Mt. Washington Summit Climb - 2/10/08

[davidhowland14]

Drove up to N. Conway on Sat. night in moderate snow. Dinner at the Moat Mountain Brewery. Mmm. Burger.

At about 9 PM it started to dump. The next morning there was about 4-5" of fresh in the parking lot. After struggling to get the car up the hotel driveway (it hadn't been plowed yet). I was at the trailhead with the EMS guide at 7:30 AM. Avy conditions at the board at Pinkahm were extreme for the bowl, and High for everywhere else. Yikes.

• Pinkham @ 7:00
• Trailhead @ 7:30
• Summit @ 1:15
• Pinkham @ 3:50

I can't even begin to descrbe how much snow is on the ground up tehre. The snowbanks on the side of the road were about 8 feet +.



The trail was covered in deep snow all the way up to HoJo's with tracks from a litter in the fresh snow.

We made good time all the way up to the Lion Head Winter Route turn-off. It was about 25 degrees and I was down to my base layer. At the base of the Winter Trail we put on Crampons and traded trekking poles for an ice axe. The winter trail is moderately steep, comparable to the climb from the bottom of the bowl to Lunch Rocks. There are three sections of mixed ice and rock climbing, and then it's about 200 feet of moderate steepness until you're above treeline. We were breaking trail the entire way up the winter route, and it was bluebird until we got to the top of Lion's Head. This picture is taken just below treeline:




I have a series of these pics which I'll stitch together tomorrow and post.

After this, the clouds rolled right in over Boott Spur. Hiking up the Lion's Head ridge, we were breaking trail through 2-3 foot drifts of heavy pow. It was tough to keep to the packed-down trail and every once in a while I'd sink in up to my waist, which would lead to an outbreak of heavy swearing. At this point we could see down to Hillman's, the tree-less Hillman's runout, and the empty bowl. Four stupid people were making their way up Hillman's.



At this point, the clouds dropped down and the wind picked up, blowing the snow around. It was pretty much 25-30 foot visibility at this point. We made our way along the Lion's Head ridge and up over the top, spotting from cairn to cairn. Anyone who has climbed up Lion's Head in the summer will remember the two patches of 15' trees that the trail goes through. I walked over the top of those. There was about 10 feet of consolidated snow, with about 2 feet of windblown fresh for the entire ridge.

We got to the Alpine Garden/Tuckerman Junction area and turned up the summit cone, scraping all the rime ice and snow off the backside of the cairns as we went. This would make a big difference coming down. Up on the actual summit cone, most of the snow was blown off, leaving a couple of inches of bulletproof and rime ice. There were, however, chest deep drifts along the normal winter trail. So we deviated off the trail and kept in sight of the cairns.

At this point we ran into a guy also named Dave, who was from Connecticut. He hiked with us all the way to the summit and helped break trail.

We made slow progress up the summit cone, but we got there. Here's a screenshot of the conditions page about the time we summited:

I got first summit, and tried to get a picture, but my camera was frozen, as was my cell phone. The summit sign had rime ice extending from the post all the way out the entire length of the top of the sign. The whole summit was covered in about a foot of rime. From the summit pile, i could barely see the obs. tower. We ate lunch right by the entrance to the observatory, in the shelter. One of the observers came out to set up a thermometer and talked to use for a while. We were the first people to come to the top the whole day.

Setting off down from the summit, my goggles froze over. I was stumbling and tripping over all the rocks on the way down. The only option was to pull off my goggles. The wind had really picked up at this point:

Notice the wind spike and temp drop.

It took us about 15 minutes to get down the cone to the Tuckerman Junction, another hour to slog to treeline (all of this in about 25 foot visibility, but the scraped-off cairns showed up like beacons in the blowing snow). We passed two groups of 4 on their way up, but they were all reaching their turn-around times, slowed down by the heavy snow. As far as I know, none of them summited. Our tracks from the way up had been completely filled in.

Once we got to treeline on Lion's Head we stopped for a break. It had now begun to snow furiously.



We glissaded down Lion's Head, i ripped my Gor-Tex pants on my ice axe, and we hit the Tucks trail at about 3:30. Man, anyone who rode down the Sherbie on Sunday got a treat. It was absolutely puking out. 4-5" fresh on top of the fresh from the night before. We passed about 3 people skinning up just to do the Sherbie. It took us about 20 minutes to get down to Pinks.

Every part of me is sore today. We were hiking constantly from about 7:30 to about 1, and then hiking again from 1:30 to 4. Ouch. Still, I could not have asked for a better day to hike the mountain. These were exactly the kind of adverse conditions I wanted to summit in. I had an excellent day, and it was a really cool feeling knowing that I was one of 3 people to summit the entire day.

[deadheadskier]

Wow, nice work. Curious what the cost is for an EMS guided hike? What sort of pre-requisites do they have? Can anyone do it?

[davidhowland14]

i think it was like $250. It was worth it for the extra knowledge and experience though. I had all the skills, just not the experience, which was key. They require everyone to be "fit", but my guide told me that most of his clients would not have summited on sunday. They get alot of out-of-shape people.

[cbcbd]

Nice stuff. Who was your guide?

And yeah, I've seen some huffy puffy people wanting to tag the summit.

[davidhowland14]

paul cail.

[Grassi21]

Awesome man. Sounds like a great experience.

[X-Linked]

Awesome stoke man. Some of those shots are beautiful and greatly depict the dangers and cold of the outdoors up there.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Excellent mile+ high New England mountain stoke!!!! It looks like Tucks could be totally legit this spring..woo hoo