Trip Report: Mount Waumbek

My wife and I took Calvin for a weekend in the White Mountains for his first real hike, up to Mitzpah Springs Hut.  But there were a lot of extra hours in the day so I threw some peaks in there too keep my restless legs happy.  After my recent Cabot ascent, Waumbek was just screaming to be hiked. It was the Northern most peak, so one of these most annoying to day-trip.  So the first morning before our hike up Crawford Path, I took a pre-daylight run up Waumbek.
Trip stats
Distance: 6.5 miles
Elevation Gain: 2800 ft
Total time: 2.1 hours
Weight: 10 pounds
Peaks: Starr King, Waumbek

The trail is really annoying to find, you need to keep driving past the ditch that it seems like your car can’t clear next to the driveway for the nearest house.  I actually gave up once but couldn’t find any better trailheads so came back to try again.
Early morning start.
The beginning of the actual trail is pretty straightforward and unlike most other trail that I’ve hiked, it pretty much stays like that the whole way up.  This is probably the reason this is considered one of the easiest 4000 footers.  Almost 3/4 of the route I was able to keep up a pretty steady pace at and then on the way down, I was able to jog without much discomfort.
The general terrain of the trail is pretty easy.

A good distance up the trail, it turns and becomes slightly more difficult as it approaches Starr King.  But relatively speaking if you’ve done some of the other 4000 footers, it didn’t feel like much of a climb.
The summit of Starr King is reported to have a really good view and the top looks like it’s set up to be an awesome viewing area.  The remnants of a fireplace from an old cabin still sit there and they provide a romantic setting for staring into the sunlight reflected off the Pemi mountains to the south.  I didn’t have an awesome view either when I was on my way up or down but I could definitely see the possibilities here.
My view of the Pemi mountains to the south, maybe one of the Twins?
Remnants of an old fireplace.
The hike from Starr King over to Waumbek had a bit of a dip but most of it was casually joggable.  It was a pleasant morning with the sun coming up as I made my way over.  I had already read up on the summit and predictably it was a bit of a disappointment compared to Starr King but I had a quick drink and started back.  As I said earlier, it was a really fast run down the trail.  Unfortunately when I looked up my time versus other Strava users, I found it was a really fast summit for almost everyone and my jogging pace was just average.  But there are some fast trail runners out there, what can I say.

The actual summit of Waumbek is a small clearing with no viewpoint.

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