Pemi Loop Gear List: What to Pack for New Hampshire’s Toughest Loop

This Pemi Loop gear list exists because the Pemigewasset Loop punishes generic packing advice. On paper it’s about 31 miles with roughly 9,000 feet of elevation gain, starting and ending at the Lincoln Woods trailhead off the Kancamagus Highway. In practice it’s two of the most exposed ridgelines in the Northeast — Franconia Ridge and the Bonds — stitched together by the Garfield Ridge Trail, which is slower and rockier than any mileage estimate suggests. I’ve done sections of this loop in everything from July heat to October rime ice, and the gear that works here is not the gear that works on a sheltered valley walk of the same distance.

Three conditions drive every choice below. First, sustained above-treeline exposure: the stretch from Little Haystack over Lincoln to Lafayette runs close to two miles in the open, and Bondcliff to Bond adds more, with nowhere to hide when weather moves in. Second, White Mountains weather changes fast — Lafayette tops out at 5,260 feet, and summits that were calm at 9 a.m. can be in cloud with 50 mph gusts by noon, any month of the year. Third, water is scarce up high. Once you leave the Franconia Brook drainage, reliable sources are basically the springs near Liberty Spring Tentsite, Garfield Ridge Campsite, and Guyot Campsite, plus whatever Galehead Hut will sell or give you. Everything in this list is tuned to those three facts: carry shelter and layers that handle real wind, keep the pack light enough to move fast through the exposed sections, and plan water like it’s a desert hike, because above 4,000 feet it kind of is.

Shelter first, because the Pemi constrains where you can pitch it. Camping above treeline is prohibited in the White Mountain National Forest, and in the Pemigewasset Wilderness you need to be 200 feet off the trail unless you’re at a designated site. Realistically you’re sleeping at Liberty Spring, Garfield Ridge, Guyot, or 13 Falls — all wooded, all with tent platforms or pads. That means you want a shelter that pitches on platforms and handles wind funneling through the cols. The Durston X-Mid 2 is my pick here: around 2 lb 4 oz for the whole shelter, a genuinely storm-worthy double-wall design, and the offset-pole geometry sheds the gusty, swirling wind these sites get. On platforms, the downside is that you must bring a few feet of extra guyline for the corner anchors — the stake loops rarely line up with the hardware.

For the pack, target something in the 45–55L range that carries 25 pounds comfortably, because you’ll be hauling extra water through the dry ridge sections. I run the Hyperlite Mountain Gear Southwest 3400 (55L, about 2 lb) when the forecast is wet — the Dyneema fabric shrugs off the all-day drizzle that soaks through pack fabric on Garfield Ridge — and the Osprey Exos 48 (about 2 lb 10 oz) when I want a real frame and ventilated backpanel for a humid July trip. Both are honest choices; the Osprey is cheaper and more comfortable over 30 pounds, the Hyperlite is lighter and drier.

For sleep, nights at Guyot (about 4,580 feet at the ridge) run 20–30 degrees colder than the Lincoln valley. Even in August I’ve seen upper 30s up there. A 20-degree quilt like the Enlightened Equipment Enigma 20 (roughly 19 oz in 850-fill) covers June through September with margin, and pairing it with a Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT (13 oz, R-value 4.5) means the tent-platform planks under you aren’t sucking heat out all night. Platforms are colder than ground — don’t skimp on pad R-value here.

The clothing system for the Pemi is built around one scenario: you’re halfway across Franconia Ridge, the wind picks up to 40 mph, and the temperature drops 15 degrees in twenty minutes. That’s not a worst case — that’s a Tuesday up there. Hypothermia incidents in the Whites happen in summer, usually to hikers who were sweaty, got wind-blasted above treeline, and had nothing but a cotton hoodie in the pack. Your base layer should be synthetic or merino, never cotton, and you want a wind-worthy insulation piece even in July. I carry a synthetic puffy (roughly 10–12 oz) rather than down for this trip, because it still insulates after two days of White Mountains humidity.

