This post has been a long time coming, but since Casey got his out I figured it was about time for me to publicize my Presidential traverse as well. On Friday June 18th I grabbed my purple nail and headed up to Bates College to pick up a friend who is deeply involved in their outing club. The next morning we woke up at the ungodly hour of about 4am, headed down to Conway, and grabbed a much needed coffee run at the local DD. We arrived at Pinkham Notch at about 6, and promptly began to hike the Old Jefferson Rd. trail. We soon arrived at what's called Lowe's Bald Spot, a rocky outcrop above route 16 that looks out at Wildcat Mountain.
Looking North towards Madison and Adams
Looking South down Route 16
After crossing the Auto Road, Old Jefferson Rd. turned into the Madison Gulf Trail, and the grade steepened considerably. We found a few sweet waterfalls to snack at while we rested.
Very convenient water trough
A mossy slide
A few times we would look up through the trees and see peaks and ridges looming thousands of feet above us coming closer and closer, and we would think, "we're climbing that?"
Mt. Washington, our eventual destination
This picture doesn't quite do Mt. Adams justice. The context is that you're looking up at a fairly steep angle towards the summit
Before we knew it, we had come to the Madison Gulf headwall. For those that don't know the area or have never hiked it, the Madison Gulf Trail climbs up from the road at a decent grade, then kicks up steeply as it ascends nearly 300 vertical meters in about 400 meters ground distance. Locals say it's one of the three steepest trails in the White Mountains. Needless to say, hiking with a 50 pound pack was treacherous (the AMC guide strongly recommends going the other way), but the views were well worth it.
A view around the bowl
Looking South towards the Auto Road, taken from about halfway up the incline
You can't see it from that picture, but this was the day of the famous Mt. Washington Road Race. As we were standing on Lowe's Bald Spot, I noticed that no cars could be seen anywhere on the Auto Road. However about halfway up the headwall I looked back at the road and saw a train of cars that stretched almost halfway down the mountain from the top. I gave it almost no thought until a friend asked me later that week if we had seen any of the race.
Madison Hut
Jesus?
Having at last made it to the saddle, we enjoyed a few hard earned mile-high disc throws.
After refueling thoroughly at the hut, we continued onwards. We dropped our packs and brought the Camelbaks on a short out-and-back run to the summit of Madison, then hiked again to summit Adams and cross Sam Adams. (several beer jokes were made at this point)
Mocking the sign. A surefire method for bringing bad weather.
We then descended more than 300 vertical meters to our campsite (The Perch), and luckily made it there before it was totally jammed full. Nearly all the tent platforms were taken, so we made our home in the shelter with five older dudes from Lancaster MA. One of the guys, Neil, had been a cross-country skier at Bowdoin long ago when it was still DII, and we had a long discussion about Nordic Skiing then and now.
Of course, a trip with a member of the Williams mens' nordic team from the class of 2013 is not really complete unless you forgot something and have to improvise. So in order to devour the tortellini we had lugged up the mountain, we ended up carving our own forks.
We had planned to get to bed really early so that we could get up around 2:30 and hike to watch the sunrise from Edmand's Col, but at 2:15 a thunderstorm rolled through and killed our idea. In the morning it appeared as if the cloudless luck we had the previous day had abated, so we kept careful watch out for thunderheads and continued on.
It's a little hard to watch for thunderheads here.
About an hour later, the fog suddenly lifted and we felt as if we were standing somewhere in Middle Earth
Looking up towards the Col
This is what we live for
Summit of Jefferson just before the fog rolled in
When we got up and hiked straight into cloudcover, the sign we had made good fun of the previous day suddenly seemed a little too real. We summitted Jefferson in thick fog, and on our way down encountered the legendary 15-foot visibility that gets hikers lost. Suddenly, we couldn't see the next Cairn. Drawing on common sense and hiking lore, we whipped out the 50-foot parachute cord and took turns leap-frogging to find the next one. (One person stands at the last known trail location, and one person walks in the direction they expect the next cairn to be, and tugs twice on the cord to signal success) We did this for about a half mile until we reached the Sphinx Trail and there was more visibility and no need to leapfrog. Fearing more adverse conditions, we then hiked quickly up and over Clay and began our ascent of Washington.
Living on the edge. You have no idea how scary it was to try to sit down here.
During a brief pause where the trail brushed the edge overlooking the Great Gulf, we thought we heard a few thunderclaps way off in the distance. Fearing the worst, we continued on across the Cog Railway at nearly threshold pace, trying to beat the rain. The further we got up, the thicker the fog was. Just as we thought about breaking out the para cord again, we saw a building not 10 meters in front of us.
At the top, we asked a group of high school freshmen from Don Bosco Prep in NJ to take a summit picture. As you can see, visibility was barely 30 feet
Not thirty seconds after we had our picture taken, weather turned for the worst. My head was beaten with a couple pearl-sized hailstones before I even realized what was going on. We ran into the lodge to check the radar screens just as the clouds broke loose and let us have it. When I saw the radar, my breath caught: the storm that I had thought had been far off in the distance was actually only about a mile north of us when we heard the thunder, passing directly over Mt. Clay where we had been just an hour previously. Worst weather in America indeed.
The temperature dropped about 10 degrees fahrenheit while we waited out the storm. Though we had originally planned to make our way down to Lakes of the Clouds and eventually the Boott Spur, we decided after more than an hour of waiting (without cell service, as the tower was out of order) that we would try to get a ride down. After considering and deciding against $29 rides down via the hiker shuttle, we proceeded to blatantly ignore the large NO HITCHHIKING signs and try our luck with finding a ride. A very nice woman with her toddler agreed to take us up on the offer, because her husband and Boy Scout son had tried hiking up Tuckerman but were turned back by the weather.
Halfway down the mountain we got out to experience the wind
We turned back into the Pinkham Notch parking lot around 1:30 where we promptly climbed back into the car with a headful of memories and tired legs. It turned out to be about 11 hours total of hiking at a good pace. Above all, my purple nail was hardened in beating sun, lightning storms, hail, and disappointment at not being able to complete the traverse.
A few days ago I was notified of my WOOLF group and who should be in it but our own Kristin Halvorsen! We have exactly two months until Freshmen arrive on campus and a little more till we convene as a (junior-less) team again. Lets use that to get fast for next year!
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