Bonds traverse
A beast through rugged, cragy clifs of N.H.
We hammock-camped at a guyot tent site.
Trail sequence:
- Zealand Trail – 2.3 miles
- Ethan Pond Trail – 0.2 miles
- Twinway – 3.1 miles
- Zealand Mountain Spur Trail 0.2 miles (out and back)
- Twinway – 1.3 miles
- Bondcliff Trail – 0.8 miles
- West Bond Spur – 1.0 miles (out and back)
- Bondcliff Trail – 7.9 miles
- Lincoln Woods Trail – 2.9 miles
- = 20 miles with 3700′ elevation gain.
From the section hiker
I’ll fill in more details later, for now, photos:
Zealand Parking area to Zealand hut
It’s a gradual beginning, the 2.6 miles from the car to the AMC hut. You follow a river and pass beaver ponds.
It’s always nice to arrive after some huffing-and-puffing hiking to a built and maintainted structure. My notes from the day reminded me to come back and with monies next time.
The bunks appeared newly varnished and I admired the labor of love to keep something like this going. It survives outside of capitalism. On this day, it was blessed with homemade cookies.
From the hut to Zeacliff
You get these stunning vistas at about 1.5 miles from the hut. This could be a great 4 miles in day trip in itself including many features: falls to cool off in, hut for lunch, and the payoff of a view. Our first actual peak Zealand, won't have any views, so we soaked up these here.
From the cliffs to the unremarkable Zealand mountain summit
We continue 1.6 miles along the Twinway trail. Zealand counts as a 4000-footer, but its peak is buried in a forest and I don't seem to have taken any photos of it.
