The day I’ve been waiting for since the beginning finally arrived. The weather couldn’t have been better. Franconia Ridge was more breathtaking than I ever could have imagined. I have SO many pictures and videos of that ridge now, it’s hard to go through them all and choose which ones to show. For my Relive video, I decided to stop my GPS track after the ridge and start a new one for the rest of the day just so I can do a separate video of just Franconia Ridge since Relive limits me to 50 images and 60 seconds of video. It’s still going to be tough to trim out what to show. Along the ridge, I climbed Little Haystack Mountain (4,780 ft), Mount Lincoln (5,089 ft) and Mt Lafayette (5,260 ft) and then dropped down to around 3,800 ft elevation just to climb Mount Garfield at 4,500 ft. The last climb of the day was South Twin Mountain at 4,902 ft. After all that in 12.9 miles, I was beat. I stopped a mile short of going down to Guyot Shelter where I was going to camp and instead I’m stealth camping at the first place I found to put my tent. Since Guyot Shelter is over .7 off the AT, my stealth spot actually drops tomorrow’s planned distance from 19 miles to 18.6 miles even though I stopped 1 mile short today. I think that works better. Not to mention I’d have to pay $5 to the AMC if I camped at the shelter. I’m happier with my stealth site. I just had to be sure to carry enough water since there isn’t any around and I won’t come across any tomorrow for at least 5 miles. Some of these climbs today were absolutely insane! NH doesn’t believe in switchbacks. When it comes to climbing a mountain, it’s straight up. Some spots are literally a solid smooth slab of stone that might have some cracks along at an angle just wide enough to grab with your hands and shove your shoe’s toe box into it and shimmy up. Today, me and Sparkle hit a spot that was one of the scariest climbs up a rock face with a nasty drop off next to it. I was able to use tree roots and my hands in rock cracks to get up but Sparkle really hit a limit and was on the verge of breaking down thinking she just couldn’t do it. She slid back down to get her composure and then I pep talked her up the climb helping her with each hand placement and each footing to get up. I’ve been happy doing my own hike but in this extremely technical section in NH, I’m glad to be hiking with someone. She’s helping me keep my calm with my fear of the unknown and I’m helping her with my pep talks. She and I both should be VERY proud of what we accomplished today. They told us at the hut we passed today that the section we just completed is one of the hardest sections out here. Standing on top of South Twin Mountain and looking back at the long mountainous section we just completed today, I’m overwhelmed with emotion. It’s insane looking back and seeing what we climbed. It almost doesn’t seem real. Tomorrow we head a long distance to Mizpah Hut & Nauman Tentsite where we’ll camp and then prepare for the Presidential Range Alpine Zone. I hope the weather cooperates. It looks like we may have rain on and off everyday for over a week. I cannot wait that long for better weather so it may be ugly weather and maybe not much of a view but as long as it’s not considered too dangerous, especially for Mt. Washington, I’ll be hiking on. The huts post weather reports so I’ll continue to monitor those to decide what to do.