A hike up Mt Clinton (aka 'Pierce') - part training exercise, part sanity check and part just fun :)
Crawford Path -> Mizpah Cutoff -> Webster Cliff Trail -> Crawford Path
Gallery / slide show
TLV and the Chocolatessa have a planned trip to Lakes of the Clouds; but neither has been doing a lot of hiking lately.
Are they up to it?
Rather than hold you, O Gentle Reader, in suspense, I'll say the answer is a resounding "Yes!" based on their hop-skip-and-jump hike on Mt Clinton 
Ok, maybe not hop-skip-jump, but we all made the trip no problem, just a question of taking our time and paying attention to the footing to avoid any turned ankles.
We got started pretty late, so the parking lot was overflowing. But we managed to park ... and two of us discovered that our parking stickers had expired, in time to pay the iron ranger.
Whew. Didn't need to end the day with fines!
Despite the slight haze, the day looked to be pretty awesome.
The Crawford Path is pretty gentle, the only steepness of note is on the Webster Cliff Trail between Clinton and Mizpah Hut.
I wanted to go to Mizpah for a variety of reasons - I like the steep ascent section; I wanted to use the hut for water and other bio needs and I thought they might have cookies.
No cookies, but very good apple spice cake 
The water was potable, but tasted kind of bad. Better than being thirsty, though.
At Mizpah there was a pretty big crowd, including numerous thru-hikers, both NoBo and SoBo.
I was amused by the thru hikers; as they sat chatting one among them, a very attractive young woman, mentioned she was from Pennsylvania. Suddenly it seemed that every one of the male thru hikers was also from Pennsylvania and wanted to, um, compare notes. Perhaps I'm just cynical, but it seemed a rather amazing coincidence 
I guess even on the AT love is ever looking for an opportunity to bloom
After a nice break at Mizpah, we tackled the steep ascent up to the shoulder of Clinton, admiring some of the stone stair work. We soon reached an outlook to the west, and though TLV looked, we could not see the Ironbiker or his wife over on Franconia Ridge. We did hear later that they had had a great time, ascending Flume Slide Trail and descending Greenleaf.
Jealous.
On the other hand, Clinton was pretty darned nice, and 10 miles shorter 
... and ... I got to sit on the summit and take it in for over an hour. Woo hoo!
Arriving on the summit, we saw quite a few people and (well behaved!) dogs. So many people, had to hunt for a spot to settle in.
We saw a couple of birds on the summit, one little sparrow sized fellow, and one that I initially thought was a raven ... but closer examination shows it was a vulture. Seems like they are more and more common every year. I dont remember seeing many just a few years ago.
At the junction of the Mizpah Cutoff and Crawford Path, we saw a little more wildlife, two very fat mice, and two grey jays. The jays are already begging.
Descent was no problem, just an exercise in taking our time and watching our steps.
The footing on the Mizpah Cutoff and the upper part of the Crawford Path was a bit annoying to me; lots of small ( boot size) rocks requiring careful foot placement. I think I'm spoiled because of all the hiking I've been doing in the Belknaps. The Belknap trails are quite a bit less rocky. I was also surprised how much water there was on the upper part of the CrawfordPath ( between the Cutoff and the Webster Cliff Trail junctions). As dry as it has been in central NH I did not expect the rivulet along the trail. No problem, just a bit of a surprise.
One other interesting thing I ran into. I often carry a Garmin GPS, and an Olympus camera. The Olympus has a GPS which is sometimes useful, but on this trip the Garmin reported about 6.6 miles and 2600' gain; the Olympus showed 7.6 miles and 3100' gain 
Took me a while to figure out, but the Olympus GPS makes entries continuously, even when you're stopped. Since there is always some measurement error, this results in lots of little 20 or 30 yard measurements when stopped. These add up when you stop for long periods! The Garmin apparently filters most of these extraneous entries out, so it is a more accurate measurement of the overall distance/elevation gain.