Twins to Zealand (September 6, 2020) - 10.5 hours

Click on pictures to enlarge.

North Twin outlook.  Franconia Ridge.

Peter Wyatt and I did a long traverse from the Twins to Zealand, with Guyot in the middle. This redlined a section of the Twinway that we had not done before. We dropped my car at the Zealand trailhead and Peter's wife Nancy dropped us at the North Twin trailhead. We went up the North Twin Trail, where the water was sufficiently low that we didn't have to get wet at the stream crossing. Shortly before getting to North Twin we had a great outlook (left, view to the north), and at the summit we took the side trail for a great view of the Franconia Ridge (right).

North and South Twin.  North and South Twin.

We then dipped to the col between North and South Twin and on to South Twin with superb 360 degrees views (left and right).

West Bond.  Stretch of bog bridges.

Here we turned on the Twinway and on to Guyot. The first part was pretty rough but it eventually became nice woods walking, with little in the way of views except for an interesting outlook to West Bond (left). There was a nice stretch of bog bridges at some point (right).

Twins.  Guyot.

We got to the junction with the Bondcliff Trail and beautiful views appeared back toward the Twins (left) and toward Guyot (right). Guyot is one of my favorite mountains - its broad grassy rounded second summit looks out of place in the Whites, and there's never anyone there because it's not technically a 4,000 footer from not having enough of a col with South Twin.

Grey jays on Peter's hat.  Grey jay eating out of Daniel's hand.

At that point a pair of grey jays showed up. They are so cute and tame - they ate almonds off Peter's hat (left) and pieces of Clif bar out of my hand (right). I love grey jays.

Summit of Guyot.  Summit of Guyot.

We continued up slightly on the Twinway and veered off the trail to roam around the gravelly true summit of Guyot (left and right).

Pemi Wilderness.  Massive wood ladder.

From there we dropped to the col between Guyot and Zealand Ridge, and up Zealand Ridge. The trail was all rock slabs, which made it tiring. We bypassed Zealand Mountain (been there done that) and got some views of the Pemi Wilderness (left) before going down a massive ladder(right).

Zeacliff.  Zealand Road.

We got to Zeacliff and took in the views (left). Some college-age girls had taken over the area with a tent and with chatter, which was a bit annoying but on the other hand it's great to see kids taking to the outdoors. We went down to the Zealand trail and exited to Zealand Road, catching the evening light on the beaver ponds with the first colors of fall (right).

See also: 2020 Hikes