Mt. Waumbek is a 4006 ft mountain in the Pliny Range of the White Mountains of NH. It is the tallest mountain in the small range, but is the 3rd shortest of the 48 4000 footers being only slightly taller than Mt. Tecumseh (4003 ft) and Mt. Isolation (4004 ft). Like Mt. Cabot to its North, it is drained by various brooks to the Israel River then to the Connecticut River and eventually Long Island Sound.

The trailhead is accessed near Jefferson, NH off of US Rte 2. The hike starts on the Starr King Trail and passes over Mt Starr King (3907 ft) at 2.6 miles. Mt Starr King is named for Thomas Starr King a Boston Unitarian minister and author of The White Hills 1887) a book about the White Mountains. Northern NH was originally populated by Abenaki Indians and the word “Waumbek” is Abenaki for “white”.

From Mt. Starr King it is a one mile walk in the woods over to Mt. Waumbek, making the hike total 3.6 to the top and 7.2 mi r/t. Mt Starr King is actually the star of this hike if you had to name a highlight. If not for it being slightly over 4000 feet, Waumbek wouldn’t get much traffic.

This is the second hike of our summer trip to NH in 2023. If not for the previous day’s hike to Mt. Cabot this would have been right up there with Mt. Tecumseh as one of the easiest 4000 footers. With my thighs and knees still aching from the previous days hike, today sure didn’t feel easy on the way up.

We got started at the parking lot of the Starr King Trail late around 1 pm. We slept in from previous day and stopped and got a big “meat lovers” pizza to fuel up. We couldn’t eat the enormous pizza so we offered a slice to a gentleman just coming down from the hike. He was eager to take us up on the food. We shared with him our quest of climbing them all and he told us he was on his 3rd time around climbing all 48.

With the late start I was starting to wonder if we had made a mistake. The sky was clouding up and getting dark. It would turn out to not be a problem, but the previous early evening after our hike of Mt. Cabot a vicious thunderstorm rolled in and dumped Florida like torrential rain. We would see the result on our hike with a very muddy trail in the flatter areas.

As we were about to start on the trail 3 women were exiting the trail. I hear one of them say “Hi Ronnie”. I look up and it is Cindy Dussault. She is a family friend and very close to Jamie and Beth. Just the previous day she was hiking Smarts Brook with my sisters and Jennifer. What a coincidence. She told us she had only gone up to Mt. Starr King because it is on the list of “52 with a view”. I had never heard of this list and Waumbek was NOT on it.

It was cool out and no bugs bothered us. The trail was muddy and the rocks wet. For the hike to Starr King my legs were feeling it. The lactic acid was setting in and I had a steady 135 bpm pulse with Jacob setting a fast pace. We covered the first 2 miles in one hour.

We were both sweating and Jacob stopped to soak his head in a stream breaking onto the trail.

We Reached Mt. Starr King at 2:27 pm for a 1:30 hike of the 2.6 miles. The South views from Starr King are of the Presidentials but they were shrouded in clouds. The stone fireplace is the remnants from a former shelter but makes for a nice fire pit.

Above is the obligatory Raisinet feast at the top of Mt Waumbek. There was a pretty decent view of the Presidential Range over the trees but the clouds were shrouding Mt. Washington. We reached Waumbek at 3:00 pm for a 2 hour total hike, covering the last 1 mile over from Starr King in 30 minutes. We had eaten a massive pizza before getting on the trail and neither of us were hungry, so Jacob ate a few Raisinets, tookd in the views for a few minutes and headed back to Mt. Starr King.

We got back to Mt. Starr King at 3:45 and the view of the Presidentials was still shrouded in clouds. This is going to be an issue for us when we tackle the entire Presidential Range in 2 years. Will just need to hope and pray for clear weather. Talked with a trail maintainer here who was carrying a saw to cut up and blowdowns across trails. Seems he spends his retirement hiking all the NH trails and had done the 48 a total of 3 times. He gave us some tips on the hike from Isolation over to Mitzpah through the Dry River Wilderness and said it could be a 5 hour hike.

Back to the parking lot at 5:30 for a 4:30 minute total time hike of the 7.2 miles.