Saturday I went up Abraham and Ellen for my second and third of the VT-5.  The weather forecast was for cold weather with a possibility of snow.  Well, that wasn't wrong, but I was overdressed.  The trail in starts right away with the uphill, with no warm up.  The leaves have fallen, but the trail was well traveled so it wasn't hard to follow or extra slippery.  About 0.7 miles in, I stop and strip off the upper layers.  I was dripping sweat, and I didn't want to be wet when I got to the top in another 2 miles.

To continue my NE111 quest, I branched out of NY once again and hit the closest peak in Vermont, Killington.  The trail up was quite lovely.  It was a long relatively flat wooded trail that ranged from trail width to forest road and was an absolute pleasure to hike.  The mile or so of up to the AT/LT was steady, but nothing difficult.  Up to this point is was mostly dirt with some interspersed rocks for trail.

Today I lead a hike up Mt. Adams Fire Tower.  This is one of the harder fire towers to go up.  It starts off on the east river trail, which is quite pleasant for the first mile.  Then you come to the observer's cabin and the trail which is where the trail starts to climb.  It starts easy and then the last mile is just like a high peak with steep slabs and eroded trail for most of the last mile up.  It's a lot of work, but it is soooo worth it.  We had the perfect day for the hike.  Slight chill at the base, but the hike in took care of that.

The North East 111 comprises of the ADK 46ers, 2 of the Catskill 3500 in New York, 5 peaks in Vermont, 48 peaks in New Hampshire, and 14 peaks in Maine.

Last week, I did 3 hikes that if you just looked at the top line numbers, you'd say they are 3 very similar hikes:

Flume and Liberty: 8.8 miles, 3677 feet. (9.2, 3688 by GPS, 1.0 MPH pace)
Garfield: 9.5 miles, 3079 feet. (9.7, 3061 by GPS, 1.4 MPH pace)
Tom, Field, and Willey: 8.9 miles, 3583 feet. (9.6, 3615 by GPS, 1.2 MPH pace)

Wednesday, we awoke to near freezing temperatures.  The weather was predicted to be below freezing wind chills on top of Cannon and the Kinsmen that day, and the peaks are exposed peaks.  We called an audible and went to Tom, Field, and Willey instead since they would not be exposed peaks.  This trail started at a station for the Conway Scenic Railway, and an AMC facility, parking though was on the road.  We saw frost covered fields on the way in to the trailhead, and it was a brisk 34 degrees F when we parked the car.

Monday we decided to go easy and go up Garfield which is typically sold as one of the easier peaks.  This was the Garfield trail the whole way up and down with a hint of the AT on the ridge.  This hike started with a small disaster for me.  I didn't turn off the bite valve on my bladder, and when we got to the trailhead, 2.5 of the 3 L had leaked into the seat.  Thankfully, just a short distance down the road was a stream that I could fill up from.

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.

This coming week, I'll be heading out to New Hampshire to do some hiking with a friend. This is going to be interesting. I've heard/read that the trails are not that dissimilar from the Adirondacks in that they also are old and in many places just follow the fall line of the peak. We shall see how true that is. While this will be my first time hiking the Whites, my hiking companion has hiked some before, and this is her reciprocating hiking I took her on in the 'Daks last year.

Over the month of September, I have been leading ADK hikes in the local area after work on Wednesday nights.  These all have been short (under 3 miles) with little elevation that can easily be done in an hour or so.  Overall these seem to have been well received, and I will be continuing this, but in the spring.  There probably will be a couple short local hikes, like maybe exploring the North end of Thatcher, on weekend days but nothing too intense.