Highpoint of New Hampshire: Mt. Washington

Mt. Washington, New Hampshire

My brother, two of my nephews and I climbed Mt. Washington on Columbus Day weekend (October 6-9) 2006. Mt. Washington is famous for its horrible and dangerous weather, which is undoubtedly justified but we experienced an absolutely glorious fall weekend. After weeks of weather forecasts threatening snow and cold, the weather was magnificently beautiful. Aside from the exertion involved, there’s no better way to see the fall foliage in New England. On the day of our climb, the peak observatory recorded a record high of 57 degrees. Some local denizen along the trail told us this was the best weather in the last four months.

We set out from Boston on at about 7:00 AM all of us and our gear crammed into in a car and arrived at Pinkham Notch NH, the AMC headquarters for the region, at around 10:30 AM.

We were hoping to get 4 spots in the Hermit Lake Shelter at the base of Tuckerman’s Ravine for that evening (first come, first served) but when we arrived we were told that all 100 spots had been taken by 6:30 AM that morning, with 100 others being turned away.

So we consulted with the AMC volunteers who suggested that we go up the Old Jackson Road and set up our tents off the east side of the trail on an area that is sort of a plateau. So 1 ½ hours and 515 calories later we were bushwhacking through dense foliage until we found a mossy clearing which we widened by moving dead branches and uprooting little saplings until we had room for our tents not far from a gurgling stream.

After we had set up camp, we hiked another hour or so to a rocky outcropping called Low’s Bald Spot, where we had a great view of the valley behind us, Mt. Washington to our left and the pyramid peak of Mt. Jefferson directly ahead. From Mt. Washington we could occasionally see sunlight glinting off windshields of cars descending the auto road hidden in the trees and hear the whistle of the cog railway descending the opposite side. A glider was swooping into and out of a big ravine just below the peak of Mt. Jefferson. A great place to sit for a couple of hours; I slept for much of it, stretched out on the granite in the sun.

At around 6:30 PM or so we tramped back to our hidden campsite and turned in after munching on Trail Mix and whatnot (read the label of this supposedly PC food sometime: saturated fat, sodium, trans fat galore!).

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We were up at 5:15 AM the next day, broke camp and hiked back down to Pinkham’s Notch for a 6:30 AM breakfast in the visitor’s center which is a big two-storey log and frame building with a huge dining room.

We put our tents and sleeping bags in the car to lighten our load somewhat and set off up the Tuckerman’s Ravine Trail. The kids tired of waiting for the adults and were soon gone off ahead, not to be seen again until the summit.

The entire round trip took us 10 hours 37 minutes and my heart rate monitor recorded that I burned 3,291 calories. We spent an hour at the top and lost another on a initial wrong turn on the descent, so figure 8 1/2 hours round trip actual hiking time. This was in good weather; bad weather would obviously have made things more difficult.

Tuckerman’s Ravine is the famous site of spring skiing in New England, with snow lasting sometimes until July. Skiers pack camping gear (my summer pack weighed 42 lbs) plus their skiing equipment on their backs and tramp up the same route we took to the top using crampons and ice axes, and then ski down. I have a lot of respect for the extreme physical conditioning these folks have because we were much more lightly laden and we did not have to contend with snow.

The hike to Hermit Lake is not difficult, over boulders on a fairly wide path that could almost be called a road for a couple of miles. As soon as the wide bowls of the ravine came into sight, the trail ends and you have to use both hands and feet to ascend some 2,000 vertical feet at a steep grade over piles of boulders, up the "headwall".

The summit has been described as the ugliest of all the US highpoints and I do not doubt it. Hundreds of cars drive up the 8 mile road, disgorging their cigarette smoking passengers into a carnival of gift shops and restaurants. We spent an hour or so resting and rehydrating.

We decided the take the Huntington Ravine trail down because it looked easier on the map than Tuckerman’s which we had just come up but after we had put about 500 vertical feet behind us, we were lowering ourselves down some steep rock faces when a very fit French Canadian met us coming up and informed us that he had climbed Mt. Washington many times and in his view a descent via Huntington’s Ravine was “out of the question”. So we clambered up out of the ravine and traversed along the Alpine Garden Trail across the top of Huntington’s Ravine until we came to the Lion Head trail. We probably burned an hour on this misadventure.

Lion’s Head was no picnic but we were both very glad we had met that Frenchman.

At the bottom again, we checked into the Joe Dodge lodge (where we had made reservations back in August) … a very comfortable bunkhouse. We had a full dinner at the Pinkham Notch visitor center right next door, showered back at Joe Dodge and then fell into bed. The whole experience is exactly what you would expect of a New England weekend: cheerful, fit people with their kids creating a convivial atmosphere in the woods.

 

Directions to Mt. Washington from Boston

• US 1 North over the Tobin Bridge

• I-95 North

• Rt. 16 North to Pinkham Notch AMC visitor center

For George Fisher's main Highpoint page, click here

© Copyright George Fisher 2006 all rights reserved