expedition_retirement | Crawford Notch State Park (Reply)

In planning for this trip, I had trouble figuring out what trails we wanted to hike and what we wanted to see on those hikes. Part of that was a complete unfamiliarity with the region and the terrain, and some of it was difficulty assessing our hiking ability, since we hadn't been hiking for a couple of years. As a result, we arrived in New Hampshire without any concrete plans, and I would spend every evening researching our hikes for the next day.

After we settled into our unit that first evening, I was trying to find some hikes that would be sufficiently challenging without being too strenuous for us. On our drive in, we had passed through the Crawford Notch State Park and I had noticed some trailhead parking areas for some waterfalls, so I thought that might be a good place to start. As I looked for information about waterfall hikes in the park, I came across a state park blog post about hiking to 8 waterfalls in a single day. These hikes were reasonably close together, and sounded like they would be within our ability to do, so that formed the nucleus of my plan. I was also looking at maps, and decided that we could probably add Gibbs Falls (an additional waterfall suggested at the end of that blog post) to our agenda for the day.

Armed with that plan, we set out in the morning and drove up to the top of Crawford Notch, parking at the train depot at the top of the pass. Here, we walked across the tracks to the trailhead for our first hike, which was to take us to our first two waterfalls, the Beecher and Pearl Cascades (we would be doing the falls in the reverse order from the blog). The hike to the Beecher Cascade was about a half mile, and wasn't terribly strenuous, with a smallish, but pretty cascade our reward for our effort. We continued up the trail for another tenth of a mile to the Pearl Cascade. Both falls were clearly marked with signs, which was good, because the Pearl Cascade was essentially dry, with just the merest trickle of water. Without the signage, I'm not sure we would have seen it for what it was. Having reached this destination, we turned to retrace our steps, but before we made it back to the depot, we decided to turn at a trail junction and climb up to the overlook on Mount Willard. My hiking app showed this as a moderate hike, and, at just over 3 miles each way, seemed like a reasonable test of our hiking abilities without risking it being too much. The trail started out relatively easy, but soon turned into an almost continuous climb that eventually brought us out to a clifftop on the south side of the mountain with amazing views down into the Notch, with the highway, river, and train tracks visible below us. After taking in the views and catching our breath, it was time to retrace our steps back to the depot. On the way down, my right knee started to bother me, an indication that I was approaching the limit of my ability to sustain this pace and pitch.

After returning to the depot, we cross the road and did the 1.2 mile round trip hike out and back to see the Gibbs Falls, another pretty cascade fall. This hike presented not unusual difficulties, and we returned to the depot without any issues. We then drove about a mile down the highway back the way we had come in the morning, stopping at a pull-out parking area to check out the Flume and Silver Cascades, which plunge down the mountainside next to the road, before the streams cross under the highway to connect to the Saco River on the other side. These falls required no real hiking, being readily visible from the side of the highway, and we were soon on our way down into the valley.

We stopped to eat our lunch in a picnic area at the Willey House Historic Site. After eating, we took a peak inside the visitor center here, and had a chat with the volunteer working there before heading off to our next hike. The trailhead parking area for the Ripley Falls was full, with cars parked along both shoulders of the access road for several hundred feet. We turned around in the parking area and found a spot to park on the shoulder facing back down to the highway and set off on our 1 mile round trip hike to the falls. This hike started with a short climb to the railroad tracks, then after crossing the tracks, we continued to climb up to the falls. We liked Ripley Falls, with its short free drop at the top, and long cascade down a sloping rock face for the rest of the drop. It was dramatically different than the other falls we'd seen earlier in the day, and we spend a little time here just enjoying the view before retracing our steps back to the car.

Our final hike of the day was to take us to three more waterfalls. After parking and walking to the trailhead, we again crossed the railroad tracks and entered the woods. At the first trail junction, we turned off the more heavily traveled trail on to the Bemis Brook Trail. This trail began easily enough, with a moderate but not steep climb, and we saw a lovely small cascade into the Fawn Pool before we reached the Coliseum Falls. From here, the trail would become steeper and somewhat more strenuous, but the hike the rest of the way to Bemis Falls really wasn't too bad. But after Bemis Falls, the trail turned and went straight up hill in a scramble over rocks and tree roots in a climb that felt like it would never end. When we rejoined the main trail, we had to stop for a few minutes and catch our breath before we continued on to our final destination, the Arethusa Falls. The trail continued to climb until just before the falls, when it dropped back down to the stream bed at the base of the falls. Arethusa Falls was another nice cascade fall, but the late afternoon sun was above and behind the falls, which made it challenging to photograph. Soon enough, it was time to begin the one and half mile hike back down to the trailhead and our waiting car. From here, we drove back to our accommodations, bringing our first day to an end.

We visited nine waterfalls (although one was basically dry) over the course of the day, with four different hikes, with a total distance of almost 11 miles and a vertical height of around 4,000 feet. That was an ambitious first day, but it also showed us our limits, and helped us plan for the rest of the trip.