Mount Osceola and East Osceola

Katy and I spent another extended weekend away earlier this week up at Lake Winnipesaukee with her family. It was a fantastic vacation with time spent swimming, boating, golfing, and relaxing. And since we were already well north in New Hampshire, we decided to throw in some hiking as well. We had originally planned on grabbing another couple 4000 footers on Saturday with her two sisters, her sister's boyfriend, (plus Mo). However, those plans fell through and we did a hike on our own on Tuesday morning instead.

The Counihan family tends to be early risers and on this past Tuesday, early morning commotion had already begun around 6:00AM. Katy woke up and said to me in a somewhat sleepy state "I really want to go hiking. Let's go before I don't want to go anymore." I guess we better go then! We got up, grabbed some breakfast, threw some water and granola bars into a backpack, and headed to the trailhead for Mount Osceola and nearby peak East Osceola. It was about an hour's ride from where we were staying in Alton Bay, and the forecast said partly sunny with a chance of an afternoon thunderstorm. We arrived at the trailhead at 7:45AM and were the only ones in the parking lot.

The hike up Mount Osceola was a very steady grade and a relatively easy 3.2 miles. Unfortunately, the partly sunny forecast did not pan out as we were completely in a cloud when we reached the summit and had no views. We continued on for another 1.0 mile with a couple of very steep sections over to the summit of East Osceola which had a wooded summit in the clouds. We retraced our steps back to the car and had completed 4000 footers 18 and 19 by 12:45PM. Overall it was an enjoyable hike that was part of just a generally really nice time away in New Hampshire.