NH – Flume Gorge – Winter
December 7, 2019 Update: We hiked this again on a 20-degree day in light snow. There is now really good signage for a winter walk, with the walk starting to the left of the visitor center as you look at the visitor center. The trail is marked with red diamonds, with blue diamonds marking side trails to viewing platforms. Additionally, around the back of the visitor center, there is now an open and heated room with restrooms.
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Date for first hike: March 22, 2015
Another really cold day (about 14°F) with 20MPH gusts. Hiking through the woods seemed like a better way to stay warm than sitting on a chair lift. We decided to hike around in the Flume Gorge area.
Flume Gorge is at the southern end of Franconia State Park near the base of Mt. Flume. In the summer it is operated as an attraction by the state. Besides the fact that so many things are prettier in the winter, there are also fewer people and no entrance fees.
As it’s a tourist attraction in the summer, it obviously is not a very strenuous or challenging walk. We walked a loop that consisted of the Flume Path, Rim Path, Ridge Path, and Wildwood Path. Our total distance including some spurs and wandering was 2.75 miles in about 1.5 hours. Today we, again, opted for microspikes. It is late in the season so the snow is naturally packed down and there is a reasonable amount of foot traffic to pack it further. That being said, both Eileen and I post-holed a couple of times when we weren’t paying attention to the path.
The walk started at the northern end of the Flume parking lot. We started (heading north) on the Franconia Notch bike path (which in the winter you share with snowmobilers). About 150 yards in at the STOP sign, turn right. Walk down the path around the vehicle gate to the end. Turn right at the T intersection and then left at the next STOP sign (roughly behind the main visitor building). This trail follows the river (the Flume Brook, which drains into the Pemigewasset) towards the gorge.
The gorge itself it quite narrow with relatively high walls. It is only a few hundred yards long. There is a wooden walkway built into the side wall for the walk through the gorge during the summer. The walk is closed in winter and the gorge is the realm of ice climbers.
After watching from the entrance to the gorge, we headed up to the top of the one of the walls to walk over to the other end and looked down the gorge.
After that we took the long way around to get back to the beginning. This ran along another gorge, Liberty Gorge. Liberty Gorge isn’t as high and narrow as Flume Gorge but it is wilder and more wooded and also has a large cirque near one of the crossings.
After crossing the water on a large wooden covered bridge we were heading back in the direction of our starting point.
At one point the woods opened up into a spectacular view of Mt. Liberty (left) and Mt. Flume (on the right with Flume slide).
Heading back, we walked through an area of large glacial boulders.
The whole trip took us about 1.5 hours. The total ascent was 580 feet which averaged over a bit over a mile (one way) is relatively mild (although everything is always a little harder in snow).
Point A is the entrance to Flume Gorge where we watched the ice climbers. Then we walked around the top of the north wall of the gorge (B) to the top of the gorge (C). Point D is where we crossed Liberty Gorge, E is the opening where we saw Mt. Flume and Mt. Liberty, and F is where the glacial boulders are.
