The plan:
-Tuckerman's Ravine, but only to the ravine. I had never been there, and was curious to stand at the base of it and take a look around.
-then, take the Boott Spur Link
-summit Boott Spur
-return on the Boott Spur Trail
Big Big adventure.
We arrived pretty early at a packed Pinkham Notch Visitor's Center, and I was somewhat carsick because Eric had driven hastily over Hurricane Mountain Road, which is like a roller coaster. Gross. Either way, Eric hustled off to his class, and Ellen and I took to the hills.
Overall, my rating of the Tuckerman's Ravine Trail to the actual Ravine is not terribly high. After passing by the Crystal Cascades- which were lovely, the trail was not terribly exciting.
It would be a high quality winter trail though- gradual and wide. Ellie and I saw a decent number of hikers both ascending to Washington and descending from their backpacking adventures.
Anyway, we ambled along, enjoyed the day, and appreciated that the river crossings were very well bridged. (the water was low, but these crossings still looked tricky!) As we got closer, we caught a view of where we were headed.
After passing by the hut, the trail got super steep! We definitely got a good warm up for the rest of the day in this section.
It was pretty cool checking out the Ravine. It was steeper than any photo gives it credit for, and certainly looked like it would be a long and damp climb to get out of there.
After checking it out, we made our way back DOWN the steepness to the next step off our day.
The Boott Spur link trail was easy to find, down by the large hut. Many people were there, but for the remainder of my day, I only saw 4 people (yay, goal accomplished! Always striving to take the quiet road.)
Let me tell you WHAT. The Boott Spur Link is STEEP. SO VERY STEEP. After a short time, I looked DOWN to see where we had come from and I was like F**K!!!
This is a terrible photo but that is the hut that I JUST came from. Ellie was leaping and bounding and pumped about the steep ascent- but even SHE was panting. I was laboring along like a 96 year old woman and kept stopping to say "SHIT! TOO STEEP!" It was steep. THE END.
We climbed, and climbed and popped above treeline and climbed MORE! For a hot minute I was thinking that the above treeline section of the link was one of the most exposed/steep trails that I had been on in a while. Then, thankfully, it settled down.
Once on the actual Boott Spur trail there was still a good bit of climbing to go, but it was on a somewhat more reasonable incline. And it was beautiful! Definitely a gorgeous vantage point, and so so quiet on this particular day.
After summiting, we took a few minutes for a snack and a sit-down. I hadn't calculated how much total elevation we would be doing in this hike, but at this point I was thinking "a lot"- especially for a medium distance hike.
Descending, more steepness, as one would expect. Still a really cool trail though, very pretty and very enjoyable.
We were beat at the end of this monster day.
You think to yourself- "it's not going to be that bad, we aren't even technically tagging any summits!" But this one is a good workout. Definitely a great one if you want to get above treeline without a huge crowd, and a good training hike for SURE. Lots of VERT. Also, very very pretty, from the waterfall, to the views of both Tucks and Huntington's ravine- really impressive!
THEN Ellie and I went to the local brewery for a burger and the weirdest stranger interaction story of the summer happened! This random man and his children wandered over to see Ellie while I was eating (all good!) but then when I got out of my seat to let the kids interact, the father STOLE my seat and spend twenty minutes telling me about how amazing he was. He was good at: running, getting covid, overcoming covid ("Overcoming things is what I am BEST AT!!") hiking, and just everything- from what I was told. Want to know what he was not good at? Letting me eat my lunch (I should have just told him to get out of my chair, I hate that I fell into the trap of having to "be nice" because that is shit.) I eventually grabbed my plate and kept on eating while saying "oh wow. that is great. so much skill." Jesus Christ. One might have thought that he was looking for a new spouse, but his existing spouse was at an adjacent table, and my conclusion was that he really LOVED himself and wanted all the strangers to know about the greatness. Ellen and I were not sad to make new friends once they left, and we immediately became friends with a couple who had Rhodesian Ridgebacks (who kindly allowed me to eat AND listen to their stories, hahah...)
Stats:
Miles: 7.8
Elevation: 4028 (not flat) (plus you gain like 800 feet in less than a half mile on that stupid link)
Fun: A solid 8.5- good weather, amazing views, a heck of a workout
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