Mountain Wandering: Two Bushwhacks in the Flume Brook Valley

In the past week I enjoyed a pair of bushwhacks at the head of the beautiful Flume Brook valley, a spacious bowl enclosed by Mt. Liberty, Mt. Flume and Hardwood Ridge. The first led me on my initial visit to the open slides on Mt. Flume, if only up to its lower ledges. The second was a return to a small open talus slope on the eastern flank of Mt. Liberty, with a wonderful of the aforementioned Flume Slides..

The big scars spilling down the west face of Mount Flume are among the most prominent landslides in the White Mountains. I had stared at them many times from the summits of Mt. Liberty and Mt. Pemigewasset, from the Flume Visitor Center parking lots, and from off-trail crags on Liberty's south ridge, as seen in the photo below. These open slides are well to the left (north) of the treed-in old slide followed by the steep Flume Slide Trail.

Two slides on the west face of Mount Flume were triggered by a tremendous rainstorm on June 20, 1883. These occurred above the Flume House hotel and were highly visible to tourists visiting Franconia Notch. One of these came almost directly down from the summit and is still open in its upper half. To the best of my

knowledge, the second slide was farther to the south and later became the route of the Flume Slide Trail (originally known as Mount Flume Trail and opened in 1917). The storm also unleashed a multi-pronged slide on the SW slope of Mount Liberty; this one swept away one of the famed landmarks of the Notch - the large boulder suspended between the walls of the Flume.

In 1885 the famed AMC trail-builder J. Rayner Edmands climbed Mt. Flume via the one of the 1883 slides on its west face, most likely the one later followed by the trail. He was accompanied by an axeman, hired to clear the summit for observation. They ascended through the Flume and then up the loose, treacherous slide, ascending, in the words of Edmands, “an avenue from one to two hundred feet broad, of gravel and bowlders.” They then climbed along a narrow gravel spine separating this track from another gully. “Frequent rests for breath are here necessary;” wrote Edmands, “but how the view broadens with each short pull!” Farther up was an area of “very treacherous ledge” where a rock came loose and bounded down the slide. Near the top Edmands resorted to a sort of crab walk in a loose mass of gravel, stones and small boulders. For safety’s sake they bypassed the uppermost section of the slide, then looped back and made a seat at the very top. The duo then continued up a short climb to the ridgecrest south of the summit, and climbed over two knobs, “with the help of a hedgehog trail,” to the high point of the mountain.

In his 1898 Guide Book to the Franconia Notch and the Pemigewasset Valley, Frank O. Carpenter described a trailless ascent of Mt. Flume by those great western slides: “Follow up the brook which flows through the Flume one and one-half miles from the Flume to the foot of the great slide on Flume Mountain (one and one-half hour). Thence climb directly up the slide, one hour. As the slide is an old one most of the loose material has been washed down and while often at a steep angle it is an exhilarating climb. It is safe, if caution is used, where the rocks may be wet. From the top of the slide, bear to the left (northeast), and climb up the ever-rising slope till the summit is reached (no path) in thirty minutes. The view is interesting.”

In 1908, in the wake of intensive logging, a major forest fire burned 423 acres in the upper Flume Brook basin, mainly on the slopes of Mt. Liberty’s south spur. A USFS glass slide, taken from that south spur of Mt. Liberty in the aftermath of the fire, reveals what appears to be a massive fresh slide on the west face of Mt. Flume, originating a short distance north of the summit. The new slide appears to overlap in part the older, darker 1883 slide. This new slide activity was noted in subsequent editions of A Little Pathfinder to Places of Interest Near North Woodstock, New Hampshire: “The great slide of 1883 on its western slope is a most interesting feature. A more recent slide, since the great fire, is as yet scarcely invaded by reforestation.” In this archival photo the slides are open rock and gravel from base to summit. Today only the upper half of this swath remains open; the lower half is fully revegetated. (WMNF photo glass slide courtesy of David Govatski)

Despite having bushwhacked to several destinations in the upper Flume Brook valley, I had never seen the open Flume Slides close-up. So on a sunny late October day I hiked several miles into the valley on the mellow section of the Flume Slide Trail, and bushwhacked up to the steep lower ledges of the slides for a better look and some views of the surrounding area. After an approach via the Franconia Notch bike path (from the Flume Visitor Center) and Liberty Spring Trail,. I hiked 2.4 miles up the mellow lower section of Flume Slide Trail to the floor of the bowl. From there I bushwhacked north up the valley, then east up a slope of increasing steepness, following and at times crossing several revegetated tracks of the old slides, then ascending steeply through conifer forest, weaving around rough and rocky areas. At 3350 ft. I chanced upon a small open talus slope with an imposing view up to Mt. Liberty.

