2025: The Year in Landslides

A look back at landslide exploring in 2025, with one slide photo for each month, and a few extra for the fall. For a full history and documentation of White Mountain slides, see our Google doc, Landslides of the White Mountains (always a work in progress) here.

January: Snowshoeing on the 1995 slide in the nameless valley between Little Haystack and Mt. Liberty. This little-visited slide, visible from the Kinsmans and few other locations, has become one of my favorites.

 

 

 

February: North and South Twin from the slide on Flat Top Mountain. This three-pronged slide fell into the Garfield Stream valley during Hurricane Carol in 1954. 

 

 

March: A view of the Osceolas from a slide on the headwall of Tripyramid's Avalanche Ravine. This was one of several slides - including Tripyramid's renowned North Slide - that fell  during a massive rainstorm in August 1885.

 

April: A view of Mt. Passaconaway and the headwall of the glacial cirque known as The Bowl, seen from a slide on the SE ridge of Mt. Whiteface.  This slide may have fallen during the September 1938 hurricane or Hurricane Carol in 1954. It's very steep with a slope of 37 degrees.

May: Looking across Tunnel Brook Notch to two of the nine slides on the steep eastern face of Mt. Clough. The slide on the left is the largest of the nine, dating back to the November 1927 rainstorm. At its widest it is 260 feet across.

June: Looking out to the peaks of The Kilkenny from a slide high on the side of  Cascade Ravine on Mt. Adams.This slide came down during the November 1927 rainstorm. 

 

 

July: Another view towards The Kilkenny, this one from a slide on the west wall of Castle Ravine. This slide fell around 1970. Mt. Bowman is seen in the foreground on the left. 

 

 

 

 

August: The view out towards Vermont from the upper end of a slide on the headwall of Moosilauke's Slide Ravine. Part of Mud Pond is visible at the south end of Tunnel Brook Notch. This slide most likely came down during the September 1938 hurricane. 

September: My retirement commenced on September 1st, so this month will display three slides. This photo was taken at the base of the huge 2011 slide in Moosilauke's Tunnel Ravine,  which fell during Tropical Storm Irene. The headwall of Tunnel Ravine can be seen above. 

 

Steep granitic ledges mark the upper half of the massive slide that fell from the north ridge of Mt. Whiteface into Downes Brook around 1920. These slabs are tilted at 34 to 35 degrees but are dry and grippy. This is one of the largest, most expansive slides in the Whites.

On a gorgeous fall day I returned to a favorite - the 2011 slide on the NE side of West Sleeper. This was my 10th (!) visit to this big Tropical Storm Irene slide, on which I have been observing the ongoing process of revegetation.
 

 

 

 

 October: I had been putting this one off for a long time, but finally tackled it on a gorgeous day in late October: the hidden but giant gravelly slide on the west side of Whaleback Mountain, plunging into the Clear Brook ravine. The view from the top of the slide takes in Big Coolidge Mountain up close and Mt. Moosilauke in the distance. This trip had a heart-pounding conclusion as I was closely followed by a black bear, in the dark, along the lower half-mile of the old Osseo Trail.

 

 

 

Another late October bushwhack brought me up to the lower end of the great slides on the west face of Mt. Flume. Somewhere near this spot I lost my iphone and all the photos from the day. Luckily I salvaged a few pictures with an old point-and-shoot camera I had stashed in my pack.

 

 

November: I soon returned to the Flume Brook valley and bushwhacked to a talus slope on the flank of Mt. Liberty for an intimate view of the Flume Slides, which fell in 1883 and 1908. I now owned a new iphone 17 with a good zoom capability.

 

December: Inspired by a recent photo posted by the accomplished bushwhacker known as timbercamp, I bushwhacked to an obscure ledge on a shoulder of Black Mountain for an unparalleled view of the Norrthwest Slides on Scar Ridge. These slides are apparently at least a century and a half old, as they appeared in an Appalachia piece by geologist Warren Upham in February 1878. On a surveying trip in 1871, Upham lost a hammer, which tumbled hundreds of feet down to the bottom of the slide.

Thanks for reading and best wishes for the New Year!  

 

 

Wandering Around Hedgehog

After the big rainstorm, I enjoyed a pair of hikes in the Hedgehog Mountain area on the north side of the Sandwich Range.

 

HEDGEHOG MOUNTAIN

 

The day after the rain, a blue sky beauty into the afternoon, I hiked the classic loop over Hedgehog Mountain on the UNH Trail.  This was a combo spike/bareboot trek. 

The first 0.2 mile of the trail follows the grade of the early 1900s Swift River Railroad.

 

The loop junction. I went clockwise, up over the East Ledges, on to the summit, and then down the western part of the loop, which I maintained for a number of years. The entire loop is now admirably maintained by Fawn Langerman.

Nice hardwoods along the lower part of the East Loop.

The trail makes an easy crossing of little White Brook, which flows out of a hidden mini-ravine.

The rainstorm had blown the snowpack out of long sections of trail, making for tedious conditions. 

The spikes took a beating on sections like this.

