Stayed in the Galehead AMC hut last night after climbing Mt. Galehead and Mt. Garfield yesterday and 11.5 miles of hiking. Today we will stretch it to the limit and get five 4000 footers, 10 hours of hiking, and 14.2 miles.

We woke after intermittent sleep last night because of a person constantly coughing in the hut all night.  Dad was awake when the “croo” came thru at 6:30 am with guitar singing “Rock me Mama like a wagon wheel” by Darius Rucker. They were pretty good.

Breakfast was plentiful but not really very good. The “johnny cake” was probably the best.  The scrambled eggs probably came from a carton. The sausage and pancakes were ok. The oatmeal wasn’t very appealing. Thank goodness I brought my own Starbucks via instant coffee as theirs was horrific.

The weather was forecast to be perfect and it didn’t disappoint. While we were completely fogged in at 7 am, it was obvious that it would clear and be a perfect day for hiking (if not a little warm). It would end up being sunny and warm all day with no bugs to speak of.

While we hadn’t planned on being able to complete the last 2.6 miles at the end of the day to go over and “peak bag” N. Twin mountain, we carried as much water as we had bottles for.  It turned out that we ran out of water at the end of the day just as we decided to start over to N. Twin. While we were thirsty when we got back to the hut, it wasn’t that big of a deal except we both commented about how parched we were.

Advil was a necessity for Jacob and I as our knees were aching from the day before. In my case, I also had a herniated disc that bothered me when I slept, but wasn’t much of an issue when I was hiking.

We left the Galehead hut at 7:50 am with all the food/snacks we would need for the day. Today we didn’t have sandwiches, so block cheese, pepperoni, peanut butter crackers, beef/pork jerky, Triscuits, Raisenets, and mixed nuts would be our food.

We climbed fast at covered the 0.8 miles and 1100 ft of elevation gain in 45 minutes. We had worked up quite a sweat. We climbed through the fog cover and were treated to a view back to the hut that we had just left (above).

At the top of S. Twin mountain we ran into a couple there and they took our pictures. At 8:40 am we continued to the southeast on the Twinway trail heading toward Mt. Bond. After about 10 minutes of hiking Jacob complained of stomach problems. Something he had eaten at breakfast didn’t agree with him and he felt like he had diarrhea. He went into the woods to try and relieve himself but was unable to. We think it was the gluten-free pancakes they served him which didn’t appear to be completely cooked. Jacob stomach was hurting but he marched on.

 

 

We covered the 2.0 miles to the Bond Cliff Tr in one hour, getting there at 9:45 am. We had been talking the whole time about whether we would be able to get all the way out to BondCliff and back to S. Twin in time to make it over to N. Twin and back before dinner. I did not want to miss dinner and neither of us were relishing the thought of having to get up tomorrow morning and climb straight up to S. Twin, go over to N. Twin and back to finish the day. If we could possibly “peak bag” N. Twin today, we wanted to make it happen.

 

20 minutes later (10:05) we made it to the Guyout campsite spur intersection and Jacob saw a sign that said there was an outhouse. What he didn’t see was that it was 0.2 miles away at the campsite. He must have practically ran, because 10 minutes later he was back, having made it to the campsite, finding the outhouse, relieving himself, and running back. He was a little out of breath, but feeling better after ridding himself of whatever was bothering his stomach. We got back hiking at 10:25 am and 15 minutes later we reached the top of Mt. Bond.

At the top of Mt. Bond at 10:40, we could see the ridge to the South that we would need to climb down to and cross in order to make it our to Bondcliff. It looked a lot farther than the 1.2 miles on the map. It was a beautiful day out and you could see the entire Pemigewasset Wilderness laid out before us.

 

 

Heading across the ridge to Bondcliff – looking like it will be a long day and hard to get in N. Twin, we are behind time but an incredibly beautiful day. Starting to ache and tire. It is pretty warm out.

