Planning a Thru-Hike of the White Mountains Direttissima

Has anyone done this NOT as an FKT?

The other day when I started planning our Direttissima route, I quickly discovered there aren’t a ton of resources out there. It seems that most people who have written about it online have either done it as an FKT (fastest known time) over a few days or a long backpacking trip in the 10-15 days range.

One person in the latter camp actually did post their full itinerary on a blog (the only one I saw) but it included many 20-plus mile days. For our purposes, we’re treating it like a short thru-hike – by hiking 12-17 daily miles over 20-25 days, with three in-town resupplies.

I’m not doing 20s in the Whites

Many people do it, but hiking 20 miles a day in the White Mountains is hard! I vividly remember my biggest day in the Whites on the AT: Webster Cliffs to Osgood Tentsite, approximately 21 miles through the Presi’s. Hobbling down the steep, rocky backside of Madison at the end of the day, I had myself a good Hike-‘N-Cry from pure exhaustion. I barely had the energy to force down a Snickers and a couple Vitamin I(buprofen) before I crawled into my sleeping bag and miraculously fell asleep despite the relentless throbbing of my knees. 

Mid ~21 mile day through the Presi’s on my AT thru-hike in late June 2020. Blissfully unaware of the roller coaster of emotions I’m about to face: joy in receiving a free quesadilla from the Madison Spring Hut, closely followed by despair as my knees experience what descending the Osgood Trail feels like after 20 miles of hiking.

And that was somewhere around 1800 miles into a NOBO (northbound) thru-hike. AND it was without even summiting most of those mountains. The AT only skirts many Presi mountains besides Washington, Madison, and a few others that you actually peak.

Andrew and I haven’t backpacked or hiked much in the year and a half since the PCT (like, less-than-200-miles-much). On the Direttissima we’ll be peak bagging all 48 summits over 76,200 feet of elevation gain. With those considerations, it would not be wise to plan big miles. Afterall, the whole point of us doing this hike is to train for the CDT and work our way up to daily 20s.

I repeat (from my previous post): I’m a SOBO now

We’re doing the Direttissima SOBO (southbound) for two main reasons. One, I’d simply rather finish on Moosilauke than Cabot (it’s a views versus no views thing). Two, for practicality’s sake, we live closer to Moosilauke and would rather end up closer to home at the end of this. I’m not going to post my exact dates we plan to be out there for safety reasons, but we want to be finishing the hike around a week/week and a half before we head out west for the CDT. That way we have some downtime in between to rest and prepare, but not so much that we lose any training gains.  

Sunrise views on the summit Mount Moosilauke during my AT thru-hike.

The Route

If you’re unfamiliar with the Direttissima route, the links below will give you a couple maps to refer to. They are more or less the same. The FKT one is a little more aesthetic with the towns and 4Ks marked without having to zoom in a lot.

FKT Direttissima Map

All Trails Direttissima Map

FarOut, the guide app we use for thru-hiking, unfortunately doesn’t have a specific map for the Direttissima, but it does have maps for the Whites. The other unfortunate thing, I discovered while planning our custom itinerary, is that the Whites maps are in multiple different files categorized by mountain range / wilderness area, e.g. The Presidential Range, The Pemigewasset Wilderness.

The Direttissima route, however, winds in and out of these areas. You don’t do all of the Presi nor the Pemi in one go; you are in and out of each of these areas twice. There are also some days that fall partially in one area and partially in another. What does this mean? It means we’re going to be doing a lot of switching from one FarOut map to another. (Hey @faroutguides, can you make a Direttissma guide please and thanks?!)

On top of Mount Isolation, one of the NH 48 4,000 footers on a backpacking trip with Andrew in the summer of 2021. Isolation is in the Presi range, yet farther away from the other peaks (name checks out). This is likely why instead of doing all the Presi’s in one go on the Direttissima, going SOBO you do the northern ones first (Jefferson, Adams, Madison) then you head eastward over to the Wild River Range to grab Moriah, the Carters, and the Wildcats, then back to the Presi’s for Isolation, Washington, etc.

