April 16 & 17, 2004
We'd been hoping to make it to the Whites all winter but the weather _never_ cooperated. Well, it wasn't winter anymore, but a few remnants were to be found, surely. The plan had been to go with Luke, Sophie, Pu and Ewart, but the US border guard was most unwilling to let Luke in with only his Canadian Permanent Resident Card (he'd forgotten his passport). So, he and Sophie had their weekend ruined and we were down to three. Pu and I drove down together and Ewart was to join us later on.
We drove from Ottawa to NH on a nice Sunny Friday afternoon. On the way we crossed on the Grand Isle ferry from NY into VT, and from there we made our way to the Moosilauke Area (which is roughly in the vicinity of the Jct of Rte 25 and 112 in NH).
No campgrounds were open at this time of year, so we ended up electing to "car camp" at Lake Tarlington State Park, which is essentially a boat ramp on Lake Tarlington (off route 25C). We decided to sleep without tents, and had a wonderful sleep outside next to the car in the parking area. A very nice police officer checked in on us around 9:30pm and was very friendly, chatting about the area and warning us about potential friday night drunken teenagers.
Our campsite for the night
Moosilauke and Tarlington at Sunrise
Since we had two cars, we elected to do this hike as a traverse, starting at Kinsman Notch and ending at the Glencliff trailhead. Our entire route would be on the Appalachian trail. The way up from Kinsman Notch was via a very steep section of the path known as the Beaver Brook trail.