For the final approach to the base of the open ledges at 3500+ ft., I climbed up one of the slide tracks, emerging at this wild spot, looking across steep slabs to the dark bulk of Hardwood Ridge. I immediately noticed the white pine seen in the center of the photo.

From afar, these ledges had always looked wet, steep and virtually inaccessible. When I arrived here, I was pleasantly surprised to find the lower section accessible with care. It is a really neat open area of ledge, deciduous scrub, and various grasses. I was able to make my way up (carefully avoiding any wet spots on the ledges) to an open perch with a close-up view of Mt. Liberty and a wide vista over the Flume Brook valley with Mt. Moosilauke sprawling on the horizon. With the short daylight hours, I had no intention of trying to climb the slide to the summit.

Regular readers of this blog may wonder why there are so few photos with so much text. Well, after a half-hour sojourn on my perch in the warm October sun, I discovered that going down the lower part of the ledges was trickier than going up. I had to resort to butt-walking down through the scrub in a few spots. In the process, my iphone was somehow pushed or pulled out of the pants pocket where it resides while I'm hiking. I realized this just a short way below the slide. I climbed back up almost to my perch, retracing my steps as best as I could. No luck on the way up to a spot where I thought I had taken photos with the phone on the way down. It was almost 4:00 pm with a 900-ft. descent to the trail ahead of me, so I couldn't look for long. I did pull out a small point-and-shoot camera that I carry in my pack and snapped a few quick photos of the ledges. I could not spot the phone on the way down, either. (Coincidentally, Carol had bought me a new and upgraded iphone - a leap from SE to 17 - that was scheduled to arrive that day.) I thought, well maybe the photos were uploaded automatically to Google Photos. Then I remembered that I had the phone on airplane mode for the entire hike. Oops!

I don't normally post pics of GPS tracks, but since there are so few photos, here it is. I did find a better line on the descent, avoiding the worst rocky areas, and made it down to the last half-mile of Flume Slide Trail before turning on the headlamp. The rocky lower 0.6 mile of Liberty Spring Trail is not fun by headlamp!

Five days later, with new iphone in hand, I returned to the Flume Brook valley for another wander.

Note that the bootleg shortcut from the bike path south of the Basin up to the sharp turn on Liberty Spring Trail has been officially closed and marked as a Revegetation Area.

A familiar junction!

The start of a long, lovely walk up the valley.

The water levels were up from the previous week, but the largest of the several brook crossings was easily manageable. This stream is shown as Spring Brook on one map and Cascade Brook on another, but has no official name.

The walk along this south-facing slope is delightful on a sunny late fall morning, with good exposure to the sun through the leafless hardwoods.

There are some good-sized old sugar maples in this valley.

This gully was carved by one of the runout racks of the 1883 slide on the SW slope of Mt. Liberty.

The brook that drains the main track of the slide.

The trail climbs over a debris flow levee - a trail of boulders deposited along the edge of the slide.

Flume Brook at the first of two crossings in the upper valley.

Recent winds had obstructed the second crossing with a blowdown.

Heading into the inner sanctum of the valley.

Just before the trail crosses the north branch of Flume Brook, I headed north into the beautiful birch forest that cloaks the east side of Mt. Liberty's steep south ridge. These "pioneer trees" seeded in after a 1908 forest fire charred more than 400 acres on this slope.

With the leaves down, there were frequent views up to Mt. Flume and the slides.

This gave me a chance to check out the enhanced zoom capabilities on my new phone.

I had considered the option of climbing back to the base of the slides, where I had lost my previous phone, but could see from the Flume parking lot that the ledges were wet and icy. This closer view confirmed that assessment. I was also mindful that whacking up to the ledges would be a harder and longer trip than what I was embarking on, with darkness and rain both arriving at 5:00 pm.

Instead, I enjoyed a leisurely whack through the open birches, up and across this rather steep slope. Looking back, I could see the outline of Hardwood Ridge.

A small drainage cutting down the slope.

Once well up on the slope, I climbed directly upward towards my objective, a small open talus slope at 3325 ft. I had snowshoed to this spot last winter, but had unfinished business as the view of Mt. Flume had been truncated by clouds.

The steep climbed was rewarded - there's the talus!

Into the open, stepping carefully on the loose rocks.

Looking across the valley to Hardwood Ridge, which has its own little talus slope up high.

There's the view I was looking for!

It's a long way up from the floor of the valley to the open ledges.

A great angle on the slides.

Close-up of the lower ledges on the slide. I could see the ledge perch where I sat in the sun five days earlier.

Zoom on the craggy summit.

Down-look from the seat where I enjoyed the views for an hour.

Heading down from the talus.

For part of the descent, I followed a logging sled road presumably used by the G.L. Johnson Co. in the early 1900s. There are many such sled roads on the south slopes of Mt. Liberty.