A 4th of July weekend with no weddings booked means we got to take two nights to go camping in the Bonds!

This is a trip that Jenna and I have been kicking around for a while. The Bonds (Bondcliff, Mount Bond, and West Bond) are a 22.6 mile out-and-back in the White Mountains.

The 4000 Footers website lists this hike as Moderate/Difficult, though IMHO it’s actually one of the less strenuous White Mountain 4000 footers, at least from an elevation gain perspective. It’s really the length of the hike that makes it more difficult – the first 5 miles in is a long, flat straightaway. The worst part of the hike is coming back down that straightaway at the end.

In fact, the elevation gain is so gradual, we got passed by a number of trail runners along the way. New #goals.

But the goal of this trip was to get at least one sunset on top of Bondcliff. Jenna, Ben, and I set out on Friday with a vague sense of a plan. Being that it was all of our first times in the Bonds, we were relying on finding a couple of stealth sites to camp out in and figure out water sources.

Having gotten a late start on our day, we picked our first site at the end of the flats, just before climbing any real elevation. It was also still by the river, so we had a good source of water to fill at before starting our ascent. The next morning, we packed up our site (leave no trace!), filled up on water, and got going. We knew we wanted our second site to be closer to the summit, to make the descent back to camp easier to navigate post-sunset, and we knew we wanted to make it out to West Bond and back that day.

First stop, Bondcliff.

We actually made it all the way to Bondcliff and hung out on the summit for a while before finding our second site. Bondcliff is one of those iconic, postcard-perfect White Mountain spots. Everyone gets their butt out to the edge of the prominance to get that perfect shot. At 4265 feet and a sheer drop, the cliff literally takes your breath away. This is me looking very brave. I literally crawled out to the edge, popped up for a second, and almost got blown over by a gust of wind. That’s the end of cliff time for me.

We backtracked to make camp at our second stealth site. Watching out along our ascent, we actually spotted a good one not realizing how close it was to the summit. So we climbed back down, set up camp, dropped off the bulk of our stuff, and took some day packs to continue onwards to Mount Bond.

The Bonds are pretty packed together, perfect for peakbagging. From Bondcliff, it’s only 1.2 miles to the summit of Mount Bond, and from there, only another mile to the summit of West Bond, with a pass by the Guyot Campsite.

Spotted my first luna moth in the wild. Her wing looked a little wonky, but she fluttered away easily.

This is one of the neatest things about going out to West Bond – being able to see the summit of Mount Bond and how far you have come. We were also able to fill up on water at the Guyot Campsite, our last water source for the rest of the night and until we got back into the flats the next morning.

Normally, we linger for a while on summits, and we did make sure to get some time on each. But again, goal #1 – getting back to Bondcliff in time for a sunset. And we made it!

I’ve been aspiring to acquire more mountain summit sunsets this summer. This was definitely a killer one to start with, despite the fact that it got pretty chilly as the sun went down.

But wow, really, what a view.

Thanks to our second site planning, popping back down to our camp in the dark was easy peasy, and we were able to get a good night’s sleep before descending in the morning. The hike down was mild, and the hike out on the flats was endless (note to self: maybe try bikes next time?) but we rewarded ourselves on a good weekend away with a dip in the river before our post-hiking nachos.