Flume-Liberty Trip Report

Beautiful weather continues; too good to be the White Mountains. Everything was so great that day – except Mt. Flume. Deb and I were doing fine: the slide was tough but managable. The climb after the slide was extreemly difficult. The book greatly underestimated the effort. To underscore this: A guy hiking ahead of us almost died. After the slide, he was up the hill about 100 yds. We forgot about him. We were trying to navigate a difficult slab when small stones and then large stones began to roll down the hill from above us. Deb and I bolted to the side of the trail and into the trees to avoid getting nailed by a rock when a body rolled down the slabbing towards us. The body rolled off a 2 ft. high ledge, landed and stopped on the slab below it just 10 ft up the trail from us. We thought he was dead until he moved. It was the hiker we’d seen earlier with bloody scrapes over his legs. Well we were freaking out, yelling to him to stay put. I asked him a bunch of questions to make sure he wasn’t serously injured. He wasn’t hurt but he was confused about what happened. He lost his glasses which had fallen in front of Deb. She was happy she found them for him. We talked him down to our slab, which we were afraid to move from. He was pumped, and he raced back up the trail and dissapeared. Deb and I thought this guy was nuts and were worried that either he or us would slip on the slabbing, so we walked ahead very slowly and carefully, on hands and knees at times. Not long after starting back up the trail, we met him coming back down. He said he thought going back was better for him. Other notes: Extraordinary views from the summits.

Of note

• Avoid the slide by ascending and descending Liberty Spring Tr.
• We saw a grouse on the ridge.