Kenna Brochu
This weekend, Summit Stewards Kenna Brochu and Demi Terry and Summit Steward Intern Sarah Heller traversed up to Franconia Ridge for Labor Day Weekend. This weekend we anticipated a large population of hikers, so we were eager to get up to the ridge and start working.
On Friday, September 4th, we were surprised by the lack of hikers spending the night at Greenleaf Hut. The hut was only around half full, which was very unexpected. Nonetheless, we met up with AMC Alpine Steward Pete Lane, who was stationed at Greenleaf Hut, and discussed our stewarding plan for the busy Saturday.
On Saturday, September 5th, the weather was less than ideal. It was a very cold and gloomy morning in the clouds, but we knew that the conditions weren’t going to stop hikers from traversing the ridge. Sarah and I traversed over to Little Haystack to spend the day stewarding. On the way, we stopped at each summit for around 30–45 minutes and talked to multiple different groups of hikers about their plans. We arrived at Little Haystack around 12:30pm and remained stationed there until around 3:30pm. Although busy, the flow of traffic was relatively mild, and the summit never felt overwhelmingly busy like it can on a typical Saturday.
On this day, Demi hung back and continued building up scree walls along the south side of Lincoln in hopes of keeping hikers on trail during this busy weekend.
At the end of the day, Sarah and I met Demi at the summit of Mount Lafayette and stayed there for around an hour. We like to end our day stewarding on Mount Lafayette in hopes of guiding hikers to the right trail when following the Franconia Ridge Loop. We have noticed an increase in hikers continuing on the Appalachian Trail towards North Lafayette instead of turning left down the Upper Greenleaf Trail. We believe that additional signage or reworking the current sign would help guide people in the right direction.
On the descent down the Upper Greenleaf Trail, the rain began to pick up. Thankfully, we noticed most hikers coming to the ridge were very prepared with rain gear and layers.
On Sunday, September 6th, the plan was to head to the south side of Mount Lincoln to continue to work on the rock project from the previous week. Sarah and Demi continued working on the project while I installed more string fencing on the north side of Mount Lincoln. Although we have worked tirelessly this season to perfect the scree walls in this region, unfortunately these efforts have not been successful in keeping hikers on trail. While installing string fencing, multiple hikers were curious about the project and appreciated the efforts of maintaining the trail.
Unfortunately, Demi and Sarah had to stop working on the rock project relatively early due to the amount of traffic on the ridge that day. Instead, Sarah decided to steward on Mount Lincoln, while Demi traversed back to Mount Lafayette to steward there. The digital trail counter was malfunctioning this weekend, so we unfortunately will not have an exact count of hikers traveling the ridge on Sunday, but I can confidently say that this is one of the busiest days I have seen this season.
After finishing the string fencing installation, I joined Sarah at the summit of Mount Lincoln and talked to various hikers for around an hour.
On our traverse back to the hut, I noticed a hiker in distress on the south side of Mount Lafayette, around 100 feet from the summit. She was in her late 20s and had been abandoned by the group she was hiking with. She stated that she was in no intense pain but felt like she had breached her physical limits. When I met her, she had already notified Search and Rescue that she needed assistance. Fortunately, Pete wasn’t far behind and was able to contact Fish and Game to make a plan. Pete, Demi, and I hiked with her over the summit and down the Upper Greenleaf Trail to Greenleaf Hut. We were under the impression that some of her group was waiting for her at the hut, where we would drop her off with them. Unfortunately, her friends began the traverse without her, down the Old Bridle Path. So, we got in contact with her friends and asked them to stop hiking so we could meet them and allow the group to finish the traverse together.
It was around 7:00pm when Demi and I started hiking the woman down the Old Bridle Path. Fortunately, the hut had two headlamps they were willing to donate to the group. At around 8:30pm, we found her friends waiting, roughly a mile and a half down the trail. We reminded them that it is never a good idea to split up in the backcountry and situations like these can become extremely dangerous extremely fast. After talking for a bit, they started their hike back down the trail, while we started traversing back to the tent platform. We got back to the hut around 9:15pm.
On Monday, September 7th, we were all feeling pretty exhausted from the long day on the ridge and decided to just traverse up to Mount Lafayette. Demi and Sarah started working on extending the walls leading to North Lafayette in hopes of reducing the confusion at the fork. I worked on rebuilding cairn tops leading to the summit of Mount Lafayette. This day was also extremely busy, with a full crowd on the summit as early as 10:30am. At around 1:00pm, we began our trek back down Upper Greenleaf to begin our pack out.