Presidential Traverse (6/25-27/23)
Some of the major accomplishments that a White Mountain hiker can pursue are the traverses. Amongst these are the Pemi Loop and the Presidential Traverse, although I am sure there are more. I needed a sizable AT section starting in Crawford Notch and ending in Pinkham Notch, and this would mean doing the entire Presidential Traverse, plus a pretty large chunk on both sides of it. I figured this would be a good opportunity to not only do my first Presidential Traverse, but also stay in two White Mountain huts that I had not stayed in before, Lakes of the Clouds Hut and Madison Springs Hut.
I was, of course, familiar with both huts. Lakes of the Clouds is a hut that I had stood on the porch of many times during the winter, including just a few months prior, but had never been inside, as I had never been there when it was open. Madison Springs I had been inside once, but had never actually stayed there. I was excited to stay at both on this trip, although I have to admit that the high price was a little off-putting. Still, I would get my meals and bedding provided, so that was a lot of weight that I wouldn't have to carry on the long hike.
As is often the case on these multiple day hikes, my wonderful fiancee Dragonfly was nice enough to drive up to northern New Hampshire to help me do a car spot, which I very much appreciated. We spotted my car at Pinkham Notch and then Dragonfly drove me to Crawford Notch to start my hike. I was somewhat surprised by where the hike actually starts from. I expected the Appalachian Trail would cross Crawford Notch near the Highland Center, which is where the Crawford Path is. Instead, it crosses it much farther down the Notch, before you even reach the Willey House.
I started hiking around 9 AM, and almost immediately had to cross the Saco River, which thankfully there was a bridge for. This wasn't the much larger Saco River that I am familiar with in Maine, but it still would have been a challenge to cross.
There was a lot of climbing at first, with 2,600 feet of elevation gain in the first three miles, so that was tough. Once I completed it, though, I emerged onto the Webster Cliffs. These were rocky and a little dicey in places, but beautiful overall.
I could look down into Crawford Notch and see Route 302 and some of the features.
Eventually I emerged into Mt. Webster, and then I went into a quick saddle before I emerged onto Mt. Jackson. I remembered doing this route once before with Dragonfly, and I knew that there was a significant rock climb coming before I hit Mt. Jackson. It wasn't as bad as I remember it being, maybe because it wasn't winter conditions this time, and before long I summited Mt. Jackson. Amongst the White Mountains, there are few mountains that offer a better payoff for a relatively light effort than Mt. Jackson.
I stopped for a snack, and then prepared to resume my journey. However, I ran into a problem. I couldn't figure out where the trail went. I had been to Jackson several times before, but I had always turned around and gone back. I had never continued on before. I talked to another guy that was up there with me, but he didn't know. I used FarOut, my navigation app, but that wasn't getting me anywhere. Finally, a combination of FarOut, trial and error, and sheer willpower allowed me to find the trail, which wasn't anywhere near where it looked like it should be.
After Jackson, the trail descended down into a saddle for a while before it began climbing towards Mt. Pierce. I knew that when I reached Pierce, I would be on the Crawford Path, which was a route that I was more familiar with. I had hiked this section once before, during a failed attempt at Eisenhower during February 2019, but I didn't remember much about it.
Before I reached Pierce, I came to the Mizpah Springs Hut. Of all the huts in the White Mountains, I find it to be the most awkwardly placed one. It was built a long time after the other ones, in a bid to cut down the distance between Zealand Falls and Lakes of the Clouds. The problem is that it's so close to Lakes, only 4.7 miles, that it doesn't really split the distance at all. Regardless, I was glad to be able to stop in and refill my water bottle. As I write this, Mizpah is the only White Mountain hut that I have never stayed at, so maybe I will be able to do so in summer 2025 just to complete the set.
After Mizpah, there was about a five hundred foot climb up to Pierce. It wasn't too bad in the scheme of things, but I was definitely feeling it by then. I guess I was mostly out of shape, having only done one real hike in the last four months.
When I topped out on Pierce, there was a girl up there trying to talk to someone on her cell phone. I would assume it was the only place that she had managed to get signal. I stopped for a snack, but tried to stand a distance away so as to respect her privacy. I'm not sure if she even realized I was there until I walked past her.