Rain gear is where I tell people not to go too ultralight. A 6-ounce emergency shell that wets out in an hour is a liability on this loop, because the exposed sections are long enough that you can’t just sprint to treeline. Carry a real hard shell with a hood that cinches down — something in the 8–12 oz range with pit zips, since you’ll also wear it as a wind layer on the ridge. Add rain pants or wind pants if you’re out in shoulder season; bare wet legs in 45-degree wind above Bondcliff will end your day. Round it out with a fleece or grid-fleece midlayer, a warm hat and light gloves year-round (I’ve wanted gloves on Lafayette in every month), and a dry sleep shirt sealed in a pack liner. The rule I follow: everything I need to survive a stalled hour above treeline in the worst plausible forecast rides in the pack, not in the car.

The Pemi’s footing is classic Whites: eroded granite staircases on the Osseo Trail, endless rock-hopping on Garfield Ridge, open slab on the Bonds, and the flat-but-pounding railroad grade of the Lincoln Woods and Wilderness Trails to finish. Nine thousand feet of gain also means nine thousand feet of descent, most of it steep and rocky — the drop off Garfield’s summit cone and the descent from South Twin to Galehead Hut are both notorious knee-eaters. I hike this loop in trail runners with a sticky rubber outsole and a rock plate, and I think most people with reasonably strong ankles should too; the weight savings over boots matters when you’re lifting your feet onto rock steps a few thousand times a day.

That said, be honest about your ankles and your pack weight. If you’re carrying 35 pounds for a two-night trip, a light mid-height boot is a defensible choice — just make sure it’s broken in, because this is not the trail to discover hot spots on mile 8 of 31. Whatever you wear, bring at least one spare pair of socks and deal with wet feet as a certainty, not a possibility: Garfield Ridge holds mud through August, and the water bars on the descents run like small streams after rain. In shoulder season (roughly October through May, and honestly sometimes June up high), add microspikes — around 11–14 oz — because the north-facing sections of Garfield Ridge and the slabs near Guyot hold ice long after the trailhead is bare. I’ve turned around parties in May who were postholing in running shoes at 4,000 feet while Lincoln Woods was 65 degrees.

Water is the most underrated planning problem on the Pemi, and it drives real gear choices. Going clockwise from Lincoln Woods (up Osseo to Flume first), your reliable sources are: the brooks low on the Osseo Trail, the spring at Liberty Spring Tentsite, the spring at Garfield Ridge Campsite, Galehead Hut, the spring at Guyot Campsite, and then Black Brook and the Franconia Brook drainage on the long walk out past Bondcliff. The problem is what’s between them — the entire Franconia Ridge from Liberty to Lafayette is dry, and the Bonds traverse from Guyot over West Bond, Bond, and Bondcliff is dry until you’re well down toward the Wilderness Trail. In a hot July, I leave Liberty Spring with three liters and I’m glad for every one of them by the Lafayette summit.

Gear-wise, that means capacity for at least three liters (I carry two 1L bottles plus a 2L collapsible for camp and dry stretches), and a filter you can use fast at trickling sources — a squeeze filter in the 2–3 oz range is ideal, because the Garfield and Guyot springs are low-flow pipes or seeps, not rivers. Backflush it before the trip; a clogged filter at Guyot with a dry traverse ahead is a genuinely bad situation. Two more notes from experience: the Garfield Ridge spring can slow to a dribble in late-summer droughts, so ask southbound hikers about flow, and Galehead Hut sells water and snacks in season, which makes it a legitimate part of your plan rather than a cheat. Budget roughly a liter per five miles in moderate temps and more in heat — the climbing here burns water faster than the mileage suggests.