We made it to Bondcliff  at 11:30, covering the 4.5 miles from S. Twin in 3 hours. We had a 360 degree view, with the Presidentials and Mt. Washington very clear in the distance. You could see Loon Ski area to the Southwest in the above picture. Owl’s Head so the West was obvious as was the entire Franconia ridge behind it with Flume, Liberty, and Lafayette rising up. These pictures don’t have any depth to them, but you understand why it is called Bondcliff as it drops straight off from the top of the mountain.

We would eat lunch and spend some time enjoying the views. A judge who we had eaten dinner with the previous night came along and we chatted with him a while.

We spend quite a bit of time (45 minutes) chilling out at Bondcliff because at that point I didn’t think we had any chance of getting all the way back to S. Twin and completing N. Twin…we still had to go out to W. Bond.

We left Bondcliff at 12:15 and covered the 1.2 miles back across the ridge and up to Mt Bond in 45 minutes. We then needed only 15 minutes to cover the 0.5 miles to the W. Bond Spur.

At the W. Bond spur Jacob decided to drop his pack as we headed  out to W. Bond. We left at 1:15 made it the 0.5 miles out to W. Bond and straight back in 32 minutes, arriving back at Bondcliff trail and retrieving Jacobs pack at 1:47 pm. At that point we had completed four 4000 footers that day.

20 minutes later we would be back to the intersection of the Twinway trail and would run into one of the female “croo” who was out hiking that day with friend of hers from another AMC hut. They took our picture above.

 

It would take us an hour of hiking to cover the 2.0 miles from Bondcliff Tr to S. Twin mountain. Arriving there at 3:05 pm. We had realized that when we made it out to W. Bond and back so quickly, that we very well might be able to make it over to N. Bond today, depending on how we felt after reaching S. Twin. We seemed to have made up over an hour of hiking time that we didn’t expect when we left Bondcliff after lunch.

Upon reaching S. Twin there was a young group of hikers from a camp that was heading down to the Galehead hut and would he eating with us tonight. They had come from the Zealand hut. There was a young lady and her Dad who heard us contemplating going over to N. Twin and she spoke up and told us that it had only taken her and he Dad 50 minutes to come from N. Twin. That was enough to tell us we could make it out there and back and then down to the hut in time for dinner.

While we were almost out of water, we left for N. Twin at 3:17 pm. It started straight down and we knew that meant we would have to go back up at some point. It was a nice hike of 35 minutes with much of it back in the forest.

 

We arrived at N. Twin at 3:52 and I left my pack beside the trail to take the path out to the lookout. The above picture of Jacob is looking South back at S. Twin and the picture of me above is looking more to the Southwest and you can see the Galehead Hut and the Franconia ridge in the background with Lafayette, Lincoln, Little Haystack, Liberty, and Flume.

We left N. Twin at 4:00 pm and got back to S. Twin at 4:40. We made it back to the Galehead hut at 5:40 taking our time because that last 0.8 miles is straight down, I had run out of Advil and my and Jacob’s knees were screaming at us.

We made it in time to get cleaned up by washing hands and face and changing our shirts. We sat down to dinner at 6:00 pm of lentil soup (excellent and I had two full servings), salad, fresh warm bread, broccoli and kale, rice and bean enchilada. The bean enchilada was more like a casserole but it  was good. The chocolate cake was excellent!

Jacob and I were very tired but were quite satisfied before bed knowing we had accomplished so much in that day. When we told other hikers what we had done, they were quite astonished. We were in bed by 9:30 and slept well that night (the cougher from the night before had gone). It was another warm night, getting into the 50’s but plenty warm in the hut with our t-shirts on and sheet covering us.

The next morning was tough heading back to the car and we would take our time. We bought Advil at the hut to ease the aching of the knees and ankles. We left at 8:00 am after breakfast and packing up our things. I tipped the “croo” a $50 because they do a great job and I know they are not paid well and only do it for the love of the outdoors. We made it back to our car at 10:25 am with Jacob’s only incentive being a tubing trip on the Pemigewasset with the girls (Beth, Madison, Lauren, Jennifer, Ana Sofia)…and me.