The Pemi Loop

Kylie and I are staying in the North East for a few weeks and we are trying to take full benefit of being close to beautiful mountains. After consulting our good friend, Matt S., for a few hikes in the NH area, we decided to hike the Pemi Loop since it was a short drive for us. The plan was to hike the loop from Friday night to Sunday, and our sore legs now confirm that it is exactly what we did.

We started from the Liberty Springs trailhead in the dark and hiked to the Liberty Springs tentsite. Kylie and I scored the last 2 spots on the wooden platform sites and cowboy camped. The next morning, we caught nice views at Mount Liberty, and then made our way clockwise on the loop. The remainder of the western ridge – Little Haystack, Mt. Lincoln, Mt. Truman, and Mt. Lafayette continued to offer us stupendous views of the surrounding peaks and ridges. We ran into many day hikers at Mt. Garfield. While there was no view at Galehead mountain, South Twin made up for it. The hike from here to Mt. Guyot and Guyot campsite was easy. Again, we got the last wooden platform spot. We did a quick out and back to West Bond for stellar views. At camp, we MacGyerved our non-free standing tent on the wooden platform.

The next morning, we enjoyed amazing sunrise views on the Bondcliffs – the highlight of the trip for me. The descent to the bottom and the flat walk on the old railroad grade on Lincoln Woods trail was easy. The next parts – i.e. the climb to Mt. Flume and the descent on the Flume Slide trail – were not easy. The view at Mt. Flume was nice. Overall, we lucked out with beautiful weather the whole weekend. Here’s our route on Caltopo: https://caltopo.com/m/L3H3 . Our splits were 3, 15, and 17 miles with total elevation gain of 13.3k ft.

One tip: Going down the Flume Slide trail is not a good idea. In the first 0.6 miles of the descent, you lose 1,500 ft.

-Karan