Sunday, I went and hiked my first New Hampshire 48 peaks, Flume and Liberty.  We started the day on a connector trail from the parking lot to the Liberty Springs trail, then headed up and turned on to the Flume Slide trail.  As my hiking companion said, this is the trail of lies.  The first 3.4 miles of our hike were lovely, and "flat", climbing about 1200 feet over that distance.  It was quite a lovely trail full of beautiful trees, moss, ferns, etc.  Just what you expect in a forest in the north east.  Then the lies ended and we hit the real trail.

The last half mile or so of the trail is steep.  We started off with a bunch of loose rocks the size of baseballs to cantaloupes being the trail.  I hate hiking on loose rock like this, and it truly reminded me of my least favorite part of the Dix range in NY, the Macomb Slide.  We then reached the section of the trail that makes it one of the "scary 25" trails, the slabs.  These look to be very similar to what I'm used to from the 'Daks.  Pretty straight forward and typical bumps that should work as hand and foot holds.  The problem though was this rock was smooth.  My boots have a hard sole, which is great for most hiking, and after reading an article about microplastics in Lake Tear of the Cloud, better for the environment in general.  The problem though is that these boots are horrible on smooth surfaces like ice.  Well, these slabs were smooth enough that I couldn't get any grip, I couldn't physically get up the slabs.  Nor could my hiking partner reasonably get up them.  We had to bail and do the herd paths around the side.  I hated doing that, but that was the reality of the hike and the only safe way we could make it up.  If I do this trail again in the future, rock climbing shoes would make it doable.

We got past the slabs, and still had a couple tenths of a mile to go, including one scramble that was much like a natural staircase in the rock.  We hit the ridge trail (Osseo Trail) a short scramble, and we were on top of Flume.  Damn.  What a veiw, and what a hike it was to get my first 48er.  We snacked a bit while enjoying the view, and then we headed over to Liberty on the ridge trail.  This was a typical ridge walk.  A bit of down, a bit of up, and nothing horribly difficult other than short scrambles on the very tops of the peaks.  Liberty was again a beautiful peak, wide open, 360 views, and a bit less windy than Flume was.  We snacked up, met a few of the grey jays that live in the area, and started our exit.  The short distance on the ridge trail had a couple great views of Liberty at the start, and then we hit the Liberty Springs/AT trail down.

The trail down was more annoying than anything technically difficult.  The trail was full of rocks, most of which you could trust, but you had to pick your way down wisely.  Not quite as bad as walking down/up a stream, but getting close to that.  According to my hiking partner, this is the kind of trail she's used to seeing in the area.  We stopped at Liberty Springs, which is a spring and camp site.  There has been a problematic bear in the area, so there were signs everywhere about food and bear safety.  This is also a camp site run by AMC, so to camp there you have to pay $15 a night.  What does that get you?  A relatively clean site and outhouse, and multiple campers that may or may not be people you want to camp with.  Is it worth it?  I don't know, but it's good to know that if you're going to plan to camp, it may cost some money.  Needless to say, the rest of the hike out was uneventful and we made it back to the car just under 9 hours after we started.

9.2 miles and 3688 feet over 8 hours and 52 minutes bringing me to 258 miles and 11.5 miles of elevation over 166 hours this year.  This also brings me to 2/48 and 50/115.