North Tripyramid Mountain

North Tripyramid Mountain – White Mountains, NH

Elevation: 4,180 feet

I haven’t hiked every trail in NH (yet) but I think North Tripyramid up the Livermore trail was my favorite trail so far. Let’s start from the beginning. I parked at the Livermore Road Trail head near Waterville Valley. From the Livermore Road trail to the split between Livermore Trail and Mt. Tripyramid trail is a beautiful easy walk in the woods. I saw lots of people bike to this split due to the wide paths and very gradual climb up. Once you hit the split between the Livermore Trail and Mt. Tripyramid Trail is when things start getting fun. If you’re going to do the loop, which is 5.9 miles long, I definitely encourage going up the Livermore trail. I couldn’t even imagine attempting to go down that trail.

Once you start on the Livermore trail you start gaining some incline and the trail does narrow a bit. I also didn’t see any blazes at this point. Then you hit the water gully/slide and that’s where it gets fun. You basically hike up the water slide where there’s a ton of loose rocks and a bit of bouldering then you hit a sheer rockface climb. I was definitely thankful for my upper body strength as for the last half mile I was on my hands and knees basically spiderman crawling up this mountain. It was so much fun but scary at the same time. I was told that if it’s too much the Scaur trail is less steep and a bit better footing. I wouldn’t recommend trying to climb up Livermore trail if it recently rained or any type of precipitation had happened recently. I had gone when it was completely dry and my hiking shoes weren’t getting grip on 75% of the last half mile up.

After you finally get to the summit of North Tripyramid Mountain, the trail is really easy across the Tripyramids and going down the Mount Tripyramid trail is steep and full of loose gravel and rocks but not nearly as difficult as going up Livermore.

As far as dog-friendly? Well, Java did it better and more gracefully than I did but he did slide down a couple of sections while really trying to hang on by digging his nails as far into the rocks as possible. I didn’t see any other dogs on the trail and I do think this would be tough for most dogs to go up with Livermore trail. As I said, I was told the Scaur trail has slightly better footing options but I cannot attest to this claim, yet. I’m really glad Java was able to climb this trail as it was one of my favorite trails to climb in the whites so far! However, would go on my list of not very dog friendly due to how technical the climb up is.