Mt. Flume and Mt. Liberty - 9/22/24
Mt. Flume: 4328 ft. - Mt. Liberty: 4459 ft - approx. 10 mi.
I'd been chatting with my friend and former roomate Daniel, who lives close by and is also a hiker. Somehow in about a decade of friendship and multiple years of cohabitation we'd managed to never hike together and it was time to rectify the situation. He's climbed a good chunk of the 4000-footers but we manged to find an option neither of us had climbed. I really wanted to climb the Flume Slide trail, and he was game. If you've parked on the Flume Slide side of the mountain, the easiest way down is to go over Mt. Liberty and take the Liberty Springs trail down, so it was going to be a two-mountain day. It was also going to be my longest hike to date. I was confident the distance would not be an issue, but I was still curious to see how I would hold up and especially how I'd feel the day after.
Dan picked me up at 5am that day and we headed up to Franconia Notch. We made it to the trailhead around 7 and were hiking by 7:30. There is parking at the Flume Gorge Visitor Center, as well as a smaller lot for the Whitehouse Trail just about .1 mi. north, which is where we parked.
The Whitehouse Trail parallels the Franconia Notch Bike Path and the Pemigewasset river for about half a mile, then joins the bike path to cross over the Pemi on a big wooden bridge. The Liberty Springs trail leaves the bike path shortly after the bridge.
From there it is another half mile or so to where the Flume Slide Trail leaves the Liberty Springs trail.
From the bike path to the base of the Flume Slide itself is some of the easiest and smoothest walking I have encountered on an trail in the Whites. I'm used to roots and rocks in my way even on the flattest trails, but this was flat and largely free of obstacles, aside from 2 unremarkable water crossings. You cross Cascade Brook shortly after leaving the Liberty Springs trail, and then cross Flume Brook Shortly before you reach the base of the Slide. Perhaps these would be trickier in wet weather, but you wouldn't want to climb the Slide in wet weather anyway.
We took a short snack break before we crossed Flume Brook, and then the fun started. The eponymous Slide gains ~1400 feet of elevation in about 3/4ths of a mile, with the bottom 1/3rd of that being loose scree-type stuff, and the remainder a steep, ledgy, slabby mess. While a fall would have hurt on any part of that, there was only one spot where I felt any real sense of danger, and it was largely self-inflicted. The trail is mostly easy to follow (it's there the rocks are and the trrees aren't) but there is one point where it jogs to the right a bit, and I didn't realize. I had to downclimb to get back on track, and descending is not recommended.
We reached the top of the ridge and it was just a quick tenth of a mile to the summit of Mt. Flume. It is small, peaked, and rocky, with sharp dropoffs to the west and excellent views in all directions, including towards Mt. Liberty, our next stop. We didn't spend much time here, because it was small and several other people were coming from the Mt. Liberty side.
Mt. Liberty is just barely more than a mile away along the ridge, and mostly is easy walking, except that it gets steep again just before you reach Liberty's summit. I regretted not taking a longer break on op of Mt. Flume, because I experienced some leg cramping on the way to Libery. We'd made really good time up to this point and I think I just didn't pace myself well. I felt good on the slide, but I should have known that after hiking 4 miles including the Slide, I needed more than a couple minutes of taking pictures as a break. So we just sat down on the side of the trail for about 10 minutes, and then took it a little slower for the quarter mile or so up to the summit of mt Liberty, where we took another, longer break for lunch.
We left Mt. Liberty and followed the Franconia Ridge trail briefly until it met with the Liberty Springs trail. The trail on this part of the ridge is nice smooth walking, and had some cool trees.
About 1/3rd of a mile below the ridge line there is the Liberty Springs Tentsite, which has a composting toilet and a water source and would be another good spot for a break. The rest of the hike down was pretty unremarkable. The Liberty Springs trail has a very moderate grade for its entirety, although it has the typical roots and rocks and tripping hazards of the Whites. But it mostly was an easy cruise to the finish line from here. We got back to the car aroun 3:30pm, with a roughly 7:30 start time for an 8 hour round trip.