Due to the poor conditions on the trail, I made a familiar shortcut bushwhack up through a little notch on the peak that bears the East Ledges.

Heading for the sun.

Regaining the trail on the crest, I backtracked east a short distance to the western section of the East Ledges, my favorite spot on the mountain.

The ledges offer a sweeping view over the expansive valley of Oliverian Brook. How often can you do this in December?

In addition to the valley view there is, of course, the impressive sight of Mount Passaconaway and its eastern spurs: Nanamocomuck Peak, Wonalancet Hedgehog and Square Ledge.

In 1884, AMC tramper Alford A. Butler hailed Passaconaway as “a perfect forest-mantled cone, the most symmetrical mountain in the landscape, a veritable sonnet in stone.”

Nanamocomuck Peak and its 1938 slide, under which the Square Ledge Trail passes.

Looking up at the summit of Hedgehog.

Wild terrain as the UNH Trail swings around the west side of Hedgehog.

Love the open spruce forest.

I had started barebooting at the East Ledges, to save wear on my 'spikes. Careful footwork was required on icy spots as the trail makes a steep zigzag climb towards the summit.

Had to put the spikes back on to get up this scramble.

One of several outlooks along the approach to the summit.

Spikes off for this ledge, which seems a little harder each time I come through here.

A near-summit view of Passaconaway & Co.

Mts. Huntington, Hancock and Carrigian from a western outlook.

Zoom on Hancock, with Mts. Bond and Guyot seen in the distance on the right.

West Sleeper, the Tripyramids, part of the Fool Killer, and South Potash.

Mt. Chocorua and the Sisters.

The Osceolas beyond Scaur Peak.

Heading down the trail north of the summit, where ledges open a view out to Mt. Washington beyond Mt. Tremont.

 

 

PASSACONAWAY BEAVER POND AND BEYOND

Two days later I headed back to the Hedgehog area to bushwhack to a favorite beaver bog that provides an imposing view of Mt. Passaconaway, followed by some wandering out in the western part of the Oliverian Brook valley. The lower parts of the Oliverian Brook Trail and Passaconaway Cutoff were solid and pretty smooth, making for easy microspiking.

 

Moose were liking the conditions, too.

Into the Wilderness.

And on to Passaconaway Cutoff, which I had traversed a week earlier en route to Square Ledge.

I had noted this projecting stub on the first trip.

This time I remembered my saw and removed it.

At my chosen spot, I switched to snowshoes and headed into the woods.

The snowshoeing was decent in perhaps 5 or 6 inches of crunchy snow.

Approaching the beaver bog.

The view of Mt. Passaconaway from the sunny north shore is one of my favorites in the Sandwich Range Wilderness.

In fact, I deem it one of the best views of a single mountain anywhere in the Whites.  I like how Charles Edward Beals, Jr. describes the mountain in his 1916 classic,  Passaconaway in the White Mountains: "...the loftiest, wildest, yet most symmetrical, most awe-inspiring mountain of the Sandwich Range."

 

From here you can see the top of Passaconaway's East Slide, which fell during the September 1938 hurricane.

View of the beaver bog from the East Slide.

This fallen spruce provided a convenient seat that allowed me to bask in the sun for nearly an hour.

Farther along the shore I could see the backlit profiles of Square Ledge and Nanamocomuck Peak.

Heading back into the woods for some wilderness wandering.

I made my way to the site of a logging camp I had stumbled upon a few winters ago while bushwhacking down to the beaver bog from the UNH Trail.

There is still a small clearing here. This was a camp of the Conway Lumber Company's Swift River Railroad (1906-1916), one of seven in the Oliverian Brook valley, according to Bill Gove's Logging Railroads of the Saco River Valley. As always, a reminder that logging artifacts should always be left as they are found; it is illegal to remove them from the WMNF.

Part of a wood stove. The map in Gove's book, shows a "Lambert Camp" in this neighborhood. On the other hand, in Albany's Recollections, by A. Bernard Perry, there is a photo of a large camp building with a dozen men in front with the caption, "St. Clair's camp on small pond between Passaconaway and Hedgehog Mts." Presumably the small pond referred to is the beaver bog.

These hoops may have been used on some sort of carriage wheel?

Bushwhacker J.R. Stockwell has visited this camp and he believes this was some kind of drill used by the lumbermen.

The tributary of Oliverian Brook that served as the water source for the camp.

I continued bushwhacking westward to the lower flank of Mt. Passaconaway.

Some fine woods out here, on seldom-visited terrain in the shadow of the mountain.

A random steep drainage.

There are many large boulders in this area.

Descending along a gully.

An unusual spot where three brooks merge.

On the broad, flat floor of the valley the streams trace meandering courses.

There is ample hobblebush to impede the bushwhacker.

En route back to the trail, I made my way along the south edge of the beaver bog for a view of Hedgehog Mountain (L) and the East Ledges (R).

The impressive face of the East Ledges, scene of some early AMC rock climbing in the late 1920s.

Late day sun tints the summit of Hedgehog.

An old curving beaver dam.

Cold, end of day light on Mt. Passaconaway.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL, AND BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR!