Peter, the surgeon from Rochester, NY who left GA within 2 days of me and we hadn't really spent any time together until VT. I stopped for a while about half way up to talk to 2 southbounders and catch my breath. The ascent was continual, unrelenting and rocky but not nearly as steep as the north side is supposed to be. It still took me two and a half hours to complete the ascent and reach the summit.I stopped in the trail at onw point and called in half a dozen boreal chickadees that I had heard foraging nearby. They were very cooperative and came in very close (3 ft). Peter was impressed. These were my first boreal chicadees for the trip and my first in many many years. They are a northern New England speciality not found in any other portions of the country so it was fun to see them here on my first alpine summit climb.The summit of Moosilauke is well above timberline and the slopes are mostly fileds of Bigelow sedge with a few bog billberry plant sccattered around. It is a relatively wide and rounded summit ridge that drops off gradually in all directions. Today was clear blue skies, excellent visibility, winds gusting to only 14 mph and air temp at 12.30 of 46.The most impressive and closest peaks seen from the summit were the steep and sharply defined Franconia range ridgeline and the Presidential range including the summit cone of Mt Washington with its occasional plume of black smoke from the coal burning cog railway. To the west Camels Hump and Mt Mansfield were clearly visible in VT. To the south marched away a long line of smaller peaks that I didn't recognize by name. It was a wonderful day to be above timberline on the summit of a big mountain. I wasn't the only one who thought so because there were about 25 people there at one point and folks kept moving in and out of the summit area during the 2 hours I was there.I finally reluctantly headed down about 2.30 PM. It was a relatively normal hike through high mountain spruce-fir forests for the 2.5 miles down to the Beaver Brook Shelter. The shelter had a wonderful view of the nearby Franconia ridge and the summit of Mt Washington. I almost stayed there with Cheeks and Steps Small but instead continued on down into Kinsman Notch to camp.The 1.5 miles from the shelter down to Kinsman Notch took me nearly 2 hours and was very steep and rocky in many places. It was steeply down over large boulders and followed closely alongside Beaver Brook for much of the way. Thw brook was an almost continual series of cascades and waterfalls alongside the trail. This was without a doubt the most impressive stretch of trail that I have hiked so far. In many places there was rebar drilled into rock slabs to provide handholds for scrambling up and down. There were also many wood steps bolted into the face of steeply sloping rock slabs to provide footholds on the slippery wet rock. It was a very steep and continually descending trail that was very interesting and fun to hike on such a good weather day. It would have been downright tough on a wet rainy day with poor footing.I ended the day tenting near the Kinsman Notch teailhead parking lot because there was nowhere else to go and no way to make the next shelter. All in all it was a superb first day in the high peaks of the White Mountains!