This is the final post in a catch up effort I finally made.  Read about Sweeney and I constructing our own gym, and my trip to Acadia which I also just posted.  Unfortunately I missed key photo opportunities at most of our July/August climbing trips.

Here we go:

Last weekend Sweeney made some spontaneous hiking plans and made a quick drive up to Lincoln for some day hiking.  I’d been wanting to hike the Tripyramids, or Trippy-amids as I sometimes call them for some reason.  They were pointed out on this blog, and the ~11 mile loop we planned seemed like a solid route.

The hike was mostly enclosed by trees, but had a few good views.  Since it was just the two of us, we did our best to race up the steep ascent and then hike along the ridge to past the north peak to Middle Tripyramid, both of which are just over 4k elevation.

Some foliage as we crested the ridge.

We took a break at Middle Tripyramid, once we’d found a good outlook.  We did the 5 mile ascent in 2 hours, so it seemed like a well deserved break.  Time to soak in the view.

One of a few good views from the middle peak, with Waterville in the background.

To the right…

And the left.

There is a distinct lack of snow behind Sweeney.

We backtracked a bit to turn the hike into a loop, with about a mile walk on the Kanc to get back to the car.  After a steep, but brief portion, it was mostly easy going.  Unfortunately, there were many streams and rivers between us and the road.  They were very nice to look at–the river was strewn with smooth rocks and had very clear water, but after crossing it for the 5th time, it got a bit tiresome.

One of the roughly 25+ river and stream crossings on the way down.

A stream bed that got pretty destroyed by Irene.

After one or two last crossings, we knew we were in the clear.  I actually took my shoes off at one point and just waded across.  Just when we thought we were approaching the road, the hiking trail turned into a gravel road.  We suddenly came upon a tourist landmark, a unique water fall.

Unexpected landmark.  Sabbaday Falls was created by a plate fault across a basalt dyke.

Checking it out…

Pretty cool.

Photo op. I tried using my new (and first) smart phone exclusively for photos. It did alright.

This made the final hike out a little easier than expected, but it was a cool find, and a great way to end the hike.  We made in back to the car about 5 hours after we’d left, and took the scenic Kancamagus back to Lincoln for some food and ski sale perusing.

Here’s Sweeney’s trip data which he kindly provided to me:

[sgpx gpx=”/wp-content/uploads/gpx/tripyramid.gpx”]