From Erica:
I originally had other plans for this day, but the forecast called for “hurricane-force” winds up high, so I decided to pivot and do something at a lower elevation. I reached out to Riley the day before and convinced him to come along. Am I the bad influence friend? Probably...
I rolled out of bed for this at about 4:30 am after getting a whopping 4 hours of sleep. Today I am thankful for Celsius, because I almost certainly would have caused several accidents and mortally injured myself on the drive up without caffeine. By the time I met Riley at the Slippery Brook TH, I was WIRED. I wanted to get the Baldfaces done early, since there were thunderstorms forecasted for the afternoon, so we went counterclockwise. We started at 8:16 am and kept the pace conservative. We had both not slept well the night before and had a “we’ll just go and see what happens” mindset.
Slippery Brook Trail is double-wide and quite runnable for the first two miles or so. It then becomes a single track and is still runnable-ish until you reach the junction with the Baldface Circle Trail. From there, you’ll climb the steepest section of the route to South Baldface. This is in and out of the trees, and was our slowest mile (a combination of the grade and many photo ops). We were lucky with the weather and had some nice views, although it was rather windy up there, we completely avoided the forecasted rain. Temps were perfect.
After North Baldface, the route stays on the ridge until the junction with Eagle Link. Eagle Link takes us down into the Wild River Wilderness, and from here it is all new miles for me. True to form, the trail through the wilderness area is overgrown, tough to follow, and riddled with downed trees. I had Riley go ahead of me and would pick up any branches and sticks that I could and toss them back into the woods. There weren’t any trees that we had to crawl under, thankfully. Some short stretches were smooth and runnable, and we took advantage of these when we could. Now that we had most of the climbing out of the way, we were starting to pick up the pace a bit.
There is one more short, mellow climb in the wilderness area. There’s a section of this area where the trail goes straight through a bog. You’re getting dirty here- no ifs, ands, or buts about it! Just gotta trudge right through. At the top of this climb, I took the lead and started running. I don’t know if everyone would call this section runnable, but it gets more runnable the closer to the road you get. If we continued moving at the pace we were going through the wilderness, we would be coming in a little too close for comfort for me. Thankfully, we had 8 more easy-ish miles to drop our average pace. We locked in and started cruising. Being in the trees, we missed the winds from the ridge and were starting to feel how muggy it was. Having to cross a couple of small streams here was the biggest relief, as the water cooled our feet off nicely.
Once we hit the road, we stopped briefly to get some water and have a snack. I immediately got molested by mosquitoes, so our break was short-lived. We made excellent time on the road, doing the fastest miles of the effort right at the end. We made up more than enough time to claim the mixed gender FKT. Overall, an excellent day. We never got seriously rained on, and I got to run some new trails with a good friend! Neither of us experienced any significant lows, and we rewarded ourselves with flatbread after sticking our feet in the river.
From Riley:
When Erica reached out to run 20 miles in the Whites, I laughed. My training has been lackluster, the weather forecast was poor, and my opportunity for sleep was minimal as I had a late evening planned. She presented the route, and it gave my brain an itch with the idea of “I may be able to do this.” At 11:30 pm my alarm was set for 4 am, and bag was packed.
With the little sleep I got, I made my way 2.5 hours up from southern NH to the trailhead to wait for a very amped up Erica. I knew it was go time. We applied bug spray and got moving at 8:16 am. With a light jog and a drizzle, the long grass on the old logging road got our feet nice and wet to begin with. I got Erica’s attention and mentioned I just wanted to have a fun day, no record needed, just two pals in the mountains. So we did, we kept a conservative pace throughout the morning on the fire roads, taking pictures as we climbed through the lush green forest.
As we got to the steeps, the rocks were damp from the recent rainfall, but we turned around and saw a beautiful inversion in the clouds. Carefully approaching the ridgeline on the steep, wet rocks, we make a climb and start getting blasted by the wind. Fortunately, we were moving fast enough that we didn’t need to bear down to put jackets on. As we see the extension of the baldfaces, we are beaming with joy, knowing there are some above-treeline sections and some great wooded sections ahead of us.
We get to South Baldface and see the rest of the route, and just keep cruising along. Still, taking it a little conservatively just so we don’t slip or fall on the wet slab and roots. We looked at our watches with a big smile, seeing that we were averaging just under 30-minute miles. This got us stoked.
We then made the turn into the wilderness, where we knew we’d have to move with good intention to keep the pace consistent. The Eagle Link trail is stunning, full of birch glades, moose poop, and even a spruce grouse. Some beautiful, runnable sections through here allowed us to open our stride. We then found the mud towards the bottom, filtered some water, and made our way to the rugged and muddy Wild River trail, where we encountered the only two humans on the trail.
With a long, gradual climb, we had some good conversation with each other about where we were time-wise. Counting down the minutes and ensuring we were fueling enough. At this point, it was becoming surreal for me; we could hike the rest of the way out and get my first-ever FKT. However, that wasn’t enough. We pushed. We found sections runnable, we stomped through the swamp and mud, and waded through the river crossings. You cannot avoid these here.
As we approach the road, we are moving well, averaging 15-minute miles, and chatting away. As we get to the road, we are swarmed by bugs. I got my fluids organized for the road and some calories in, knowing we were going to push. At this point, my legs were junk due to lack of training, but I was nearly teary-eyed, as I hadn’t pushed myself this hard in so long. We find a pattern of walking and running, nearly sprinting at the end, finishing at the gate, completely gassed. The weather ended up being nearly perfect, and the day was one to have. An accomplishment I’ll never forget.