Hiking the Great Gulf Wilderness

Thursday, August 12, 2021 

Hi Blog!

On Wednesday, we moved the RV from the woods of Maine into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We are staying at the Twin Mountain KOA. We needed a full-service campground after our week long stay along the East Branch of the Penobscot River. During our stay here in the White Mountains, we hope to hike up the Crawford Path on Sunday and spend the night at the Lakes of Clouds Hut. In order to prepare for our seven mile uphill hike, we wanted to warm up our White Mountains muscles. We decided to explore the Great Gulf Wilderness Trail.

We had last been on this trail back in 2006 when we hiked to all nine of the Appalachian Mountain Huts. Here is Dave today on the amazing swinging bridge across the Peabody River.

The Peabody River rises in Pinkham Notch, on the eastern slopes of Mount Washington. The river flows northeast to the Androscoggin River in Gorham, New Hampshire, collecting tributaries from the Presidential Range to the west and the Carter-Moriah Range to the east. Its most significant tributary is the West Branch of the Peabody River, emerging from Great Gulf, a deep and long glacial cirque surrounded by the peaks of the Presidential Range.

Almost everyone who hikes this trail stops for a photo on the bridge. Here is Kathy circa 2021.

Here is Kathy circa 2006.

The Great Gulf Trail follows the West Branch of the Peabody River. We took a few opportunities to venture off-trail to get a better look at the river. While David took photos of cascading waterfalls, Kathy busied herself collecting blueberries!

We crossed a number of babbling brooks leading down to the the West Branch. With today's high temperatures expected to reach near 90 degrees, we felt cool along the misty moisty banks of the river.

Just before entering the Great Gulf Wilderness, we noticed a brightly painted ammo box tucked under some tree roots. We knew immediately that it must be a geocache. For those not familiar with geocaching, think of it as a game of hide and seek. Folks plant "caches" for other to find and mark the coordinates. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook. The geocacher can sign the lot book with their code name to provide that they found the cache. This was a large ammo box containing lots of trade items. Unfortunately, we brought nothing to trade, so we replaced the box where we found it.

Once we replaced the geocache, Dave posed next to the sign indicating we were entering the Great Gulf Wilderness. This is 20201:

Here is the photo of Dave entering the wilderness in 2006:

We continued our hike up into the wilderness. Click this link to see this video of the West Branch Peabody River as it tumbled down beside out trail. While David was busy taking the video, Kathy was busy dunking her head in the cold stream water.

As we neared the junction with the Osgood Cutoff, we got our first good look at Mt. Madision.

Further along the Cutoff, we were able to look back at Mt. Washington. At one point, we could use our monocular and watch cars going up the Mt. Washington Road.

For a short portion of our hike, we were in the krumholtz. The warm sun helped dry us out a bit from the misty morning.

After three miles, we decided rather than an out and back hike, we would add a small loop by taking the Osgood Cutoff to the Osgood Trail and take Osgood back to the Great Gulf Trail. All of the trail intersections are well signed by the Appalachian Mountain Club.

It is interesting the way the Appalachian Trails runs through the Great Gulf Wilderness. We only hiked about a half a mile on the actual AT. The rest of them time we were on National Forest Trails. Here is a photo of the one white blaze we saw.

We always meet "fun guys" as we hike in the woods. This particular fellow put all others to shame. Here Dave lends a hand to show just how big this big guy was!

We ended our hike with a picnic lunch along the banks of the Peabody River. The famous suspension bridge is over Kathy's shoulder as she points to one of the many rock inuksuks found in the river bed. What you don't see are Kathy's bare feet dangling in the icey cold water. There is nothing better than soaking tired hot feet in cold stream water!

We finished our lunch by the river and walked the last quarter mile or so to our Jeep, realizing for the first time today how hot it is in the full sun.  Our weather apps stated that the high today in this area was 91F.  Yikes!  We knew we were sweating, but we had no idea how hot it was until we were finished.  

Now we're cooling off back at camp, thinking about all the things that this hike reminded us we need to do to prepare for the Crawford Path up to Lakes of the Cloud Hut.  More on that in a future blog entry.