Today was our last slack packing day of the week. To be honest, I didn’t really want to hike today, I am looking forward to taking a few days off. But, with the weather looking not so great for the rest of week, it only made sense to hike this section today.
We began the day in Kinsman Notch, where we were dropped off a bit before 8am. The trail immediately went steeply uphill, but we got our trail legs underneath us pretty quickly, and reached the top of Mount Wolf pretty quickly, where we stopped for a snack. From there, we headed back downhill to Eliza Brook Shelter where we refilled on water and prepared for the climb.
And oh what a climb it was. Extremely steep sections of trail, rocks, roots… all made for a really interesting climb. At one point we passed a really beautiful mountain bog with some cliffs in the background. After that, the trail kept going steeply up. There were a few sections where we were using our hands to scramble up the rocks. Yet again, we were grateful that we only had a day pack.
It was a really nice day, so we had some great views on top of Kinsman. We ate our lunch on top and chatted with the few other people who were up there, including one southbound hiker. The view across Franconia Notch to the Franconia ridge started to get us thinking about what we’d have to climb on Saturday when we come back out to the trail.
The climb down was steep as well, but not as difficult as yesterday’s climb down Mousilauke. Just like yesterday, we met my brother and sister-in-law on the path to the parking lot. No brewery after the hike today, but the four of us did go to One Love brewery (which is not brewing yet) in Lincoln, NH for trivia night, and we rocked it, coming in first place and winning a gift card that only covered a quarter of our bar tab. Good thing we get to sleep in tomorrow…
