Flume to Liberty Loop
Hiking in New Hampshire - 4000er High Peaks Hike in New Hampshire.
Stats
| Flume Parking to Liberty Spring Trail | .8mi | 100ft | 20 min |
| Juction to Flume Slide Trail | 1.4 mi | 950 ft | 1 hr |
| Franconia Ridge Trail | 3.3 mi | 2450 ft | 2 hr 25 min |
| Flume Summit | .1 mi | 100 ft | 5 min |
| Liberty Summit | 1.2 mi | 650 ft | 35 min |
| Liberty Spring Trail | 1.5 mi | downhill | 10 min |
| Bike Trail | 2.9 mi | downhill | 1 hr 30 min |
| Flume Parking | .8 | downhill | 15 min |
| TOTALS | 11.2 mi | 4250 ft | 6 hours 30 min |
The hike starts out on the bike path and seems kind of confusing on where the actual trail begins. The Liberty Spring Trail heads off the the right. The climb to the junction of the Flume Slide Trail is moderately steep and did not seem to long. Once on the Flume Slide Trail the terrrain is mostly level on a slight incline. This is where we made most of our time cruising pretty fast.
Just as we thought that the trail was going to be easy the pitch turned skyward. The next mile was straight up with lots of open rock scrambling. This part of the trip is a little exhausting and took a lot of effort. It seemed like forever untill we reached the Franconia Ridge Trail. Once there we reached the sumitt for some lunch. The sumitt was very windy and also very beautiful.
We trekked over to Liberty Mountain at first along the ridge then down between the two mountains and then up for another 650 verticle feet. The view on top of Liberty were great and a camera is a must. This sumitt was very crowded. The return trip was down Liberty Spring Trail and was moderately steep downhill. It was refreshing to finally reach the pavement for the walk back to the car.