Highpoint #24: Mt. Washington Redux (6288')

…and, to my surprise, it was.

 I returned to Pinkham's Notch shortly after 8 AM the next morning. The skies above the Presidentials were much clearer than they'd been the day before, so clear that I could see almost all the way up Washington from the road. Once there, there was no need to repeat the past day's deliberations; I packed my bag, strapped on my gaiters, and headed up the trail towards Tuckerman's Ravine. Following the recommendations of a map I'd found in the hostel, I planned to ascend via the headwall of the ravine, then descend the same Lion's Head route I'd taken last February.

That first wide stretch through the woods (the "trunk line," so to speak, from which all the summit trails branched off), was much steeper and rougher than I'd remembered. Or perhaps it was just easier to crunch my way up a smooth ice path than to stumble over the uneven rocks exposed by melting:

Either way, that bit was just a stroll in the forest compared to what came next.

Highpoint #24: Mt. Wa- JUST KIDDING!

For all their seeming interchangeability, those two tiny states who take up opposite corners of New England's interior, Vermont and New Hampshire, are quite different. And, in the arbitrary-conclusion-jumping spirit of the early novelists--arguably the first social scientists--I attribute this difference to their disparate geography. On one side of the state line, we have rolling farmland, socialist congressmen, and gentle Green Mountains; the other features dark fir forests, license plates emblazoned with "Live Free or Die," and the perilous Whites. I saw this shift in action as I crossed the border that afternoon on I-93. The pastoral meanderings of the Vermont state route from which I'd come gave way to a wide, fast, and empty highway. I zipped past steep hills covered in clinging firs, glancing up every so often towards the cloud-swathed peaks that filled the eastern horizon. Somewhere in that hazy mess was ol' Mt. Washington, the windswept mountain of my nightmares... and here I was, coming back for Round Two.

A raindrop hit my windshield as I entered White Mountain National Forest on US-302, and then another, and then all ten thousand of their closest friends crashed like a waterfall onto my car, as if to welcome me back to the Whites' crazy weather. In the midst of this cloudburst, I passed through Crawford's Notch:

The same place we ice-climbed last February.

and I must say, the hills were just as freakishly stark and intimidating in green as they were in white. I would have wandered up the train tracks in search of the spot where we climbed, but 1. it was raining, 2. they actually run the railroad this time of year, so it probably wasn't a good idea to walk on it, and 3. I had a check-in time to make.

That February Ascent of Mt. Washington, or Why I Am a Complete Idiot

So that's where I got the idea. Now you may be wondering, why the blog? Am I just another millenial publicity hog trying to squeeze "likes" out of a distracted world?

No! There is a reason I'm putting all this online, and the reason is that I'm an absolute idiot.

Yup. That one. Right there. Dummkopf.

Allow me to explain.

Last February, to prepare for the rigors of the western peaks, I took a three-day mountaineering class in New Hampshire.

The drive up there was an adventure in itself. I'd planned to split the twelve-to-thirteen hours promised by Google Maps over two days, but I was grounded by freezing rain on the first day, so I ended up driving all the way from Virginia to North Conway, NH in a single push. It didn't help that the freezing rain warmed and intensified into a deluge that followed me up I-84, or that I hit rush hour halfway through and had to take the long way around the urban centers of Connecticut and Massachusetts, or that the entirety of northern New England was covered in near-impenetrable fog (as I later discovered, I could have hit a moose on the highway). By the time I arrived, fifteen hours after setting out (Travel tip #1: Google Maps always underestimates drive time on country roads), I was ready to collapse into my hotel bed and sleep clear into the spring.

Which, of course, is exactly what I didn't do. My class started at 8 AM sharp the next morning, and I needed to get there early to buy a bunch of required cold-weather gear I couldn't find for sale in Virginia... because in three days we were going up Mt. Washington.