July 20, 2024

Start/End: The Basin parking lot

Peaks: Cannon (4,100'), "NE Cannon Ball" (3,769'), North Kinsman (4,293'), South Kinsman (4,358')

Elevation Gain: 5,035 ft

RT Mileage: 15.27 mi

Duration: 10 hours, 48 minutes

Rock Difficulty: Class 1+

For this weekend I decided to get Cannon-Kinsmans, the last long hike I had left to finish the 48, out of the way. Of the two days in the weekend, Saturday looked to have the better weather, so that's the day I went for it.

Waking up at 4:45 AM, we left the house at 5:30, and arrived at The Basin lot on I-93 NB at 7:25. From there, we first biked 1.8 miles on the Franconia Notch Bike Path over to Lafayette Campground, where we began our hike. The Hi-Cannon Trail wasted no time gaining elevation leaving the campground, ascending steeply to the junction with Dodge Cutoff at 2,800 ft, where the trail also entered the coniferous forest.

The trail briefly plateaued here before resuming its steep ascent of Cannon's southeast slopes. While steep, I'm not sure this trail deserves to be on the Terrifying 25 list; the only difficult section is a wooden ladder at 3,400 ft, and there are similar wooden ladders on many other trails in the Whites. Above the wooden ladder, the trail came to several decent viewpoints of the Franconia Ridge across the notch as well as Lonesome Lake below.

Soon, the trail gained Cannon's south ridge and joined the Kinsman Ridge Trail, and the grade leveled off significantly. We summited just after 10:30. The summit was rather crowded with people who took the tram up, so we didn't linger long and began making our way back down the south ridge. After 0.4 miles, the trail veered off the ridge and began to steeply descend into Coppermine Col between Cannon and NE Cannon Ball. It was a tricky descent, and it took us a good while. 

From the col, it was a much more moderate ascent to the summit of NE Cannon Ball, a couple hundred vertical feet higher. Of the three Cannon Balls, NE is the only one with enough prominence to be classified as its own peak. We summited just after 11:30.

Next was 2.2 miles of ups and downs over the remaining Cannon Balls to Kinsman Pond. This part of the hike felt very monotonous and rather boring, and I was glad to arrive at Kinsman Pond, where we took our first real break of the day. From the pond, it was 500 vertical feet on North Kinsman's north ridge to its summit. Although below treeline, a decent part of the ridge was exposed to the sun, so my hat went on. We summited just after 2:30 PM.

From North Kinsman, it was another 0.9 miles on the ridge to South Kinsman. We summited just before 3:20. The actual summit of South Kinsman is wooded, but the trail breaks treeline just a little bit further along the ridge, offering decent views in all directions.

From South Kinsman, we first hiked back down to Kinsman Pond before taking the Fishin' Jimmy Trail the rest of the way to Lonesome Lake. On a map it looks like the last part of this trail is flat, but it's really just a series of small, never-ending ups and downs, which seems to have been the theme of this hike. We arrived at Kinsman Pond just after 6:00.

From the lake, it was a quick 1.5 miles back down to Lafayette Campground on the heavily used Lonesome Lake Trail. We made it back down just before 6:45, and 4,000ers #42, #43, and #44 were officially in the books. However, we still had to bike back to The Basin. The bike path had been a tough ascent on the way up, but it was a fun descent on the way back. Right near the end though, I ended up wiping out on a hard left turn at 22 mph, a sour end to what had otherwise been a good day in the mountains.