Reply To: Trip Reports

Pics from Liberty up. I wish I had gotten more with the peak filled in, but the two hours seemed to fly by fast.

We were first greeted by Brian, who didn’t think he could hike today, but ended up making it out. He thanked us for the wonderful gesture we were making.

As I introduced myself as “the8re”, a guy sitting next to me said “Hey, did you play Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?” Sure enough, this gentleman remembered seeing me in Portsmouth about 5 years ago. “When I first saw you come over the ridge, I thought ‘Hey, it’s Hamlet.'” What a small world.

We were covered with two general comments:

1. “Thanks for doing this.” Mostly it was from people who had heard about the event ahead of time.

2. “Wow! Look at the flag!” Not that our flag was special, just a 3’x5′. But the image of seeing a flag just as you come over the ridge onto Liberty struck some emotion into most of the people. (There was a group of a certain foreign nature that was nonplussed about the flag.)

We arrived late to the peak (12:15) so we forwent with anchoring the pole and just held it in place. My hiking buddy Bob switched off with me so I could stretch and take a couple pics. Wished I had gotten more with the peak and people at the peak, but I’ll know for next time.

Incidentally, our route was as such: We hiked in late Friday night and set up camp (around 9:30pm) off the Osseo trail. This was my first night hike in the whites. Never seen so many stars in all my life.

We took Osseo up to Flume, then Franconia Ridge to Liberty. Took the same path back, running into the Flume team as they just finished breaking down at 3. We cruised back down the mountain to get back to our camp by 5:15pm. It took us about 3.5 hours to get down from Liberty when it took us 4.5 hours to get up. We were cruising so we could have daylight while we broke camp and lugged our gear back to the car. That and we didn’t want to be late to the party at the Moosehead.

Last thing I want to mention… both Bob and I appreciated the time at the Moosehead. You all were the best bunch of people we’ve hung out with in a while, and it was the perfect ending to such a blessed day and event! Thank you all for participating and helping us honor an important day in our world’s history.

So who’s ready for next year? 💡

-Stephen