March 14, 2024
Grant, Bill, and I left Ottawa at 06:00 hoping to get down to the White Mountains in time for a short hike before beginning what was planned to be an extended weekend of ice climbing and mountaineering on Mount Washington. Though with the silly weather this year, we figured it might just be a lot of walking around carrying heavy packs, sadly looking at crumbling lines. Anyway, this day was a lovely warm and sunny morning, and after we had crossed the border in no time at all, decided we had enough daylight to take a run up Moriah.
We arrived at the town of Gorham promptly at noon and took our first lunch break right at the trailhead as we prepped our gear. We started climbing this steadily rising trail with bare boots in the thin mushy snow, but at 600 meters there was enough coverage for snowshoes. As we climbed, we kept leap frogging with a mother and son duo who hailed from the ADK area, stopping for some friendly chit-chat several times as we ascended the mountain. At the top of the climbing and gaining the ridge, there were many false bumps before getting to the true summit and Bill decided to turn back down while Grant and I pushed on to the top.​
On the summit we met the mother and son once again, took a few photos of the 360 degree views which included Mount Washington and endless hills off in the distance, towards and onwards into Maine. I rejoiced, as this is the first summit I have stood on with a view of something other than the inside of a cloud in almost an entire year. We said good bye to the other team and began our descent, flying down the slushy trail by snowshoe sliding. We caught up to Bill in short order and stuck together for the remainder of the trek, again leapfrogging with the ADK folk. I sheathed my snowshoes at around 500 meters and boot skied the rotting snow down the final pitches, arriving back at the trailhead after five and three-quarter hours of hiking. Drove to Conway and went out to supper in an excellent or awful Mexican restaurant depending on which one of us you talk to. Some beers at the Conway Hostel with other friendly folk, before retiring to bed just as our friend Karen arrived to join our party for the next couple of days.
Pics:
https://web.ncf.ca/mbowler/hiking/wm...24/moriah.html
March 15, 2024
It rained all night and was still coming down hard as we got up and did our morning routine. Breakfast at CoHo was relaxed and fueled by far too much weak coffee as all thoughts of climbing ice drowned with the torrents of water coming down the Saco river. Our plans turned again to hiking. The weather forecast noted that the rain should stop around noon, so we decided to poke around some shops in North Conway before heading out. Bill and Karen decided they would hike Chocorua, while Grant and I set our sights on a peak known as Wildcat D.
Grant and I drove into Pinkam Notch and found the main trailhead along the Appalachian trail to be under construction and not available. We continued up to the visitor center and parked there. In the notch, the rain from last night appeared to have come down as snow, and we found about 20cm of fresh powder so our snowshoes went on right at the start of the Lost Pond trail. This was a pretty walk along the side of a creek, past a large and now found pond, and after a little over a kilometer of walking brought us to the AT. The trail from this point went straight up the mountain.​
We were following the tracks of a couple postholers and soon came across them during some of the scramble parts. They gladly let us go ahead and then followed in our snowshoe prints as we broke trail. A steep chimney section had me pull out my axe for security to surmount, and this brought us up to a lookout ledge above Pinkham. Here we stopped for lunch as even though we had only been moving for about an hour, breakfast had been quite a while ago. We chatted with the other two guys and learned that James and Stephen were from the Ottawa area as well. They were planning to climb up to a high point as a warmup for a few days of hiking they were doing based out of Harvard Cabin.
We continued on upwards of unrelenting steepness and into the clouds where some of the open slopes, snow, and fog gave this little mountain a real alpine feel. We finally reached the first summit of the ridge, having left the other guys quite a bit behind. Snow along the ridge was quite deep, but slushy as we plunged downwards and then climbed upwards along the numerous bumps of Wildcat. Each summit we figured "must be Wildcat E", but then another false summit would present itself out of the fog. We lost the trail between Wildcat F and E and spent some time looking for it before the telltale sign of a chainsawn log showed the way. At this summit we could hear the clunking noise of a ski lift and figured we must finally be on top of peak E, where Grant even pulled out his phone to confirm the obvious. A quick decent brought us to the top of the lift and a sign proclaiming this as the summit of Wildcat at 4068'. Not believing this, we then climbed up another hundred meters or so to the top of Wildcat D, where another sign indicated this as the summit of Wildcat, again at 4068'. Given the top of Wildcat is actually at 4422' and about 3 km NE of here by my map, some fine bit of deceptive marketing is going on here! Anyway, the marketeers provided us with a nice viewing platform to look off into the fog, which also made a good place to eat second lunch.
