"Take a step to the right and you'll be a whole lot closer" - Eli
When Eli proposed a group hiking trip to Mount Washington, I was torn. My shoulder was feeling better, but still nowhere near fully healed - but having done nothing physical for 2 weeks, my mind and body were absolutely screaming for something to do. While I received quite a bit of unsolicited advice telling me "chill out" and "relax", I'm not about making up excuses to not have amazing adventures. I was totally bummed that I missed the last hike 2 weeks ago (right after I had my shoulder separated), so I simply couldn't pass up an opportunity to get out to New England for the weekend. If you've never been up there in the middle of October - you're missing out on the amazing colors of the trees, crisp clean air, and coffee shops every hundred feet.
Friday night was spent with friends in Rhode Island - a few games of Dominion followed by Thunderstone. We got to bed early, and woke up Saturday at 5:15. Eli and I were ready to go from the start, and after much wrangling of our crew of adventurers - we were headed up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a roughly 3.5 hour ride north. It was fun driving through Kingston, Warwick, Providence and Boston - places I haven't been to since college. I still miss New England, and after having left 5 years ago, part of me will always toy with the idea of moving back at some point.
We got to the foot of Mount Washington around 10:30 - and our crew of six geared up for the hike. The weather reports called for 1-3" of mixed precipitation, winter conditions, avg. winds at around 50 mph on the summit, gusting to high 60's, and a wind chill of -1 deg. F. I should note here form the start that this report was created my the Mount Washington Observatory (MWOBS), who monitor conditions constantly from a huge observatory at the summit.
We were well prepared with winter wear, snacks, and water - so onwards and upwards we went. Our plan was to tackle the Tuckerman Trail, a 4.2 mile hike each way to the summit, with about 4900 feet of elevation gain. The weather at the base was gorgeous, low 50's, and a light mist in the air. There were plenty of small waterfalls and steams at the start of the hike, and plenty of photos were taken. At this point, Eli and I decided that with the pace the crew was taking (admittedly slow), we would never make the summit in time, so we left our comrades and booked it up the mountain. It was a tricky hike, as we were basically navigating a ravine full of small boulders - so footing was very important. Gradually the weather got slightly colder, but it was fantastic in every way because you're heating up with all the hiking - so we were comfortable all the way up to the caretaker's cabin roughly halfway through the trail. We left word for our crew that they could drive home without us (as we took 2 cars up for this very reason), and set on.
The weather around this point started to get really interesting, as the snow started as just faint wisps in the air:
to light accumulation:
to pretty constant accumulation:
At this point we were reaching the top of the tree line, and we donned our winter gear. We were at the bottom of the mountains head wall, so we were still shielded by the winds. We were greeted to an awesome waterfall, courtesy of the melting snow and apparently not a regular sighting along the Tuckerman Trail. At this point all that lie ahead of us was rock, snow, ice and heavy wind. The ascent become increasingly difficult, as we had to navigate much slower and carefully - especially in my case as I could really only use one arm.
This video was taken at the bottom of the head wall we were about to tackle. At 10 seconds of the video, the plain white area is actually Mount Washington, it's covered in thick fog.
As we entered the Arctic Zone, the winds really picked up now, and the ground cover was anywhere from a few inches to a few feet, and it was a small victory to make it to each stone cairn - which served as our trail markings. At this point in the ascent, the wind was blowing fiercely into our faces, driving snow into our eyes, so each step became harder and harder. At the same time we were contending with poor footing. There were portions where we simply had to get on our hands and knees and crawl past some sections. And boy, did it get cold. However, Eli and I refused to give up even though our energy was getting sapped with each step. We refused to yield to whatever Mount Washington was throwing at us. If conditions had been any worse, we probably would be forced to head back down...but as we got about 0.6 miles from the summit, we realized it would be much safer to reach the summit, go into the observatory building to warm up and change into dry clothes than to turn around and head back freezing our butts off.
An hour later, we approached summit and the feeling was absolutely amazing. Eli and I were pretty jubilant, but at the same time - we both knew that we couldn't enjoy the moment for long. Winds at the top of the mountain were peaking at 70mph, and the snow was very significant and everything around us was caked in thick layers of ice. Visibility was extremely poor and we had a hard time finding the right building. After 10 minutes of searching frantically among the high winds - we found the right door - and entered to a the dimply lit ranger station. We were greeted by 2 other hikers, and some unfriendly rangers - who made it quite clear that what we did was a pretty poor idea all around - and we didn't look all that prepared. One guy in particular was pretty gruff about the whole idea - and wasn't afraid to put some fear into us - and to be honest I can't really fault him. I'm sure he's seen some pretty messed up stuff on the mountain - but that being said it didn't exactly help to imbue any confidence on those going to head back down the mountain.
After thawing out (Eli's beard was frozen solid), refilling our water and changing our socks, we looked over the topographical map of the mountain with the rangers. We had 2 problems - tackling the rough weather, and daylight. The ascent took us about 4.5 hours, and the late start means it was about 3:30 and we had about 3 hours of light left. The ranger presented us 2 options:
A) Go down the Mt. Washington car road.
This involved an extra 4 miles of hiking, then a 2.5 hour hike through the woods back to our car - in total darkness. In addition, the majority of the road was covered in thick ice and completely exposed to the 50 to 70mph winds we got blasted by on the summit. The advantage here was clearly on the ranger, who could search for us by car should we never get down to the cabin.
B) Go back down the way we came.
We thought about it, and realized it would be a trickier hike, but we could go down the steeper, shorter, but rougher Lion's Head Trail. It provided the quickest decent vertically, but would involve some very rough terrain. We decided to go down this route.
The first 0.4 miles of the way back involved the same route we took up the mountain, which took us around 45 minutes of intense effort. Luckily for us, going back down was WAY easier. The fact that there was a thick snow and ice cover allowed us to sled down big swaths of the route on our butts, as long as we were careful to take it kind of slow and avoid the rocks. It was actually a lot of fun, and it took us all of about 10-15 minutes to get to the cairn which marked the trailhead for the Lion's Head Trail. As an added bonus, all of the snow I accumulated on my frozen jeans from the sledding actually acted as an insulating layer and my legs warmed up. (Wearing jeans was not a good idea in general though)
The Lion's Head was amazing. As we were really moving as fast as we could (burning daylight, after all) - we took very few pictures after this one:
For part of the trail, we were actually walking the ridge line of the mountain, and the setting sun cast a gorgeous glow over the snow and ice. It was here where the quote from the start of this post came from. The weather was still windy and vicious, but we were in very high spirits and enjoying the journey. The path down involved a lot of tricky bouldering and poor footings - but we were able to make it back down to the end of the trail just as dark enveloped the mountain.
It was an epic journey - and definitely one of the most arduous things I've ever done. Physically I was sore, but my shoulder, and the remnants of the cold I'd had for weeks were significantly healed - something I credit to the energy of the mountain, and some well spent time in nature. It really beats the crap out of life in the city - and the trip helped to solidify the notion that I should be spending far more time out of it.
- Chris
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