Tripyramids Loop Hike

It was a beautiful day in the Sandwich Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire: not too hot and not too humid.  Jenn and Guthook and I decided to do a Tripyramids loop.  Jenn and I had done North Tripyramid together before, in a winter slog through deep snow.  It was interesting to compare that hike to this one.  I’m pretty sure now that we were off trail for a lot of the first one, which may be why the snow was so deep.  We were following just one or two other pairs of snowshoe tracks then.  I guess you can’t assume other people always follow the trail correctly when they’re breaking it.  Oops.

We went up the Pine Bend Brook Trail again, which starts out nice and level, with lots of water crossings, and ends up very steep as it approaches the shoulder of North Tripyramid.  There’s a little bit of scrambling on the way up, which is fun in nice weather.  The views towards the top were a little harder to see with all the leaves grown in, but there were still great views near the summit at 4180′.

That was where we turned around before, but we had plenty of time today and kept going.  We switched to the Mt Tripyramid Trail and went the short distance to the next peak, Middle Tripyramid at 4140′, a new 4,000 footer peak for me.  We also went over South Peak at 4100′ but that one doesn’t have enough prominence to count as its own mountain.

Then we went down the South Slide, which had great views into the Sandwich Range Wilderness.  It was steep, and loose in a lot of places, but very beautiful.

Once done with the slide, the trail turned back to dirt and began a much easier descent.  We turned onto the Livermore Trail, an old road bed at that point, and followed it to the Scaur Ridge Trail, which took us back up to the shoulder of North Tripyramid.  From there, we followed the Pine Bend Brook Trail back down to the cars.

It was a great 13.3 mile loop.  The bugs were bad at lower elevations, but I had my trusty head net with me.  Aside from the bugs, the weather and the hike were just grand.