Zealand Falls Hut
Saturday, 20-May-2017
Tags: NH / Hiking
This is not a trail guide. If you are planning to hike any of these trails refer to a real trail guide such as
(for the White Mountains) the
AMC White Mountain Guide.
We always try to do an easy hike for the first hike of the season. This year, it was a hike up to the AMC's Zealand Falls Hut. We have hiked to this hut several times. Also, most of this hike was covered in our hikes to Whitewall Mountain and Thoreau Falls.
The Appalachian Mountain Club operates eight backcountry huts in the White Mountains. The Zealand Falls Hut is one of them. The hut is on the Appalachian Trail (all of the huts are either on the AT or within a mile or so of it) on the Twinway. The Twinway is the trail that starts near Galehead Hut (the next hut in line to the west) and ends at the junction of the Zealand Trail and the Ethan Pond Trail just below Zealand Falls hut.
From US302 the hut is reached via the Zealand Trail which starts about 3.5 miles south of US302 along Zealand Road. Zealand Falls Hut is one of the huts that is open through the winter with a caretaker. During the winter, Zealand Road is closed to auto traffic so you have hike (skis or snowshoes) in from US302 and those 3.5 miles are a pretty boring part of the trip.
The Zealand Trail from the parking area at the top of Zealand Road (elev. 2047 ft) to the hut (elev. 2608) is about 2.7 miles. So the hike is not very strenuous with a rise of 561 ft. or only about 200 feet per mile (we consider a steep/strenuous hike to be over about 700 feet per mile and very strenuous to be over 1000 feet per mile). But even so, it is flatter than these numbers indicate since the last 120 feet of elevation gain are in the last tenth of a mile up to the hut (a final steep flight of stairs and you’re done).
The trail is easy to follow and is blazed in light blue. There are few old re-routes with brush blocking the way.
This trail runs along the Zealand River system and the primary characteristic of this walk is the huge amount of beaver activity creating an intricate series of ponds and streams (we don’t see the beavers, but the dams and chewed trees are pretty telling). This walk was pretty early in the spring so the water pretty high and the falls were rushing more than we have ever seen them.
Most of the difficult water crossings have bridges. The first one was about ½ mile in and then every few thousand feet. We did have two or three relatively difficult water crossings (Eileen got across them across safely so they couldn’t have been too hard) and these were probably due to the overall high water.
At about 1.7 miles there is a huge beaver pond area with a very long bridge over the water. (This long bridge is straight now but it must have been rebuilt sometime in the last 5 years since it used to be more of a “Z” shape with a couple of turns).
At 2.3 miles the A-Z trail leaves left (east) to head over the Mt. Wiley range (Tom, Field, and Wiley). At around 2.5 miles the Ethan Pond Trail leaves left (southeast) and heads to the far side of Zealand Notch and Whitewall Mountain. After Whitewall, this trail goes by Thoreau Falls, the Ethan Pond Campsite, and then eventually hits US302.
At the Ethan Pond Trail junction, the Zealand Trail ends and becomes the Twinway (blazed in white because it’s the AT, coming from the Ethan Pond Trail). The view across Zealand Pond on the right just after leaving the Ethan Pond Trail junction gives you the first view of Zealand Falls and the hut (the roof of the hut is the white patch about a third of the way in from the right).
After about 1000 feet along the Twinway turning right (west) around Zealand Pond we reached the base of Zealand Falls which is where the steep climb to the hut starts. About halfway up there is a short side trail to the middle of the falls.
We started walking at 11AM and reached the hut at 12:30. Usually we walk out to the rocks in the middle of the falls and relax and have a snack. Today, the weather wasn’t great (it was drizzling) and there was so much water in the falls that none of the usually exposed rocks were accessible. So we relaxed inside the hut and then walked down by the same route.
Some pretty flowers today: Hobblebush, Painted Trillium, Red Trillium.
The hike: We left about 11 am, got back around 3 pm, with lots of stops for pictures, and a long break at the hut.
Other posts that refer to this post:
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Larry and Eileen Samberg
