I'm pretty far behind on writing reports, so I'll keep these short and sweet!
Leading into the new year, we were watching the weather pretty close to see which hikes made sense based on the weather. By Dec 31st, it looked like New Year's Day would be nice above treeline, so we chose to go to Franconia Ridge. We dropped a vehicle at the Liberty Springs trail-head, and got a ride to the Old Bridle Path trail-head. We started up the Old Bridle Path, bare-booting, due to the lack of snow. We eventually put on spikes when they became necessary to get up the ice flows on the trail.
Looking southwest at Mt Moosilauke and the Kinsman ridge from treeline on the Old Bridle Path
Looking at Mt Lincoln from the side of Mt Lafayette
We made good time to Mt Lafayette, and had undercast views when we reached tree-line. The views would last throughout the day.
Hiking south along the ridge to Mt Lincoln
We had chosen to go to Lafayette first, so that we would hike south, facing the sun, and have the (minimal) wind at our backs. That turned out to be the right decision, although hiking the opposite direction would have also been fine.
Looking across the Pemigewasset Wilderness with Mt Washington in the distance
Looking south at Mt Flume from Mt Liberty
Looking south from Mt Flume
After leaving Little Haystack, hiking to Liberty and Flume was uneventful. Both of those summits have nice views, but it's a little anticlimactic being in the trees after spending time above tree-line earlier in the day. We hadn't done a hike this big in a long time, but it ended up being a great day to start out the winter season.