Owls Head Mountain

 I’ve been hoping to go back to Owls Head as it is an interesting 4,000’ peak.  It is quite remote with a 7-8 mile approach which can mostly be run.  The final mile after the approach features over 1,500’ of climb.  I’ve done Owls Head three times with two successful visits to the summit (one time we bailed very close to the summit as my feet were getting VERY cold and darkness was quickly approaching).  D-la (David Lapierre) is working on the 4,000’ peaks in New Hampshire and we got to talking about this peak.  I’m always game for an adventure!  I’ve been stuck at 30 of the 4k peaks and hadn’t been up a new one since 2016.  This adventure wouldn’t get me another peak on the list but it’d be fun heading out into the wilderness again.

The day started on a scary note as I drove to Hooksett to meet up with Dave.  There were patches of black ice and a number of cars off the road.  We met up and the final 60 miles up route 93 took us nearly 2 hours as conditions did not improve.  We got to Lincoln Woods and found the parking lot coated with snow and only two other cars in the lot.  It was snowing and temps hovered around 30 degrees.  We quickly got our gear together and headed out.

There were no footprints in the couple of inches of snow on the ground as we made our way the first 2.5 miles on the old railroad bed (Lincoln Woods trail) and turned onto the Black Pond trail.  We had decided that we’d do the slightly shorter version of the standard approaches.  The Black Pond route involves about 1 mile of bushwhacking and notes from a few weeks ago noted the path was pretty easy to follow.  This would cut a little bit of mileage but more importantly it would cut five stream crossings including the sometimes difficult Franconia Brook crossing.  We’d still have three stream crossings but that were all (usually) do-able.

We trotted along for the first 2.5 miles getting warmed up and getting into a groove.  We had a couple of pauses on the Black Pond trail as it wasn’t entirely clear where the trail went, we were able to spot blazes that kept us on track.  The snow was still coming down pretty hard and there was probably 4+ inches on the ground.

At 3.5 miles we reached the end of the Black Pond trail and had no luck finding the bushwhack (although Strava showed that we initially had it before turning back and trying a different direction).  I was pretty confident that I could navigate the very open woods.  This was a fairly easy route as you could not go wrong basically following the compass north.  Worst case was drifting too far to the west but that was uphill so I kept us more northeast knowing we’d hit either Franconia brook to the east or Lincoln brook blocking us from going further north.  We ended up going almost exactly parallel to the real bushwhack location and hit Lincoln brook within 50 meters of where the trail crossed!

We were now at 4.6 miles and had another 2.5 miles on the Lincoln Brook trail before reaching the base of the mountain.  The going was slow.  The snow made it really hard to tell what you were stepping in.  Sometimes we had solid ground, sometimes mud, and rarely a bit of ice.  We both used poles the entire run which definitely helped but also both got wet feet (and hands).  We reached the stream crossing and made it across with little problem.  Crossing Lincoln brook a little later was a bit more challenging.  The snow covered rocks often hid a layer of ice.  The poles came in handing.  Dave very nearly went in when he stretched into a near split instead of taking a leap.  I thought for sure he was going to fall backwards but he managed it.  Soon after we could tell we were very close but despite careful going we never saw the Brutus bushwhack.  We also went by the slide although I knew we were close (the boulders give it away).  Dave checked his phone and we were maybe 100 meters beyond the slide.  We went back and found the reasonably obvious path heading up.

Now it was time to make a decision.  We were 2:32 into our run and a little over 7 miles done.  In good conditions the last 1 mile to the top would take a little under an hour, if we had any trouble finding the path we could be looking at it taking us 3 hours round trip to get up/down the final 1,500’.  After that we’d still have another 2.5 hours getting back to the car.  I think it was a pretty easy decision to make as both of us had cold hands and feet.  Getting up we’d probably stay plenty warm but coming down would be a long cold haul.  Decision made, time to turn around and head back.

We were pretty steady on the run back even a little bit quicker on the stream crossings as the worry about getting we was lower as we were heading back.  It was also a bit easier doing the bushwhack as we followed our footprints (which were only just barely visible as it was STILL snowing).  We only had a couple of quick stops for equipment adjustments (I had a frozen zipper on my tights that meant that my left ankle was exposed, but two pair of high socks made it nothing worse than a bit of flapping).  We also had to stop for a couple of minutes at the construction site on the Lincoln Brook trail where they are rebuilding a section that has had some serious wear issues.  We were back at the parking lot in just under 5 hours.  My ankle had been screaming at me the last hour-hour and a half of the run.  It was pretty swollen.  Not too surprising as the worst thing for my ankle is rough footing and there isn’t much rougher than trail/bushwhack in snow!

So, I’ll add Owls Head to my list of unsuccessful summit bids.  I’ve attempted and bailed on 14 peaks.  Six of those I went back to and was successful.  As the saying goes “The mountains will always be there, the trick is to make sure you are too”.  Dave had a very positive attitude about the trip and I’m looking forward to going back there and getting to the summit.