December 13, 2008
The physically hardest day of my life thus far. Two days earlier a major ice storm struck causing major damage around Mass. and NH. The White Mountains didn’t have it as bad as the southern part of the state but there was still ice around. The forecast for Waterville was a high of 10 and for Mt. Washington –10. I figured Mt. Jackson would be in the middle of that. Needless to say no one else came up to Waterville this weekend with us.
Due to it being one of the shortest days of the year we headed out early (well early for us). I think the car thermometer said 8 degrees, the warmest part of my day. As we headed out the temp went down. There were clear blue skies until we got to Franconia Notch. There were clouds in the notch and it was like going through a storm.
Oh yeah the thermo read –3 at this point. We got through to blue skies and slightly warmer temps. I was excited because I thought we would have fantastic views of Mt. Washington and the rest of the Presidentials with these skies. My hopes were dashed when we spotted Crawford Notch. It was just like Franconia, road to top of mountain clouds, only in the far southern presidentials. It was like a sick joke, not only is it going to be very cold but also you won’t get to see anything. First, we tried to park in the train depot again, no luck, not plowed. Then we tried Mt. Clinton road, no luck, ice skating in a car. So we went to the Highland Center and got permission to park even though we weren’t staying there.We headed out with lots of layers on. It didn’t take too long before I needed to delayer. This time I was smarter and delayered sooner.
The trail was a little icy but we decided to bare boot. We worked our way up the Webster-Jackson trail at a slow pace. When the trail split we went toward Mt. Jackson. We had wanted to do Jackson and Pierce today so we wanted to get right to goal #1. About halfway up I saw dad’s thermometer read 0 degrees, lovely. It was taking forever, I couldn’t figure out why, this was supposed to be one of the easier 4kers. It was interesting seeing the trees encased in a thin layer of ice. Maybe that should have been a hint to me that this was more difficult. We took our crampons and thinking back they might have been helpful. Now I have Yak-Trax, those would have been good too. It was a bit slippery and very cold. Minor details. Finally, there was a little opening in the trees and the clouds and we could see the summit. This was about the time that my face started to hurt because it was so cold. I put my goggles back on to help a little. There was a little steep section that took a little work but we got through and soon we were about to go above tree line. 
As we got closer to the top you could feel and hear the wind. Looking at dad’s thermometer reading –5 now I knew I was about to need ALL layers, including my Under Armor Facemask Hood. If it was –5 without the wind I didn’t want to know what it really felt like on my skin with the wind. I almost lost my balance at one point due to the wind. 
There was another man up there and he was crouched down next to a cairn for protection. It wasn’t giving him much. We asked if he knew which way to Mt Pierce and he pointed us in a direction. We went that way a little bit, found some better shelter and stopped for some hot chocolate.
I didn’t think the sent us in the right direction but at this point we weren’t going back after going down a steep snowy section. The clouds parted for about 30seconds and we saw Mt. Washington perfectly, beautifully. Neither of us had our cameras ready but we got to see it. This also reaffirmed my suspicions we were sent the wrong way. Oh well, the wrong way meant going toward Webster Cliffs and the way down. It didn’t take long for dad to also start to realize this was the “wrong” way. I think both of us were starting to be very tired and were ok with the “wrong” way. There didn’t appear to be any ice between Jackson and Webster so we had to strap on the snowshoes. I had my new MSR Denali’s but dad still was using his old, way too long, recreational Columbia’s.
He kept losing a shoe and was getting very frustrated. At one point I felt almost hopeless. We had a long way to go, I was spent, and afraid we wouldn’t make it out before dark. I had my headlamp but I knew dark meant even colder temperatures. We started heading downward which made me happy. The trail wasn’t too bad until right before Silver Cascade. I think if you saw me I would have looked like Tom when Jerry got away. Angry, confused, eyes super wide open. I couldn’t believe I had to go down that steep hill and then back up on the other side. At least the cascade looked cool frozen over. 
Somehow we scrambled up and I realized we were at the Jackson Webster split. We were going to make it out before dark. I think we both got a little hop in our step because we knew the trail wasn’t bad from here down. We quickened the pace and made it out to the road as it was getting dark. Dad got back to the car sooner then me, I couldn’t move any quicker. We decided to go into the Highland Center to warm up some before heading back to Waterville. On the way home we stopped and took some pictures of Mt. Washington looking magnificent, with no clouds, at all.
Thoughts: I never knew how much the cold weather could take out of you. I had good layers and only felt cold right when I stopped before I could layer up and right at the top when I was exposed and standing to take pictures. So even though I didn’t feel cold, it was cold. My Camelbak tub froze last time so this time I put hot tap water in and blew the water out each time. This lasted longer then I thought. I also put hot tape water in a Nalgene, which then was in an insulated pouch. By the end it was icing but lasted the whole day. In the end I was happy we were sent the “wrong” way. It would have been a huge struggle if we had gone our intended route. So thank you to the man who sent us the wrong way. I ended up falling asleep at 7PM that night and slept a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment