Welcome to Fall 2017 hiking

Well the fall equinox will be occurring around 4:02 PM. Its been a good hiking summer for me after a string of rainy Saturdays early in the season. Overall the temps were much more reasonable then recent years. In recent years we had extended record high temp stretches that pretty well curtailed my hiking until a cool down. I remember a stretch of Directissima attempts, including Mats second attempt that unfortunately lined up with stretches of record heat and probably were the reason why they didn't get completed. Looks like this summer was the time to do it as we didn't have them.

That cool down around Labor Day with bit of snow on Katahdin Labor Day weekend had me thinking we would have an early fall and looking out the window the leaves sure look like it but the forecast sure doesn't look like it for this weekend and into next week.

I will take typical fall hiking over typical summer hiking anytime. No bugs and usually visibilities are much better.

Agreed. The Webster-Jackson loop today was very fine. The rest of the world agrees, too. I got an early start and scored a proper parking space near the trailhead. I saw people coming up every few minutes on the way down. When I got down at noon, there were cars up and down 302. Lafayette Place was a zoo, with cars parked up and down 93 for a mile on each side - worst I've ever seen.

Not a whole lot of foliage yet, but the lower section of Webster-Jackson had plenty of maple leaves on the trail.

My gf and I did the Tripyramid loop trails up North slide and down South. Not too many people on the trail, 4 or 5, but more people at the summits of North and Middle Pyramid peakbagging from the Kanc. Livermore road was covered with dry leaves on our way to the parking lot off Tripoli road, it wasn’t on the way up. Parking lot was mostly full when we finished around 2:30. Only two other cars when we started up at 7:30am. Did get our seasonal passes to the WMNF renewed while we were in Lincoln and stopped into Mountain Wanderings to buy a book. Traffic on the Kanc is still full of tourists staring at the mountains and not paying attention to their driving.

egilbe said:

Traffic on the Kanc is still full of tourists staring at the mountains and not paying attention to their driving.

Click to expand...

Regardless of the state of the leaves, the roads are full of people (largely, but not exclusively with Mass plates) driving slowly and without much attention--11 last weekend, 101 today. People should pretty much figure on leaf peeper traffic on everything but the freeways for the next while.

Looking around Gorham/Berlin area, the leaves are at peak this weekend.

I think the rain last weekend helped topull out the colors, or maybe its the arrival of cool weather, finally.

peakbagger said:

Looking around Gorham/Berlin area, the leaves are at peak this weekend.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the first-hand info. That's good news. I thought the peak colors would be farther south by now.

Cool, that's a slower change than I anticipated. Columbus Day weekend I was in the northern presis, and the foliage was nearly peak to the north of the range (with the birches in the ravines still bright yellow and the maples below almost uniformly orange). Some very photogenic early color (mixed with green) in the notches and southward; I was guessing the best spots this weekend would be south as far as Chocorua already.

Last weekend the trailheads were all overflowing on Saturday but the rain (and a tremendous wind above treeline) meant nearly-empty lots by Sunday afternoon.

This past Monday things were almost at peak as we left the 100 Mile Wilderness. The drive to Millinocket was beautiful!

I di a loop hike in the Warren area (Three Ponds, Mt Kineo and Hubbard Brook Trails) hard to beat the colors in the woods, there is some leaf drop but still great

Did a hike up Carr Mountain on Monday. Wife & I saw nobody all day. No views off summit unless your tall and stand on the removed fire tower stairs. Still a good hike kicking through dry leaves all day. There was some good fall color too, and no people.