How I Planned Our Itinerary

Planning our custom itinerary involved having the FarOut maps open on my phone using the route planning feature, and having three tabs open on my laptop:

1. All Trails (second link above) – used as a full map of the route (not already plotted in FarOut, you have to plot it yourself). We want it plotted in FarOut because we want to have a guide with waypoints and resources on it (campsites, water sources, other hikers’ helpful comments, etc.) which All Trails doesn’t have.
2. Google Maps – used to figure out mileage for any road walks between trails (you can only track miles on actual trails recognized in FarOut, it does not include road miles…pssst, another good feature suggestion, @faroutguides)
3. Google Sheets – if you know me you know I can create a dope spreadsheet (my most cherished skill from my time in the accounting world). This is where I recorded our itinerary with daily mileage, where we’ll camp each night, where we’ll resupply, which 4Ks we bag in a given day, and any other helpful directions for road walks or other notes. I’ll have this file with me on the hike via my Google Sheets app and can update it as we go if plans need to be tweaked. 

The Most(ly) Direct Route

Technically, “direttissima” is an Italian word meaning “the most direct route” and is used in hiking and climbing contexts to refer to the path leading most directly to a mountain’s summit or across a series of mountains within a range. If you’re interested in a brief history and overview of the Direttissima, this is a great resource to check out.

For the most part I followed the All Trails version of the route exactly for our custom itinerary, except in two spots:

SPOT 1: We’re going rogue

The first spot we are deviating from the traditional route is where we are going totally rogue on a fun detour through our home mountains: The Sandwich Range. Although it adds an extra 45 miles (about three extra days) of hiking, I thought it would be fun to literally walk home and back wherever it made the most sense along the route. Luckily, we live close to a trailhead and there are trails that eventually lead us from the Direttissima route right to it. So cool, right? It will also be one less time we need to figure out a ride into town and will be a nice midway break to sleep in our own bed for a night.

SPOT 2: My way is better (I hope)

The other spot was a minor departure from the regular route. I noticed that after summiting Cannon, All Trails has you hiking back down to Lonesome Lake before you go over to the Kinsmans, avoiding the Cannon Balls. I’m not sure why exactly it does this, or if most people do it this way. Someone let me know if I’m missing something here. To my eyes – I’ll admit I did not calculate actual mileage – traversing the Cannon Balls looks like it would be the more direct route. So going by that definition, I plotted us across the balls.

Lonesome Lake with Franconia Ridge in the background. It’s a nice lake, but I don’t see why we should be visiting it twice in one day on the Direttissima?

A Dope Spreadsheet

I want to share my spreadsheet in case anyone else is interested in doing this hike as a thru-hike and is having trouble finding or coming up with a three week itinerary on their own. Keep in mind it has our home detour in it. Instead of that, you’ll probably want to get picked up on the Kanc near Oliverian Brook Trailhead and head into Conway to resupply. It also has us taking zeros every resupply, so it could be done in three less days if you forgo those. This is not something I would ordinarily do on a thru-hike, but it’s going to be extra physically demanding without trail legs. I want to ensure we get enough rest so not to wear ourselves out before the CDT.

I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at formulating hiking plans that are conservative, not overly ambitious, and therefore easy to stick to, so I want to be a resource where I see one is lacking. If you want a challenge but aren’t trying to hike 20 Whites miles a day, this one’s for you. The link is below.

Toddler Snacks’ Direttissima Itinerary

Takeaways

I found this route fascinating. It was really interesting to me to learn the order of the peaks that is supposedly the most direct path. It wasn’t necessarily what I would have assumed in places. Although I’ve lived in the Whites for a few years now, I don’t know these mountains like the back of my hand. Not even close, honestly. In addition to providing CDT training, this will be a neat opportunity to get to know my home mountains more intimately, especially in terms of the trails that link them and where they stand in relation to each other. I hope to start connecting the pieces of a currently very broken and limited mental map I have, and at the end of this, feel like a true local. 

Finishing my first round of the NH 48 in the summer of 2022 on the summit of Mount Adams. It took me a little over two years to complete it. It’s wild to think that next time I’m going to hike all of them in just three weeks.

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