North and South Hancock

It's been a while since I last made a post on this blog, which is now becoming more of a status report for our quest to complete the 4000 footers of the White Mountains. I'm back today to report that we have not given up, and that yesterday we knocked off two more mountains on our list: North and South Hancock. This time around, the hiking group contained Katy, myself, my brother Brian, and my sister Maureen. We almost had a bigger group, but a few who were wavering dropped out at the last minute.

The weather forecast for yesterday contained warm temperatures with a chance of sun, chance of clouds, chance of showers, and chance of thunderstorms. Essentially, anything, which is pretty standard for the white mountains, so the hike was on. We all met in Westborough at 6:30AM and headed north from there under cloudy skies, leaving at about 7:00AM. We made one stop on the way up, for Brian's apparently traditional pre-hike Egg McMuffin, and made it to the trailhead at around 9:30AM.

The Hancocks are located just south of the Pemigewasset Wilderness, with the trailhead on the Kancamagus Highway. It's a total 10 mile hike with a loop over both peaks, but much of the trail is quite level. We probably went up only about 1000 feet of elevation in the first 3.5 miles before an extremely steep final half mile to the North peak's summit which went up another 1000 feet of elevation all on its own. We did not encounter any rain, and it was quite warm, even at the peaks. However, it was heavily overcast all day, and when we reached both the North and South peaks, the two lone overlooks available for views on this trip were completely clouded in. We ate lunch and snacks on the summits, before heading back down to the car and arriving back at the trailhead around 4:00PM.

Overall it was a fun trip to put the total number of 4000 footers for Katy and I up to 12. We headed back to Massachusetts and stopped for pizza on the way back. We also learned on the way back that my sister Megan got engaged to her longtime boyfriend Chris while we were hiking! Congratulations to Megan and Chris!