Waumbek

November 24, 2025

With the main mission of my NH-48/NE-111 complete, thoughts turned towards giving Paul a good experience during his first hiking trip to the Whites. Franconia ridge would have been a great candidate, but the weather forecast was for fog and flurries. Additionally, we were both pretty bushed from the last two days of hiking and being beat up on the Cannonball ridge. We discussed the options over our supper and decided on getting one of the viewless peaks out of the way. Waumbek seemed like the ideal candidate. No views, round trip of about 12 km, and somewhat on our way during the drive home.

A much warmer night was spent in the tent and we awoke to light flurries in the morning. After packing up camp we drove out through Twin Mountain and up to the Waumbek trailhead. We almost did not make it as the final driveway was rutted with huge, hatchback eating pot holes. Fortunately Paul's car managed to bounce us into the empty parking lot with the tires only digging out the holes a tad deeper for the next poor soul that tries to drive up this way. We geared up and began the hike.

Waumbek is a rather straight forward walk up what we assume to be an old horse trail. Nothing steep on this journey, we bare booted the entire way past an old stone well and up the wide trail on steady incline to the top of Starr King mountain. Here there is the remnants of a cabin gone by. We took a short break on the hearth of the fireplace and then made the quick scamper over to Waumbek's summit. The impressive cairn from my last visit has been rendered down to a pile of rocks buried in the snow. We took a selfie and then turned back.

Checking out the old water hole

Starr King fireplace

Waumbek summit

Up until this point we had not seen anyone, but now we began to meet quite a few people. Some were chipper, others were talkative, and most looked exhausted. Probably in the same state that we were... recovering from a big hike yesterday. Just after four hours on the go we arrived back at the car completing a successful long weekend.

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