IS it possible to bushwhack from...

Is it possible to bushwhack from somewhere near the summit of Mt. Hale toward the North Twin trail? I've never been on the north side of the Twinway and was trying to plan a trip that bags Hale in conjunction with another peak that I need. Any help would be great. Thanks. LD

The abandoned firewarden's trail does drop down to the Little River, where you could then pick up the North Twin Trail, but I'm not sure that'd be the most efficient way to do it... there would be out-and-back involved, as well as substantial elevation loss. To top it off, the abandoned trail can be hard to pick up from on high.

There is a deep river valley between Hale and North Twin. A two car thing would work well for a Point to Point Trail and Bushwack.Go up Hale Brook via the Zealand road to top of Hale. Take old Fire Warden's trail down the West side of Hale to the Little River. Continue West and gain the North Twin trail to the top of North Twin. All kinds of variations exist. Mike Dickerman wrote of a trip Guy Waterman did years ago into that area. He basically Basecamped up in the Little River Valley and his itineary went something like this.Day one set up Basecamp in Little River valley.Day two a bushwack up the head (South)end of the Valley to the Bonds. Day Three A Bushwack up the Eastern side of the The Twins. Day Four Backup the End of the River Valley to Zealand over to the Zealand Hut. Day Five Lend a Hand Trail to Hale. Day Six a bushwack East over the Willey,Feild, and Tom Range. Donot quote me exactly on that being his exact Itineary but I know it was "CLOSE" to that. I do know for sure it was all done in Winter and Solo.It was all part of his successful attempt to climb all the 48 in winter from all four points of the compass. 48 x 4 = 192 ! Think of some of the hikes he must of had. From what I understand he did alot of it back in the 60's and 70's before alot of Winter hiking was going on. Talk about trail breaking.

A couple of years ago a friend and I did a circuit hike on the Twin/Guyot ridge we had thought of for a long time. We went in the North Twin Trail to N. Twin, over to S. Twin, on to Guyot, then Zealand, finishing on Hale, down the Firewarden's Trail and back to our car. It was a long day, but well worth the effort.

Thanks!!

Thanks for the responses...they really helped. LD

Yes,

of course. It just depends on how much you can take.

Lend-a-Hand to N. Twin Trail bushwack

In order to combine summits for the 4k list we were working on my wife, dog and I did the aforementioned bushwack one August about 15 years ago. It was fairly simple to do. After ascending Hale via Hale Brook we begain a descent via Lend a Hand to just about the spot where the trail turns to go SSE after a short jog to the west (about the 3600' contour.) It is the easiest spot apart from the summit to pinpoint your location and allowed us to avoid most of the spruce/fir higher up. Though there was a bit of thrashing required initially, the evergreens gave way to hardwoods fairly quickly. We didn't follow a very strict bearing but I was generally aiming for the spot where the N Twin trail crosses to the west side of Little River just before commencing the climb toward N. Twin (at 1.9 mi in the guidebook description.) There is probably no way you can go wrong with this bushwack because you have the trail and the river both as collecting features no matter where you come out. If you come out a bit too far to the south, as we did, you just follow the river downstream until you come to the trail crossing (we weren't more than a couple of hundred yards off and there was an old logging railroad grade to follow for the entire distance anyway.) If you come out a bit too far to the north you will intersect the trail downstream from the crossing.

So just pick the best route down that approximates your general bearing. It allows you to avoid the occasional little ledge drop or boulder field that you might encounter as well as any area of blowdowns without having to worry much about losing your line. One interesting discovery was an area about half way down that consisted of a two acre birch glade with largely fern ground cover that was one of the biggest moose yards I've ever walked through.

I definitely recommend it.

dms said:

A couple of years ago a friend and I did a circuit hike on the Twin/Guyot ridge we had thought of for a long time. We went in the North Twin Trail to N. Twin, over to S. Twin, on to Guyot, then Zealand, finishing on Hale, down the Firewarden's Trail and back to our car. It was a long day, but well worth the effort.

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Dennis, you don't say if you went by the hut or bushwhacked from the summit of Zealand to the swamp on Lend-a-Hand which I did once, sort of moderate scrub.

Roy, we wanted to go to the cliff for the views since we were "in the neighborhood", and it was a spectacular day weatherwise, so we felt that it was worth the effort, rather than the bushwack route.