Hiking the Franconia Ridge Loop in the White Mountains (The #1 Rated Hike in New Hampshire!)

This hike has amazing waterfalls, epic mountain views, and snacks. How do you beat that? New Hampshire's White Mountains cover about 25% of the state and feature some of the most rugged mountains in all of New England. And after spending a couple days road tripping through the area and going on shorter hikes, today we're hitting the trail to hike the Franconia Ridge Loop, which is an 8.4 mile hike that gains 3,882 feet of elevation and takes you to the top of three peaks. It's the number one rated hike in New Hampshire on all trails and is said to have some of the best views in all of New England. Similar to how Colorado has 14ers and New York has 46ers, New Hampshire has 4,000 footers, which are mountains that are at least 4,000 feet in elevation and have at least 200 feet of prominence. And on this hike, we get to summit two of the 4,000 footers, Mount Lincoln at 5,089 feet and then Mount Lafayette at 5,260 feet. So a little over a mile in the trail, you'll come to this big waterfall. We had read that there was a nice looking waterfall and we kept coming up to three or four waterfalls before this and I kept asking Catherine like, is this the one? Is this the one? I just didn't expect this many beautiful waterfalls on this trail. Not gonna lie, this is kicking my butt. Almost there. Wait till you see this view. We made it to our first summit of the day, Little Haystack at 4,725 feet. It's not one of the 4,000 footers because it doesn't have that 200 feet of prominence, but man, the views were amazing. And that is where we're headed next, Mount Lincoln, I think. So the next bit of this trail is just along a ridge here, so you've got just super expansive views. Either way you look, that's what you work for. Another interesting thing to note about this ridge here is that it's actually part of the Appalachian Trail. All right, summit number two, Mount Lincoln. So you may have noticed that recently we've been summoning some of the high points in the states out east. We did Mount Marcy in New York and we did Mount Mansfield in Vermont. The highest point here in New Hampshire is Mount Washington. I think it's back there somewhere and it's 6,288 feet, but it's known for having some of the craziest winds in the entire world. It holds the record for the second highest wind speed of 231 miles per hour, which happened in 1934. And we hear that it has hurricane force winds once every three days. So for that reason, we decide we'll just skip it this time. You can take a cog railway to the top. It's really expensive and you can drive, but the van is too big to drive on the road. So we'll just have to come back and conquer it next time. Number three, Mount Lafayette. One amazing thing about this hike besides the views is that it's not super crazy windy like it was on Mount Marcy. We can sit up here, have a little snack, enjoy our time up here. Hear each other talk, hear ourselves talk, not get pushed over. So you can do this trail as a loop, which is what we did today. We went up the Falling Waters Trail across Franconia Ridge and then down the Greenleaf Trail. And about a mile down that trail is the Greenleaf Hut and they offer full services of lodging and meals for backpackers from June to mid-October. But they also offer just snacks for hikers like us. Katherine just ran inside to get us a surprise. We'll see what she gets. Alright, looks like you got some goodies. It is an apple coffee cake, I think. It looks hearty and thick and heavy and moist. This is hefty. Oh man, it looks so moist and apple-y. Good choice here, I think. We'll see. As soon as it hits the lip. Got a little crunch of an apple. This is probably the best thing I've ever eaten on the trail. This beats the pizza, the cold pizza. This is so good. I'll give you a little piece but that's it. Would it be good? Gentle? This hut is just such a unique feature of this hike. We haven't really encountered many huts and hikes around the U.S. versus when we were in Europe. Refugees are everywhere so this kind of takes us back to our time in the Dolomites which makes us so happy. This hike has amazing waterfalls, epic mountain views, and snacks. How do you beat that? This hike down from the hut on the Greenleaf Trail, pretty rocky and very steep. We made it back. The hike ended up being 8.7 miles and took us basically exactly seven hours and it was freaking amazing and freaking exhausting. So we just drove through Crawford Notch again, which if you missed our last video, we did a hike there. It's so beautiful. Go check that out. But we came back to the North Conway area because all we could think about on this hike was, oh my god, a burger sounds so good. So we did it. We came to a place called Wicked Fresh Craft Burgers and fun fact, the owner, he actually won an episode of CHOP, season 47, episode 10. He was the coolest guy. He came over and told us all about it. That is so cool. We can't wait to watch it. I think we're gonna watch it tonight. Look at these fries. These look so good. We got the herb fries. There's herbs all over. You can just smell it and then it comes with this wicked truffle sauce. Oh yeah. Oh my god. This looks so good. This looks so greasy and so freaking wow. So this beauty is the Wicked Hangry Burger, which is very fitting because I'm wicked hangry. So I got two patties. It normally comes with one and they're smash burgers, which I love. And it has, it's a Cajun burger actually, and it has cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickled jalapeno, and their wicked Cajun sauce. And I got a gluten-free bun. Oh that's spicy. Oh that's good. You can see all of the Cajun seasoning right here. It has such good flavor. This is exactly what I was dreaming about when we were on this hike. Alright, this burger description is gonna be easy because I built this one. I went with my go-to. There's lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions. I got the pickled jalapenos as well right there. And I throw mustard on there. Two patties as well and American cheese. That's exactly what I want. Oh it's so juicy and got a little crisp on there from the smashness there. The bun is great. Super gooey cheese. Perfectly crispy on the outside. Soft on the inside. And everything here just has so much flavor. These fries alone just have flavor. Then you dip them in more flavor. We are wicked full and wicked happy that burger hit the spot. But at the same time we are wicked sad because we have to leave New Hampshire now. Our New England adventures are revolving around chasing the fall colors. So we got to keep moving. But next we're getting coastal and we're off to Maine. You shall not pass. Cheese fries sound good huh? We're getting to the point of the hike where we're plotting our post hike meal and all we want is melted cheese and french fries or cheese fries. Hey Adam, guess what? I love you. You're a fun guy.