NH 48 4000 footers: Owls Head

Sunday, September 17, 2017
Start: 13 Falls campsite
End: Lincoln Woods Visitor Center
Miles: 12.9
Ascent/Descent: 2569’/3615′
Listened to: Nancy Podcast, Hidden Brain, 99% Invisible, Welcome to Nightvale

I was up at 6am and on trail by 7am. I crossed Franconia Branch river and followed Lincoln Brook Trail just under 4 miles to the Owls Head path, where I dropped my pack to do the spur trail.

Not easy to miss, as there are cairns on both sides of Lincoln Brook Trail, indicating the start of the path to one side

Owls Head path

From there, I climbed up a few tenths of a mile to the Owls Head slide. This section had beautiful views of Franconia Ridge, with Lincoln, Lafayette, Little Haystack and Liberty all visible.

It was also steep and had treacherous footing for around half of the ~1 mile to the summit.

 The terrain of the top half of the trail was nice, though there were a fair number of fallen trees to deal with. As with so many NH 4000 footers, the peak was a pile of rocks on a completely tree’d-in summit…

Once summiting, I headed back down to my pack. All said and done, it took me 2 hours to do the ~2 miles of the spur trail. The terrain requires that level of caution with each footstep for the crumbly, steep ascent and descent. Once I was back down, I grabbed my pack and hoofed it towards Lincoln Woods, following Lincoln Brook trail to its intersection with Franconia Brook trail, and then Lincoln Woods trail back to the parking lot. During the hike, I crossed both Lincoln Brook and Franconia Branch a number of times, all the while successfully remaining dry!