Grid: Passaconaway->N Tripyramid

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Miles: 15.76

Start: Olivarian Brook TH

End: Pine Bend Brook TH

Elevation gain/loss: 5440’/5197′

Peaks: Passaconaway, Whiteface, East Sleeper, West Sleeper; South, Middle, and North Tripyramid

After a big day yesterday, I started out from the Olivarian Brook trailhead at 7:45am, covering myself in bug spray first. The bugs were aggressive and got me moving quite quickly out the gate. The first mile or two were mostly flat, and then the trail started to climb sharply. It hit up to a 35% grade, and I was dripping sweat down my arms and legs in the morning heat in short order. I made the summit of Passaconaway by 10am, stopped off at the stream to filter up a liter, and passed by the Whiteface summit somewhere around 11:15am.

Then it was an easy trail down and over to East Sleeper, around some blow-downs, over West Sleeper, and then a scramble up the top of the South Tripyramid slide. There wasn’t much leaf cover yet and I ended up getting a mild sunburn from the exposure in this section. Coming down South Tri, there was some snow, but coming down from North Tri, the snow went on for at least half a mile and had turned into a very slick surface. I ran out of water as I descended Pine Bend Brook, but I was okay to just finish out my hike. I’d forgotten just how rocky and technical this ridge is, with all of the snow hikes I done over the winter; I was slower on many sections (especially the Pine Bend Brook descent) than I am in winter.

It was 90 at the road when I finished around 3pm, and I stuck out my thumb to hitch back to my car 3.5 miles away. It took 30 minutes for someone to stop, but I really didn’t want to walk/run the hot asphalt.