Mt Washington

Mt Washington

November 9, 2007 we left Philly and flew to Manchester NH. Nice short 50 minute flight. Picked up our rent a car and waited for the mall to open. No, we weren’t going shopping we needed fuel for our stove, our destination was Mt Washington. So EMS seemed a logical option. Later we found out they sold it at the AMC Pinkham notch visitor center which is at the trailhead.

We drove the 118 or so miles to the visitor center. Signed up for a shelter at Hermit Lake and off we went. The temp was 40F. The hike to the shelters was 2.5 miles, up hill. Over the boulderiest (is that a word) trail I’ve ever hikes. As we gained elevating the trail turned to ice then snow. The hike up was with full packs and we still don’t pack too light so 57 pounds for me and 36 for Bobbie. The ice on the rocks made for interesting footing. You focused on foot placement allot. We got to the care takers house at Hermit Lake about 2.5 hours later. We were beat. We got lucky #7 shelter and made our selves at home. The temp was now 26F. No real wind and the sky was slightly over cast. All in all the best weather considering were we were, the home of the worst weather in the world. We ate and hit the bag by 6 PM. Only to be awaken by a mouse that sounds as big as a cat chewing on one of our cushions we sit on. I shoed him/her away but back it came 30 minutes or so later. It was so involved with the plastic cushion I’m pretty sure it didn’t know what hit it. It was a Scarpa Inferno size 12.5 boot. We slept well the rest of the night.

Day two:
We woke up around 6:20 had breakfast and hit the trail by 7:45. Our plan was to hike the Tuckerman Ravine trail to get to the summit of Mt Washington. We spoke to the care taker to get any last minute weather updates. Did I mention the weather was perfect. A side bar on the care taker. He is a guy that lives up at Hermit Lake year round. He is 2.5 miles in one direction or 1.8 miles the other to the nearest road. He is literally out in the middle of now were. I think he is a USFS employee. Seems like one heck of a job, but not for me. We may have been the first on the trail today. In hind site not such a good idea. The snow was deep in places and we were post holing for the folks behind us. We decided it was better to take a break and let anyone that got close go by us. The trial up is 1.8 miles. After about 2 hours we covers about 1 mile. The going was steep and the snow was deep. We tried to stay on the tops of rocks but often you’d step into the snow and be knee deep. There was some danger of wedging your foot in between rocks as you could not tell what was under the snow. As we crossed by the wall we met an ice climber who was setting up to start playing on some ice. We also got passed by 4 guys bringing skis up to try and ski down. As we got near the top we stopped to have lunch it was about 11 AM. We still had .4 miles or so to go to get to the top. Lunch got us going again and off we went. We made the summit by noon. Did I mention that the weather was perfect? The temps were 23F, wind was 7MPH and the sky was crystal clear. I was actually a little disappointed that we didn’t get to experience the 60-70 MPH winds that this mountain is famous for. We took our obligatory summit photo looked around and headed back down. We decided to take Lines Head trail back down to experience something new. Not sure if this was a mistake or not, but it was far steeper then Tuckerman’s. We did some butt sliding to make things easier. As we were coming down I saw a guy coming up. This guy was dressed in Tennis shoes, long tights, and a long sleeve shirt. That was it. I thought to my self holy cow. We saw lots of folks actually. I’d say close to 30-50. Anyway as we’re going down Lions Head here comes the guy in tennis shoes again, kinda jogging down now. I mention to him “man that was fast” and he says “yeah I do this every weekend” I was impressed. We also saw 5 dogs hiking with folks as well as one Marlboro backpack (go Marlboro miles).We got back to the shelters about 2 PM. We had some hot food and packed up to head back to the car. We got back down to the visitor center about 5:15PM.


We had a great trip. This was our first winter over-nighter. We learned a few things and now I have a bunch of new questions I have to get answers to. We had planned to spend two nights at the shelters, but once we had achieved our goal, the summit, we bailed and headed for civilization. That and we though it would be easier to pack-up and head out now so as not to be in a rush for our flight on Sunday morning.