Hiked by: Tim and Valerie on Tuesday, August 28, 2007. Lincoln Woods to Franconia Brook Trail to Lincoln Brook Trail to Owl's Head path, then back the same way the next morning.
Conditions: Lincoln Woods - 8:20AM and 57 degrees. The Ranger Station was closed, but we signed in. Beautiful - not a cloud anywhere. As you can see from the first picture below, it's a very wide, flat trail for the first three miles. As we walked up the trail, and got the view up the Pemi River (below), Tim wailed that he'd rather be heading towards Bondcliff. Owl's Head isn't purported to have any views from the top, but hopefully we'll get some sort of view from the slide (turns out we got great views from the slide). It took us 55 minutes to get to the bridge over Franconia Brook at the 3.0 mile mark. We turned onto the Franconia Brook trail and continued with relative ease.
We passed a couple groups by that point... a father and son doing an overnight, a couple young guys with their dog, and one really stinky ATV going up the Lincoln Woods trail to do trail maintenance. So much for any chance of seeing wildlife. On the Franconia Brook trail, we had to take a detour where the beaver pond took over the original trail. We found the freshest moose poop on Earth. So, we became "stealthy hikers" and tip-toed around all the lookouts into the beaver pond in hopes of seeing him/her. No sightings, but we did get our first look at Owl's Head! Soon, we were at the intersection of Franconia Brook Trail with Lincoln Brook Trail.
We made all the required brook crossings without getting wet. Some required more courage on Val's part than others. We crossed Franconia Brook once, Lincoln Brook twice and Liberty Brook once. During the hike, we'd stopped once to take pictures of the Lincoln Brook and a beautiful, dark brown mink was scurrying around on the rocks. Despite our best efforts, no pictures of the mink were forthcoming. He was very shy and didn't hang around long.
We made it to the intersection with the Owl's Head path by about 1:30PM. It was a hot day and humidity was very high. You really can't miss the cairns.
Then, we headed up the slide... it looks like the pictures below for about 0.4 miles. The consistency does change somewhat... bottom has more gravel, middle is all fist-sized or larger rocks, but all loose under our feet. Each step sends rocks skittering down the mountain. Top becomes bigger and more stable boulders and ledges.
Once we got up on the slide a bit, we could turn around and (carefully) take pictures of the beautiful scenery behind us.
Finally, we reached the relative flat of the ridge (about a mile up). Not one moment too soon for Valerie. We went past the "old" summit (you can see in picture #2 below, the remnants of something nailed into the tree) and on to the "new" summit. There is currently a cairn at the new summit. The bushwhack only took us a few minutes and was very easy to follow on the way towards the summit.
The trip back down the slide was very slow and a bit scary. I think that the overall time from Lincoln Brook Trail to summit was 1hr 45mins. The descent took us about an hour.
The overnight went well again! We had Chili Mac for dinner. It never tasted so good! Weather was clear and cool. We slept really well and had an uneventful hike back in the morning. Weather was still great, and with our renewed energy, the trail seemed easy-peasy. We saw a couple interesting birds - Kingfisher, Vulture, Woodcock and the woodpecker seen above.
We were back out at the parking lot by noon on Wednesday.