North Twin, South Twin - August 19, 2026

Four of us OTHH made a loop hike out of the trip to the Twins, going up the North Twin Trail, down the Twinway to the AMC Galehead hut, and out via the Gale River Trail. The first part of the trip is a fairly easy two miles in from the end of Haystack Road, following the Little River for much of the way. The river crossing wasn't too hard, as water flows were less than at other times. Then we got down to business, over a steeper and generally rocky two more miles, topping out at a very nice view ledge. Five minutes later we were at the top of North Twin. There is no view at all from the actual summit, but a couple hundred feet past that leads to an open ledge. This was a nice place to regroup, have a snack, and take photos. Below is part of the view from there, with South Twin (4902') on the left , looming over "little" Galehead (4204') to its right. Beyond Galehead is first the long humped ridge that is Owls Head, and beyond that the two pointy peaks of Flume and Liberty. Part of the Franconia Ridge is shown to the right, all of which, plus Garfield, were easily identified from where we stood. If you look closely, the roof of Galehead Hut is visible as that small white dot in the col between South Twin and Galehead.

From North Twin, we took the spur trail down, over, and up to the top of South Twin, which has its own grand view of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. That makes a great place to stop for lunch. Below, at the top, are the four of us (L-R), Brenda, Dick, Chris, and Pam.

Next was the mile long, steep descent from South Twin to the hut, dropping around 1,000 ft in elevation. Pam and Chris dropped packs at the hut and made the short hike up to bag viewless Galehead, since it's "right there." Meanwhile Brenda and I decided that an 11-mile day would be long enough, left Galehead for another day, and went on ahead. It wasn't long before Pam and Chris caught up. After the rocky first two miles of descent, the trail got a lot easier to cover, but the rest of it, while fairly easy walking, seemed to go on forever. Chris gave us a ride back to Haystack Road, where we began the long day.