Three Days Hiking in the White Mountains

In June 2025, Brian and I took trip to New Hampshire for three days to knock out a few more of the New Hampshire 4000ers and to do a bit of a dry run for our upcoming trip to the Alps in August. Both of us have had medical issues in the last several months - knees, backs, that kinda thing - that made us want to see how well we would do for long, tough hikes at this point in the calendar.

Rather than do a two-to-three night backpacking trip, which was our first inclination, we decided to rent a home around North Conway then to do three separate day hikes from there. That would let us adapt to conditions and see how our joints were holding up, and also gave us bug-free housing, showers, and restaurants. Hard to turn that down for this time of year in New Hampshire.

In retrospect, this was a great way to do several back-to-back days, especially longer and more distant ones that are logistically hard to pull off when starting and ending the day down in Massachusetts. We absolutely appreciated the flexibility we'd given ourselves and did adjust hiking plans based on weather. So I'd certainly consider this approach to hiking again in the future.

That said, I'd also still consider multi-night backpacking and options for staying in the huts across the Whites. All options still open.

Here are the hike logs and photos from the three days. As you'll see, in just three days, we experienced nearly all possible conditions in June in the Whites, ranging from near-death to gorgeously perfect. And we only had one day go as planned.

• Day 1 - Cabot Day Hike
• Day 2 - Isolation Day Hike
• Day 3 - Madison and Adams Day Hike