Flat Top Mountain Slide

On a relatively warm winter day, with temperatures in the comfortable 20s, I headed out to the backcountry valley of the Gale River's North Branch for a return visit to the partly open slide on the SE side of Flat Top Mountain. As is usual in winter, I approached Gale River Trail via the Beaver Loop XC ski trail and the freshly groomed (for snowmobiling) Gale River Loop Road.

 

A busy trailhead in summer, providing access to Galehead Hut. Not so much in winter.

This kind of sums up the first ~1.4 miles of Gale River Trail, a mellow stroll through hardwood forest. Trail reports had noted a hard-packed track here, and it was easy bareboot walking with just a half-inch or so of new snow on top.

North Branch of the Gale River.

Along the 2012 relocation that avoids two crossings of the river.

I always stop for a photo of this stair-like formation on a spur ridge of North Twin.

A locked-in crossing of Garfield Stream.

A bit beyond the crossing I headed into the Garfield Stream valley through mostly open woods, though there was plenty of hobblebush.

The slow and contemplative rhythm of breaking trail.

For part of the bushwhack I was able to follow the corridor of the original Gale River Trail, which led up this valley past Hawthorne Fall to Garfield Ridge. It was abandoned in the 1950s and most of it has vanished into the forest.

The snow depth out here in the open woods was 16 inches.

A little deeper in here.

A peek up at the seldom-visited ledges of Flat Top Mountain (3,248 ft.), a northeastern spur of Mt. Garfield..

Emerging on a huge granite slab buried in deep snow, above a series of step-like cascades. During Hurricane Carol in 1954, the three-pronged Flat Top slide came crashing down here to Garfield Stream and made a 90-degree left turn into its bed.

Perhaps the first to visit this spot were Benjamin J. MacDonald and local guide Allen Thompson, who ascended the valley of Garfield Stream (then called Deep Hole Brook) in 1880 as part of a multi-day  exploration of the Mt. Garfield area. "For at least one hundred and fifty feet the water flows swiftly over an immense granite floor nearly fifty feet wide, rivalling, if not surpassing, the far famed cascades in the Franconia Flume," wrote MacDonald in one of his series of hike descriptions entitled "Echo Explorations" in The White Mountain Echo, a leading tourism newspaper published in Bethlehem, NH. MacDonald and Thompson named the multi-tiered cascade at the lower end of this slab  "Eaton Falls," in honor of a local farmer they had visited with on the way to their exploratory trek.

Heading into the conifers to climb to the remaining open section of the slide.

Parallel to the narrow lower track of the slide, the woods are steep.

 

A good workout.

 

The grade eases as I approach the destination.

After some maneuvering through a tight forest I arrived at the open slide section. In summer this is a spine and gully formation of gravel and loose rock.

Though high clouds had moved in, I was pleased to see that the view of North and South Twin was still clear. A spur of Garfield Ridge is in the foreground on the right.

 

One of several resident white pines on the slide.

 

Looking up the slide.

The massive bulk of North Twin.

 

Zoomed.

Twins view from the upper end of the spine.

Wide angle view.

South Twin and part of its SW ridge.

Looking up at the Flat Top cliffs.

Closer look.

Peering down at my tracks.

Heading back down to Garfield Stream.

Homeward bound on Gale River Trail.