Hiked by: Tim and Valerie on August 10, 2006 - Lonesome Lake Trail to Hut, Fishin' Jimmy Trail to Kinsman Pond Shelter, Kinsman Ridge Trail up and over North Kinsman, over to South, back to North, then back to shelter. Back the same way we came. We did this as an overnight, staying at Kinsman Pond Shelter at a tent site after climbing the two summits.
Conditions: Day 1: Despite the forecast for "possible isolated showers and thundershowers between 10am and 4pm", we headed out to Lafayette Place Campground first thing on Thursday morning. This is where our walk begins. We had done the 1.2 miles to Lonesome Lake before (when we climbed Cannon). It's not too hard, but still makes Val huff-n-puff a little. We passed about 30 people (mostly families) coming down from the Lonesome Lake Hut. One woman we spoke to said that there had been 44 people there on Wednesday night. The account of the full turkey dinner sounded really good.
Once we got to the lake, we hiked around it to the hut and headed up the "Fishin' Jimmy" trail. It started out relatively flat, then actually went downhill for quite awhile. Enough to make you wonder "when are we going to have to start paying for this??" :-) Soon, we started paying. This trail became very boulder-filled and the going got slower. We could see evidence of where they had tried to drill/blast(?) some steps out of the rockface. And where it was *real* steep, they had embedded wooden steps to the rock (see picture under North Kinsman). Overall it was 2000 ft of elevation gain over 3.5 miles from the parking lot.
By about 11:30am, we had made it to Kinsman Pond Shelter. We picked the highest tent platform of the bunch, and set up. Tim pumped some water from the somewhat nasty pond (while a giant dead dragonfly floated precariously close by). We checked out the shelter and the bear box. No sign of the caretaker yet. We dumped all our overnight gear into the tent, then strapped on the packs (again) and headed out towards North and South Kinsman. The sky had started to turn cloudy, but no sign of imminent rain yet.
The short hike up North Kinsman was very steep. Many scrambles over big slabs of rock. And then we got to the summit and there's this TINY cairn sitting on top of a rock. Makes you laugh when you see it (see picture under North Kinsman). Immediately after the summit, there's a great view to the west. We sat down and had a snack. Enjoyed the views of Cannon, Lafayette, Lincoln for a few minutes. Headed towards South Kinsman. Down, down into the col, where we met a young man from Maryland who was doing the AT alone. We chatted with him for awhile, then we all continued on our way. The South Kinsman summit was more open that we were expecting. Great views in most directions. If we stood on a big rock, we could see the pond where we're staying (see picture #5 below). The trip back to the tent was uneventful, but tiring on the knees.
Once back at camp, Val started "housekeeping" in the tent, and Tim went to pump some more water. The rain started within 5 minutes. It was a deluge within 15 minutes. We were stuck in the tent - getting chilly at that point. Reading and (oh don't say it) calling our families on our cell phone. OK, it sounds worse than it was. We just wondered how big the "green blob" of rain was on the radar. Asked Val's sister to check weather.com for us. She said it was big - covered most of northern NH, VT. So, we hunkered down. After about two hours of this, we were restless and cold. The wind was howling, everything was damp (just a little though, the tent did a great job!). We decided that instead of eating cold granola bars in the tent for dinner, we'd get out and go down to the shelter, where we could boil water. The shelter is also big enough to stay dry in and stand up at the same time. Unlike the 2-person coffin that we call a tent. So, we could stretch our legs and backs.
Dinner was dehydrated Kung-Pao Chicken, which wasn't bad, but not great either. At that point, I guess it was hot and cooked, so it tasted fine. The rain had started to let up. Now it was just like a cloud had settled into the valley where the pond was. The wind was still blowing fairly strongly, but somehow it wasn't strong enough to blow the cloud *away*. We stayed at the shelter and talked with the caretaker until about 9pm. At that point, we made the climb back to our tent and soon went to bed.
Day 2: We slept pretty well during the night, considering the wind was still blowing, the clouds still had us socked in, the trees were acting like little water condensers to collect moisture from the clouds and then "rain" it down on us every time the wind blew. It was 46 degrees F. Can we just stay in the sleeping bags for a little while longer??? Finally, we pulled ourselves out and headed over to the shelter to boil some water for coffee/tea. Breakfast was good - LUNA bar and a hard-boiled egg for Valerie, Tim had oatmeal. We went down to the water to take some pictures of the fog, then back up to start taking down camp.
We didn't leave until almost 9am. By that time, the sun was trying to peek through the cloud. If nothing else, the cloud was getting brighter. :-) We still had a lot of clothes on, and our hands were frozen from packing up the wet tent, etc... as we started down the trail. It, of course, was wet and much more slippery than the way up. It was slow going, but we didn't have any major slips or falls, so we did pretty well. We had to stop a couple times and take off layers of clothes as we went. After the first hour, we passed quite a few people heading up. We stopped at the Hut for a short snack break, spoke to the young AT'er that we had met on the trail between the summits yesterday. Tim talked to one of the "croo" in the hut about the possibilities of winter camping there. Then, we headed for the car. There were still some crazy dark clouds around and we wanted to get to the car before they opened up on us. The Lonesome Lake Trail is rather nice, and not too steep, so it was really not bad.
Overall: Day 1 - 7.5 hours (includes time to set up camp between the hike to the shelter and the hike to the summits), 7.2 miles. Day 2 - 3 hours, 3.7 miles (includes a long break at the Hut, just because).