Sunday, August 10 - North Twin Mountain (4761', 11)

I was planning on Washington today, if the weather would cooperate at all. I dawdled as usual and by the time I got in the car, it was about 3 o'clock and totally cloudy. Before I made it out of the driveway, the radio program was interrupted for a severe thunderstorm warning. Yeah, maybe I'll take a pass at Washington. Fortunately, I've got great views of the sky and mountains on the drive, so I wait for inspiration. After 12 minutes I was inspired as I entered the town of Twin Mountain, just at the point where the road runs directly toward the looming masses of the Twin Mountains (North and South, mostly from the north you see north twin. They are the 11th and 9th tallest peaks in NH, respectively and appeared relatively clear, while Washington and the rest of the presidentials were having a kettle drum contest.

I checked my map and drove to the trailhead just a few miles up the road. It's at the end of about 2.5 miles of dirt road heading directly south into the heart of the pemigewasset (pemi) wilderness. From the trailhead, north twin is 4.3 miles and south twin is 1.3 miles past that. I figure that I'd need a time cushion of 6 hours to do both, though I'd hopefully need less than 5. It was 3:30. I brought my headlamp, just in case. I really never planned to do both at this hour, in this weather. It's no big loss not to bag south twin even with it being only 1.3 miles away. It's even closer to Galehead, so it can easily be added when bagging the rest of the many pemi peaks. I'll need up to 12 hours for that 20+ miler. By doing this today, it lets me avoid a 2.6 mile side trip later.

Total 8.6 miles
3:00 exactly elapsed time
1:42 up
1:10 down