Hiking the AT between North Carter and Moriah

Posted on July 4, 2015 by Chris Lumens in .

One of my big hiking goals for the year is to finish the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire. That’s about 161 miles of trail and before this year, I had about 108 miles completed. On this hike, I was looking to pick up the 3.8 mile stretch between North Carter and Moriah as part of a long day hike. I’d have to get up to the ridge to North Carter (all on trail I’ve already hiked before) and then come back down from Moriah (from which I’ve taken every possible descent trail already). In total, it ended up being a 13 mile hike to grab that piece.

In order to make it home before fireworks, I had to get a really early start. Luckily, Sarah had to be up at 5am for work so I just got up and left when she did. With a couple stops for breakfast and lunch at a grocery store, I was walking from the north Imp trailhead just before 8:30. The first mile of the Imp trail is pretty easy so I started off at a quick pace. The temperature was perfect for hiking and the sky was clear, and it would stay that way the entire day.

After a little bit, I got to the business end of the Imp trail and had to tackle a ladder and then some long, very steep, rocky sections. My pace slowed here and I took a couple quick breaks. Soon enough, however, I finished up the first two miles and stepped out onto the cliff at the Imp Face. This is a very impressive view of the Northern Presidentials, the Great Gulf, Mt. Washington, and the ravines for not too much work. I think it’s probably one of the top five views in the White Mountains. I rested there for probably ten minutes while I ate and looked all around. I briefly considered how you might climb up the cliff itself, but it doesn’t look like there’s any information on it on the internet.

I took one picture from the Imp Face, as I was thinking about making it the new picture at the top of my website. Here it is:

The next mile of the Imp trail is really nice - it contours around the valley you can see from the Imp Face with occassional short steeper sections, with lots of stream crossings and grassy areas. I had to be careful at those mossy stream crossings, but even still it only took me twenty minutes to get to the junction with the North Carter trail and the southern branch of the Imp trail. I’d done all this before, and in all seasons.

I took another quick break and started up the North Carter trail. This mile goes pretty much straight up to the ridge and is really boring. I just treated it like overhead and got a move on. Somewhere along the way, I noticed I was going through my water very quickly. I’d brought three bottles with the plan of saving one for the way down, and I had already finished one of the other two. Luckily there was lots of water flowing down the trail so I filled up a bottle to drink with my new Sawyer mini water filter. If you haven’t tried this out yet, it’s totally worth it. I think it weighs one ounce and can either be screwed onto a small bottle (like the Platypus bottles I use, or can be fitted inline into a hose. You then just suck through it like a straw without having the annoying wait of chemical treatment.

Anyway that mile passed without incident and I was finally up at the junction with the Carter-Moriah trail on the ridge where I could start knocking down new trail. But first, I decided that I was ahead on time and could afford a little extra credit, so I turned south towards Mt. Lethe to knock it off the Trailwrights 72 list. I crossed over one sizeable bump with a view and could see Lethe maybe just a tenth ahead of me. I started paying closer attention to my left (east) and noticed an obvious herd path heading up from some rocks and into the scrub. I followed that for all of thirty seconds and ended up at a dead end with lots of sharp, pointy sticks all around me. I can’t be sure I was exactly on the summit but I couldn’t see anything higher than me either. I’m willing to count it.

Done with that ten minute detour, I headed back the way I’d come. This time, I kept going north to the summit of North Carter. I’d been here before in the winter so I still wasn’t exactly on new trail. There’s a great viewpoint from the summit east out into the Wild River Wilderness and across to the Baldfaces. While I was briefly standing there, I ran into some southbound through-hikers, Dreamweaver and Snow, who had camped on the summit of Moriah hoping to see fireworks and were heading at least as far as Carter Notch. I let them know they had some big drops and climbs ahead in the notch, and they seemed pretty excited about that.

After a couple minutes of talking, I headed off and finally got onto new trail - and what a piece of new trail it was. The AT drops pretty much straight down from the summit of North Carter, with a couple of tricky slab sections where you really need to sit down and use your hands to lower yourself. If you can manage it, there’s also some great views of the (surprisingly rocky) ridge and the final destination of Moriah from the same stretch. I made pretty poor time coming down this initial drop. After a couple tenths, it moderated and I was able to speed up and made much better time into a small saddle where I had lunch.

It wasn’t a very restful lunch, though, because I spent the whole time thinking about how much farther I had to go and how I needed to be done by 4pm to catch my ride back to the Imp trailhead. So I only got about a ten minute rest and headed off again. I cruised through this easy, rolling portion of the trail. Just before the Imp Shelter spur, there’s a really interesting stretch involving lots of bog bridges, and then a long stretch of rock you sidehill along, and then finally a climb over a slabby bump with a nice view back at North Carter. I kept moving past the Imp Shelter spur (which someone had hilariously defaced into reading Pimp Shelter) and quickly made it to the junction with the Stony Brook Trail.

I’d been at this junction before, in the winter with Rik, Tegan, and Jacob.. Our plan had been to snowshoe up to the summit of Moriah but several miles of deep trailbreaking on the Stony Brook Trail meant we only made it this far. Here in the summer, I was surprised to see that it was all bog bridges and tall grasses. It was really nice. I took another real break at the junction with the Moriah Brook Trail (maybe 50’ farther along from Stony Brook) and rested up to tackle the final 800’ climb up the slabs to Moriah.

This section was really cool - lots of steep slabs with great views out to the Wild River, and then flattening out to an open stretch near the summit. I took plenty of short breaks along the way both for the views and because I was getting tired. At the summit, I sat and took another longer break and changed my socks. There were probably ten more people sitting around, the most I saw in any one place all day.

After that, it was time to head down the Carter-Moriah trail to Bangor Street in Gorham. I’ve done this piece a bunch so I wasn’t really into it. There are several significant ups and downs along the way, and then a couple very long and steep slabby sections. The views of the Presidentials from these slabs are great, but I was just in a hurry to be done. I passed a spot with a ton of blueberry plants (berries aren’t ready yet) and then after passing Mt. Surprise, the trail really mellowed out. I made it down by 3:30.

I got a ride back to the car from Trail Angels. I can recommend using them again in the future. I was able to confirm my pickup via text message while heading down the trail, and he picked me up right on time, and I was able to pay with a debit card. This really beat having to do a five mile road walk or uphill bike ride at the end of a long day.

Next time, I’ll take pictures of the hike to split up all the text and make it more interesting. Picking up this section of the AT involved a lot of hiking overhead for little new trail, but it’s done now. The remaining sections are:

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