My favorite mountain

July 19th 2014
Pine Bend Brook Tr. 4 miles
Mt Tripyramid Tr. 1.4 miles
Kate Sleeper Tr. 2.5 miles
Downes Brook Tr 0.8 miles
Rollins Tr 2.8 miles
Walden Tr. 2.8 miles
Lawrence Tr. 2.8 miles
Bee Line Tr. 3 miles
Champney Falls Tr. 3.2 miles ~ 25miles

Me and Rich met at the Champney Falls trailhead at 7 am. We left one car there and drove to Pine Bend Brook trailhead and started hiking around 7:30.
The first couple miles went fast with only couple of stops. It was a nice day and we were going fast. We passed couple of other hikers when it started to get steeper. We reached the first peak pretty quickly. Short walk on the slide was one of the highlights of the day. I almost missed to cut off and went down the slide! thankfully Rich was there to guide me back on trail lol.
The walk on Kate Sleeper trail was one of the nicest, there are a lot of blow downs, and i mean A LOT! After the hurricane there is still a lot of damage to the trail but most of the work is already done and its easily passable. We went through both peaks taking some quick picks and found ourselves on the Whiteface ledges not long after that.
Funny because both of us thought that thats where the summit of the mountain was. I have hiked this mountain before but it was 3 years ago and i totally forgot that the summit was a little further back with no views. We were surprised when we met 5 people all gathered near the view less summit down the road. At that time i remember the spot from previous hike, silly us thinking we were the only ones on the summit and nobody cared to check it out and just passed the ledges.
We followed Rollins trail to the summit of Passaconaway. We missed the Dicey's Mill cutoff and went to the summit through Walden trail. There once more we met the group from summit of Whiteface. It turned out they were hiking up Tripyramids and Sleepers as well that day.
From the summit we followed Walden trail down to Lawrence trail towards mount Paugus. That part of the hike was in deep woods with little light reaching from the sky, there were a lot of leaves on the trail and some parts had a lot of low growing foliage. I did not like that area much, it reminded me of my unsuccessful hike to Passaconaway through Big Rock Cave and Square Ledge from previous year.
I was also getting tired and even though my body felt fine my mind was telling me it was time for a nap. I was happy when we reached Lawrence trail intersection and couldnt wait for Paugus ledges to come.
We initially had a plan to bushwack real summit of Paugus but when we got to the outlook area we were too tired to go for it. It did look like a tough wack and i did not feel like spending additional hour to do that.
We decided to head for the Bee Line Trail and focusing on our last mountain of the day.
It turned out the whole hike was going to be a little over 25 miles and not 20 as Rich told me before, and that we were going to finish in the dark.
I do not have much experience in hiking in the dark so i wasnt to happy to hear that but there was not much to do about it. I had the headlight and it was going to be only around 30 min.
When we slowly started approaching Chocorua summit i was tired. I decided not to take any breaks and just went for the final approach. It was much cooler at that time and when i finally reached the peak i put extra clothes on. I think this was the only time there was nobody else there on the summit at the same time, it was around 7:30 and we were on the trail for 12 hrs at that time.
I was glad Rich had his filtration system with him and we could get some extra water throughout the hike. My 2.8 liters were not nearly enough to last through that long day. I also almost ate all of my food prepared for this day.
We spend around 15 min on the summit but i was eager to go down, even though Chocorua is one of my favorites i did not want to get stranded on the mountain during the dark.
The walk down was not too bad and we soon heard the sound of the Champney Falls. I did not see much of it because it was getting to dark.
I was pretty happy when we got the the parking lot. It was 9 pm and i had 3 hrs drive home ahead of me.
Thankfully i did feel fine and with some help of strong coffee and made it home safely.
I was a little wind up and had trouble falling asleep but finally around 2 am my head hit the pillow.
It was a fine day of hiking, the longest hike up to day for me and i felt great knowing my body is in great shape for even more!!!