“I wish I could get a quarter every time someone asks me what my favorite hike in New Hampshire is. After writing five hiking guidebooks, including two on New Hampshire, it comes with the territory. It’s a question I don’t need to ponder. Of the 1,200 miles of footpaths winding through the White Mountains, my hands-down favorite is the Franconia Ridge Loop—up the Old Bridle Path, across Franconia Ridge on the Franconia Ridge Trail/Appalachian Trail (AT), over Mounts Lafayette, Lincoln, and Little Haystack, and then down the Falling Waters Trail.”

As told by Lisa Densmore Ballard in the Summer 2014 issue of Around Concord.