Bushwhacking West Hitchcock Mountain
The Hitchcocks are a cluster of five mountains in the White Mountain National Forest just outside of Lincoln, NH. They’re all on the New Hampshire 100 highest list (and the NH500 Highest list I’m currently working on) and none of them have trails, so you have to bushwhack to the summits. A handful of people have climbed them all in one day, but that’s a tough tough hike because they’re non-trivial bushwhacks. Most people climb the peaks over multiple hikes.
This climb up West Hitchcock is the fourth peak I’ve climbed in the group. I climbed the East, South, and Central (main) peak previously, all on one hike, back in 2014. Now that I’m on an off-trail navigation jag again, I figured it’d be a good time to climb the West Peak before we got our first significant winter snowfall, so I headed out the day after Thanksgiving to climb it solo.West Hitchcock Bushwhack