Navigation on the Pemi is less about getting lost — the trails are well-defined — and more about decision-making in bad visibility. Above treeline in cloud, the cairns on Franconia Ridge and Bondcliff are your handrail, and knowing exactly where the escape routes are matters: Falling Waters Trail off Little Haystack and the Old Bridle Path off Lafayette are your bail-outs from the ridge, and once you’re past Garfield, the realistic exits are long. I carry the paper AMC White Mountains map in a ziplock plus a GPS app with the loop downloaded offline, and I check the Mount Washington Observatory higher-summits forecast the morning I start — it’s the single most useful safety habit for this range, because the valley forecast tells you almost nothing about what Lafayette is doing.

Cell coverage is spotty-to-nonexistent for most of the loop, especially in the Pemigewasset Wilderness on the east side, so I carry a satellite communicator (about 3.5 oz) and leave an itinerary with someone at home — note that New Hampshire’s Hike Safe card is cheap insurance against rescue costs if things go wrong. The rest of the safety kit: a real headlamp with fresh batteries plus a spare (Garfield Ridge in the dark is slow, and underestimating this loop’s pace is the most common way people end up night-hiking), a small first-aid kit biased toward blister care and ibuprofen, a foam sit pad or emergency bivvy, a lighter, and repair tape for pad and shelter punctures — the tent platforms and spruce roots are hard on inflatables. None of this is exotic. All of it is stuff the Pemi has made me use at least once.

Most people should plan the Pemi as a two-night trip, and the classic split is Liberty Spring or Garfield Ridge the first night and Guyot the second. Two nights means two full days of food plus breakfast on day three — figure 1.5 to 2 pounds of food per day — and it means you hit each exposed section in the morning when weather is statistically better. The gear list above is written for this itinerary: full shelter, 20-degree sleep system, three-liter water capacity. Expect a base weight around 12–16 pounds and a total pack weight in the low-to-mid 20s with food and water, which is very manageable on this terrain. The designated sites charge a caretaker fee in season and platforms fill on summer weekends, so arrive early or have a plan B that respects the 200-foot wilderness camping rule.

The one-night version is a different animal: two 15-plus-mile days over this terrain is a big effort, and it only works if you’re comfortable hiking 10-to-12-hour days on rock. The gear delta is smaller than people expect — you drop one day of food and maybe swap to a slightly smaller pack, but you cannot drop the storm layers, the traction call, or the water capacity, because the exposure is identical. Where you save is in margin, not safety kit. I’d also gently push back on the single-push, no-overnight-gear day hike version unless you’ve done comparable Whites mileage before: plenty of strong hikers finish the Pemi in a day, but the ones who get in trouble are almost always day hikers caught by weather or darkness with no insulation and no shelter. If you’re attempting it in a day, carry the puffy, the shell, the headlamps, and an emergency bivvy anyway. The mountain doesn’t care about your itinerary.

Which direction should I hike, and does it change my gear? Clockwise (Osseo Trail first, Bonds last) gets the steep climbing done early and saves the flat railroad grade for tired legs; counterclockwise banks the flat miles first and puts Franconia Ridge at the end. Gear barely changes, but water strategy does — reread the sources list for your direction and know where your longest dry stretch falls. Do I need a bear canister? Not required in the Pemigewasset Wilderness as of this writing, but bears are active at the designated sites; use the bear boxes where provided (Guyot and Garfield Ridge have them in season) or hang properly. Never sleep with food in the X-Mid.

Can I resupply water at Galehead Hut? In season, yes — the hut is a short spur off the loop between Garfield and South Twin, and stopping there for water and a baked good is a time-honored move. Don’t build your plan around it in the off-season when the hut is closed or on caretaker basis. When is the best window? Mid-June through early October for summer-gear conditions; before and after that, this becomes a mountaineering objective with a different list entirely, and even in the window you should treat the higher-summits forecast as go/no-go. What’s a realistic pack weight? With the big four above — the X-Mid 2, either the Southwest 3400 or the Exos 48, the Enigma 20, and the XLite NXT — plus the layers, water capacity, and safety gear covered here, a 13-pound base weight is achievable without heroics, and that’s light enough to actually enjoy the hardest 31 miles in New Hampshire. See current prices on each product page, or build this exact pack in the Pack Builder.