The way back went much faster as we snowshoe skied down the bumps and made quick climbs over each one. We counted them and figure we got through F, G, H, and maybe even I (depending on what you claim is a summit) before arriving at the final peak where the incredibly steep descent began. It was this last peak where the Ottawa boys had turned around and we followed their post-holes and butt slides downward. My bones being a little older, I do not generally butt slide so downclimbed most of the steep and rocky sections in snowshoes, sometimes daggering into the snice and underlying mud with my axe head for security. At the lookout ledge before the most tricky scramble, I switched to crampons and scratched carefully down between a bare slab with my left foot and a vertical rock face with my right. Grant managed somehow to pull this off in his snowshoes. Finally the bottom was reached and I stashed the crampons for bare boots for the packed Lost Pond trail. We found the pond a second time, and shortly after arrived back at the Pinkham visitor center where we met James and Stephen again, cooking up their supper in the parking lot before heading out into the ravines. Our hiking time was just over five hours for this jaunt, but with the late start it was almost our supper time, so we scooted back to the hostel to meet Karen and Bill in time for a home cooked meal.
Pics:
https://web.ncf.ca/mbowler/hiking/wm...wildcat_d.html
Mar 16, 2024
Today it was not supposed to rain, with even a bit of sunshine in the forecast. Grant and I finally got a normal hiking start this morning, leaving CoHo at 07:30 to drive the over the Kancamagus pass to where the Hanchick trailhead lay. Karen and Bill decided that they would tackle Mount Crawford. As we came around one of the many corners on this road, the vehicle entered a wild and exciting skid, but fortunately Grant managed to correct before he lost complete control on this surface of black ice. We slowed down the driving and in another kilometer up the road we found someone being towed out of the ditch. A little further we noted a freshly mangled guard rail, and a bit further than that passed a car limping along at a snail's pace with half of the rear bumper missing. These three warnings were heeded and we continued our ascent over the pass with extreme caution.
Fortunately we made it to our destination safely, but arriving at the parking area we found it almost full. We managed to squeeze in though, and got going fairly quickly to get ahead of a fourteen person AMC group. Travel started out in spikes on the solidly frozen packed trail and we were glad to finally be hiking in something that was not slush for a change. Then Grant realized he had forgotten his water bottle in the car, so he scampered back while I sat down in shame and watched fourteen people tromp on by. At least I got an early break. A mother and two children motored on by as well and I was glad to see a family out on this nice day. Once Grant got back we easily caught up to the horde at a creek crossing where things had backed up a bit. We waited in line not moving for a while as this group picked their way one by one across, then finally managed to scamper around to the side and hop across on another set of rocks and we were in the clear again. It was quite a while before we caught up to the young family and we shared a pleasant hello as we passed.
The clear sky that we had started with unfortunately started to cloud in by the time we arrived at the Hanchicken loop, where we met a couple of women who were just starting up in a counter-clockwise direction. We decided to go clockwise to get the majority of the climbing out of the way at the start, so we turned left and descended steeply into a drainage where we found the snow much deeper and softer. Spikes were swapped for snowshoes and then we began a grindingly steep climb which sustained itself all the way to the main summit of Hanrooster​
We took our second breakfast at a lookout here, but unfortunately there would be no views today. The ridge walk to South Hanturkey was lovely, with powdery snow and only a few spots to duck under or scoot around blowdown. We met the two women from below and stopped for a short chat before continuing to the summit where we met a guy with a friendly dog. A father/son duo showed up and I took their photo just the sun came out for a fleeting moment.
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The descent was blazingly fast, and except for being held up for a bit as we negotiated around the AMC group, we were back at the base of the loop in about ten minutes after leaving the top. We stopped for our second break and chatted with two or three other couples who also had arrived at this spot to rest. The long slog back was neither that long, nor too sloggy, as the warm sun came out again now that we were off the mountain. We left the snowshoes on and just plodded along through the lovely forest as the trees dripped meltwater on our heads. Before we knew it the Kanc appeared in front of us and we were done, five hours after starting.
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The best view of the day was obtained from the parking lot where we joked with another hiker that perhaps we had just wasted our time hiking the mountains. As it was early we looked for a pub back in Conway to satisfy the beer, grease, and salt cravings, but had no luck in this endeavour. Instead we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon in the CoHo common room with a six pack and a bag of potato chips.
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Pics:
https://web.ncf.ca/mbowler/hiking/wm...024/hanks.html
Mar 17, 2024
Awoke to another day of pouring rain, so instead of hiking we decided to just drive on home. Though we did not make any of our climbing objectives, it turned out to be a successful trip anyway. Four more peaks brings my NE111 total to 112/115.​
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