Mount Washington

Well today was finally the big day to hike Washington in the winter. Normally I wouldn't have these up so quickly but I'm home early, because we left really early, and I have to wait for Brooke to go to sleep before I can shower, so I'm going to put up the pictures now.

After a month or so of planning Ryan, Stephen, his brother in law Jay and I set out to climb Mount Washington. The day started off pretty bad when about half way up I realized I left my ice axe and crampons in my car when I put my gear into Stephens at 5 am. When we went through North Conway it was still too early to get any more as nothing was opened so I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have only my snowshoes and when the going got too tough for them I would have to turn around and go wait for them to finish the rest of the hike.

As they were changing I thought I'd go up and ask if it might be possible to climb without the stuff and they pretty much assured me it was a free country if I wanted to try but it pretty much would be impossible. I was bummed. Then way in the back corner I saw some ice axes and crampons. This stuff isn't cheap but I didn't come all that way for nothing so I picked out an axe and took the last pair of crampons in the place off the display boots and was ready to go. It wasn't a total loss either, Stephen bought the ice axe from me after the hike so I got some of the money back. Anyone need a set of crampons now? If not I guess I have a spare if anyone else ever wants to go.

After that we started our hike. The bottom half of the hike was pretty easy and then we got to the Lions Head Trail. The trail almost immediately went up at about a 70 degree pitch. There was no way it could have been done safely without the right gear but we got up it just fine after passing a guided group of about 20 people. The clouds had the mountain socked in. It wasn't too cold but it was really humid and snowy. Then about 1000 feet below the summit the clouds started to clear. Actually we climbed out of them and for most of the last mile we were in the sunshine and everything below us was clouds. Mount Washington was the only thing sticking up in a big sea of clouds. It was really awesome and made a perfect finish to the climb. The top was a about 20 degrees and a bit windy so we had a snack in the closed but sheltered entry to the museum and then headed back down. Much of the trip down was in the clouds and the wind picked up, blowing snow around but it didn't matter. It had already been a great hike. Something we'd wanted to do for a long time and worth every penny in my book. If you want to see the pictures just click here and hopefully you'll enjoy them as much as we enjoyed this hike.