First Mountain

Starting off this Blog with my old trip reports, bear with me


friday, June 09, 2006 Mount Washington

Ascent
So Mike and I hiked up Mt Washington on June 6th. It was rather....brutal at times. Going up we took part of Tuckerman's which wasn't too bad at all, a bit rocky. Then we crossed over too Boott Spur, which was a little harder, but still not quite hell. I felt a bit bad about all the breaks I had to take, time was an issue. The weather was extremely foggy, so we had limited visibilty, which in a way was reather neat, rather sureal, like being in another world. From Boott we crossed to Davis Path. Hell. Hell. Ouch. The knees say "no!!!!" But to know that I was still going strong...of course, at this time I'm thinking, "Fuck if I am hking down...we're getting the car!" But then again, with all the bragging I did, I kinda had to keep going. And to prove that I could do it. We cut over to Lawn Cut-Off. I dislike this trail greatly. 800 ft of HELL!!!!! (as Mike so aptly put it) I think then I was neat 100% decided that I was not hiking back down. Didn't I do enough? Then Mike paused at.....THE AUTO ROAD!!! THE SUMMIT!!! We made it!!! I had though I was going get a bit emotional, after all, I love that mountain, but I was too bloody tired!! And there were the train tourists running around like idiots,,,,haha visibilty still sucked!!! We debated on whether to get the car down. I asked if we drove down, could I still claim I hiked Mt Washington? Mike smirked and said, "You hiked up it." Well fuck that, we're hiking down. We ate (chowder adn hot dogs), and got ready to go.


We took Lion's Head to hike down. I love this trail. It was almost easy. We made pretty good time (not really). The fog lifted, and we could see where we had just come from. Holy shit, that's a big fucking mountain. There were parts of this trail that were tricky, but nothing dreadful. We had to book it down, we were nearing our ETA, and still had a while to go. I am sure Lion's Head is probably a bitch going up, but hiking down it is my absoulte favorite trail. We finally get back to Tux, and now we have to go go go. I'm tired. I hurt. Its getting dark This was the worst part of the hike. Mike's running (not really) and I am doing my best just to keep up. We get back to Pinkham's Notch Visitors' Center to be greeted by Shannon and hot cocoa. We rest up a bit, I take my braces off, by the gods my knees hurt. We head back to the cabin to have a lovely dinner of pasta and shrimp.

So yeah, I climbed Mt Washington. It hurt. It was long. It took forever (10 hours). But it was the coolest thing I ever did. My training and waiing paid off.

It was funny. Ever few 100 feet or so, I just had to look back and be shocked at what we had actually just done. And the silence near the top.....no birds...little wind.....amazing