April 4, 2026

Start/End: Grafton Notch, Rt. 26

Peaks: Old Speck (4,170')

Elevation Gain: 3,060 ft

RT Mileage: 7.67 mi

Duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes

Rock Difficulty: Class 1+

Snow/Ice Difficulty: Grade I

A weather window finally presented itself on the second and final Saturday of my spring break after a series of rainstorms. I decided to take the opportunity to bag a Maine 4,000-footer in Old Speck, hoping that trail conditions would be more manageable in the northeastern Whites where temperatures had been colder and less rain had fallen over the week compared to the New Hampshire side. I was right.

After waking up at 4:50 AM the day of the hike, I picked up a friend from the town over at 5:30, and we arrived at the trailhead just after 9:00. Although skies had largely cleared overnight, the summit of Old Speck was still shrouded in clouds when we arrived. Fortunately, these cleared quickly as the morning progressed. We started out on the Eyebrow Trail just before 9:30.

The Eyebrow Trail first ascends gently for 0.5 miles as it skirts the bottom of Eyebrow Cliff. Then, at 1,800 ft, the trail abruptly enters the coniferous forest and begins to steeply ascend the backside of the cliff. Steel cables assisted us for the first 100 vertical feet, where our spikes fortunately provided more than enough traction on the exposed ice. Then, the trail traverses across an old slide. Iron rungs usually assist the hiker across the slide, but almost all of the rungs were hidden beneath an ice flow, so this section was a little sketchier than usual for us.

On the other side of the slide, the trail ascends two more steep sections before flattening out on approach to the top of Eyebrow Cliff. Rungs, rather than cables, were affixed to these sections too, but fortunately enough of these rungs were actually out of the ice for us to use as we ascended. One mile into the hike, we reached the top of Eyebrow Cliff, where we were offered great views of Table Rock and Baldpate on the other side of Grafton Notch as well as Old Speck above us on our side of the notch (see cover photo).

The Eyebrow Trail–AT junction was easy to miss and we ended up starting to descend back towards the TH on the AT before catching our mistake and reversing direction. The mix of soft snow, exposed ice, and bare rock on the Eyebrow Trail was finally replaced by a proper, firm monorail once we hit the AT, interrupted only by the occasional ice flow below 3,000 ft.

Above 3,400 ft, the monorail became a little harder to follow and the consequences of stepping off-trail became much more severe with a snow depth of over three feet, and we post-holed several times. The monorail itself, though, was still solid as a rock even after all the rain and warmth, which was nice. We were the only ones on the mountain today and spikes were our only traction, so we would have been in a pickle if the snow had softened. There was one final steep section with some exposed ice at 4,000 ft, and the trail briefly opened up before re-entering the forest on the western shoulder of Old Speck.

From the shoulder, we took the Grafton Loop Trail the last 0.3 miles to the summit, as the AT continued down the southwest slopes of the mountain into the famous Mahoosuc Notch. We summited at 1:00 PM. The summit itself is wooded, but there is an old fire tower on top with great views in all directions.

The descent back from the summit was smooth and fast, although we post-holed several more times above 3,400 ft and some of the ice flows below 3,000 ft were a little tricky to descend. Below Eyebrow Cliff, the AT descends much more gently than the Eyebrow Trail, and there was a firm monorail all the way back to the TH. The snow bridge across the river crossing near the TH was, surprisingly, mostly intact, although we did have to rock hop the first part where the snow bridge had fallen in. We were back at the parking lot at 3:30, and New England 4,000-footer #50 was in the books.