July 27, 2024

Start/End: Caps Ridge Trailhead, Jefferson Notch Road

Peaks: Jefferson (5,712')

Elevation Gain: 3,075 ft

RT Mileage: 6.14 mi

Duration: 6 hours, 34 minutes

Rock Difficulty: Class 2+

My friends really enjoyed Tuckerman Ravine last month and have been wanting to go hiking again with me ever since. Since I now have just two short hikes left to finish the 48, I decided I could afford to take another weekend off from peakbagging to take them hiking again. Caps Ridge was one of the most fun short hikes I've done in the Whites, and this was a good excuse to revisit it. For the descent, I decided to make a loop with the Castle Trail and The Link and bag another Terrifying 25 route for myself.

I woke up the morning of the hike at 4:00 AM. One of my friends walked over to my house, and we left at 4:45. After four more stops on the way across town, I picked up my last friend at 5:15, and we were on our way. We arrived at the trailhead at 7:50, and were on the trail ten minutes later. We made decent progress through the coniferous forest, and made it to Rock Bottom in about forty minutes.

Rock Bottom is a rocky outcrop with some unique glacial potholes as well as views of the Caps Ridge higher up, Clay over to the south, and the southern Presidentials behind it. We took a quick break before continuing to make our way through the coniferous forest. After another 400 vertical feet, we broke treeline on the first Cap and the scrambling commenced. My two climber friends had a lot of fun finding the hardest route, while the rest of us stayed on trail.

After another quick break on top of the first Cap, we began our scramble up the second Cap. This is the crux of the route, and my climber friends had no need to do any route-finding this time. The third Cap, the easiest of the three, was a breeze, and we took another quick break at the top before continuing onto the boulder field.

The final 1,000 vertical feet to the summit from the third Cap involve scrambling across a boulder field, much like the summit cones of Madison, Adams, and Washington elsewhere in the range. Five of us handled this section fine, but one friend was really struggling. Perhaps tennis shoes weren't his best choice for this hike.

It took some longer than others, but we were all on the summit a little after 11:00. The summit was significantly more crowded than the last time I was up there (last time I literally had the summit all to myself), so we took our break a little below the summit off the Jefferson Loop Trail.

As planned, we began descending the Castle Trail from the summit. The upper section of this trail was a boulder field, much like the upper section of the Caps Ridge Trail. From the bottom of the boulder field, the trail followed the Castellated Ridge, named after its three Castles, the rest of the way down to treeline. This ridge is one of the most dramatic in the Whites, and despite being less technical it was cool in a way the Caps Ridge just wasn't.

After the three Castles, the trail dipped below treeline. Around this time, two of my friends started to fall behind, and the rest of us would have to wait every so often for them to catch up. At 3,900 ft, we came to the junction with The Link, which we were to take for 1.5 miles to connect back up with the Caps Ridge Trail near Rock Bottom. The Link is notorious for traversing some of the roughest, most primitive terrain below treeline in the Whites.

Just as we'd feared, the two guys who were already falling behind on the Castle Trail began to really struggle. The rest of us had to stop every couple hundred feet, so we couldn't really get a rhythm going. After the first tedious half-mile, we decided we'd had enough, and we decided to blast some Metallica and power through to the junction. We covered the last mile of The Link in under a half-hour, and it felt so good. We did have to wait another half-hour at the junction, but it was alright.

The final descent on the Caps Ridge Trail was a breeze in comparison to The Link, and my two climbing buddies ran the whole way down at around 7 mph. Another friend and I jogged down at around 4 mph and met up at the TH around five minutes later. Then we had to wait another half-hour for my two slowest friends. Everyone was finally back down just after 4:00 PM, concluding a fun day in the mountains with some friends.