Funny, this was one that we were dreading the most. The guide book actually said that the trip up Cannon Mt was "arduous" - doesn't that make you want to run out and climb it? Then, in the 4000-Footer book, we found a 6.2 mile RT from Lafayette Campground that sounded, well, at least better than ARDUOUS.
What we found was a perfect day - clear, no humidity or haze, cool temps, no bugs and quite a breeze. The trail was hard - no doubt about that. We went up via the Lonesome Lake Trail to the Kinsman Ridge Trail. Up to Lonesome Lake was pretty easy, then we "thought" we got on the Dodge Cut-off, but apparently we did not. Instead, we walked the 0.2 miles around the lake and followed the Lonesome Lake Trail up. There were quite a few spots on the way up where we really needed to use both hands to pull ourselves up onto the next ledge, etc... but nothing really technical, I guess.
The top was fun - watching all the tourists who just took the tram up. They are so clean and smell good. haha. We will admit that the novelty of a flush toilet at the top was kinda nice, but we avoided the cafeteria like the plague. We already remember in too much detail when Tim thought it was a good idea to order chili and a meatball sub on top of Mt Washington. It makes for a difficult trip down.
We ran into a friend from an earlier hike on top of the Observation Tower. Eric is from Mass, and he's running his way through the 48. While we were just doing Cannon Mt that day, he was doing Cannon, North Kinsman and South Kinsman. Last time we met him, we were doing Tom and Field. He was doing Tom, Field and Willey. Once we all started down, he was gone like a flash.
We came down via the Hi-Cannon Trail. If we had to do it again, we'd take the Lonesome Lake Trail back down. Hi-Cannon appears to be suffering from water run-off and a lot of humans who were trying to "cut off" just a tiny bit of the trail 100x over. All the switchbacks appear to be short-circuited, making it a little difficult to follow the "real" trail. I will admit, though, that the views of Lonesome Lake and the Franconia Ridge from Hi-Cannon are really spectacular.
Overall, we learned some great lessons today
1.) don't sweat the ones that the book says are "arduous"
2.) so much of the hiking is mental - based on the bugs, heat, humidity.