So with the cycling goal for the year done I was on to one last thing to do in 2008. I really wanted to conquer mount washington in the dead of winter! (for those not familiar Mnt washinton in winter http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/winter.php ) "Mount Washington's weather has been called "the world's worst", since the fiercest winter conditions on the mountain rival those of the polar regions and the highest mountains on earth. Among the challenging, sometimes fatal meteorological conditions on the mountain in winter" We crashed up in N. Conway that night and hit the trail uber early! I borrowed/rented the specialty gear, winter mountaineering boots, cramp ons (yea knives for your feet!), glacier ice ax, belay jacket, and mountaineering gloves) We got to Pinkham notch and geared up! I downed a couple hand fulls of gorp and a bagel and 3/4 of a nalgene. We hit the fire road up w/o cramp ons and made our way up past some crazy water falls, the temp was in the 30's as after only a few mins we started to layer down. We got to the base of the lion's head winter route. There we dawned our crank ons and pulled out the ice axes. I also layered down again. This is where it got really cool as right way it started to ascend quickly! The cramp ons were digging in and the ice axe was being put to good use to stabilize me as I climbed. I wasn't very sure how it would feel to climb in cramp ons and it def was an odd feeling. but I was getting use to it (trial by fire :) We hit "the step" a very steep (almost vertical section) time to see what this gear can do! and damn those big spikes sticking out of my toes worked wonders :) no issues right up and the next couple sections also :) We started to get close to tree line and the layers started to come back on a lill (real gloves goggles and balaclava) as we got over Lions head the wind picked up (gusting in the hi 60's) there wasn't a ton of snow in this section but lots of ice! We made our way across the alpine garden to the summit cone. The wind was blowing and the clouds were flying by giving us peaks of the valley below and funneling down into tuckerman's ravine so cool! We made our way up the summit cone mostly rock and ice not alot of snow as there were warm temps earlier in the week + hi winds blowing it off the mnt. We finally hit the summit! and on went the belay jacket over the shell (and damn that thing was warm!) I kept it on as we down climbed. We made decent work of the summit cone and the alpine garden, we got down into lions head and the legs were starting to feel the burn! we got to the step and that was soooo much easier to get up then down :) but slow and steading and I got my foot placement right and no issues. We got to the bottom of lions head winter route and my feet were killing me! Maybe it was just the style of hiking with crampons and kicking my feet in, maybe it was the boots being a lill big I'm not sure but I was freaking slow on the fireroad down :( We finally finished up and damn was I happy to get those boots off! We hit up flat breads and I drank a tuckermans ale and KILLED a large pizza as my HR monitor said 6200 calories... so I deserved it :) Activity
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Thursday, January 1, 2009
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