I was grateful that the trail did not summit Eisenhower or the later Monroe, but instead skirted around the peaks. I was definitely feeling the hike by this point and I was happy to avoid the extra elevation.
After I passed by Mt. Eisenhower, but before I reached Mt. Monroe, I found a beautiful alpine vista that I hadn't previously known was there. It was like nowhere else in the White Mountains that I have been. I wondered if it was part of the original Crawford Path? Whatever the case, it had rocks laid out so as to reduce the impact on the alpine environment, and I was careful to stay on the path and leave no trace.
Technically, I think I climbed over Mt. Franklin between Mt. Eisenhower and Mt. Monroe, but I am not sure because Mt. Franklin is not an official four thousand footer. I believe this is because it is considered to be a shoulder of Mt. Monroe and it lacks the prominence to be considered a mountain on its own. Some other similar mountains in the Whites are Mt. Guyot, Mt. John Quincy Adams, and Mt. Clay.
As I was hiking around Mt. Monroe, my phone decided to play the song "Bonnie Ship the Diamond," a sea shanty that includes the lyric, "Three cheers to the Battler of Montrose and the Diamond, ship of fame." Well, I thought they were saying Monroe and not Montrose, so I thought it was kind of appropriate for my current hike. I was disappointed to later learn that I simply heard the lyric wrong.
Finally, the Lakes of the Clouds Hut came into sight, and I got very excited. This was for two reasons. First, I was glad to be finishing the very long and tough hike. Second, I was excited to finally set foot inside the hut that I had seen from the outside so many times before. When I entered, who should I be greeted by but Sadie and her boyfriend. Small world, isn't it?
I was reading the Echoes Saga by Philip C. Quaintrell, and so I spent a lot of the afternoon just hanging out and reading on my Kindle on my phone. Of course, I also did the necessary things like setting up my bunk and getting washed up. Dinner was absolutely fantastic, and honestly this group was probably the best hut croo that I have ever dealt with. Of course, there was a reason for that. They were actually the hutmasters of all of the other huts, gathered together at Lakes for some type of training, and I just got lucky enough to book when they were all there.
Lakes of the Clouds Hut has some interesting history. It was completed on July 29, 1915, and opened to visitors on August 7. In September, a group of six hikers got stranded there in an intense winter storm, and were stuck there for four days. They all would have died without the hut. One of the hikers later donated 50 books to the hut so that people would have something to read if they got stuck there. Today all of the huts have fairly extensive libraries.
I enjoyed getting to chat with people and exchange hiker stories during dinner. I have my favorite go-to stories that are always winners, and I think the end of this hike may eventually end up as one of those stories. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. After dinner, there was an opportunity to go out and get some photographs of what was a beautiful sunset. It was cold and windy, but worth it.
The next day was rough. The weather turned bad, as it so often does in the White Mountains, and especially in the Presidentials. This was made worse by the fact that we had to go over Mt. Washington that day. I strapped on my rain gear and headed out into it.
There was a group of us who were sometimes together and sometimes separated. Even though I was the most experienced White Mountain hiker in the group, I missed the turnoff for Mt. Washington. I blame the fact that I had never seen it without snow before.
As we summited the mountain, we all wanted to stop at the visitors center to get out of the rain and wind, and to grab a quick snack before we moved on. However, the visitors center appeared to be under construction. Some people in our group thought that it had been relocated, while others were convinced that it was just closed, and whatever the case, none of us could find it. Thus, we decided to move on.
We headed down the mountain in a fairly large group. I think we had four different hiking parties traveling together. We had a bit of a hard time making it over the Cog Railway tracks, and a couple people fell, but they were okay. A short time after that, as we advanced towards the Gulfside Trail, I fell off a wet rock and scraped my leg. I stopped and dug out my first aid kit, but while I did that, everyone else left me behind. It was no matter. I knew that I would catch up once I got moving again.
By the time I found them again, all the groups had begun to spread out, and I passed them one by one. Eventually, I found the last group, two older Appalachian Trail northbound thru-hikers, near Mt. Jefferson. I don't remember their names, so I will call them Hiker A and Hiker B. Hiker A didn't seem like he was having a good time, and for that matter he didn't seem like a particularly nice person. He was fast, though, and I was having a hard time pacing him. Hiker B was the nicer of the two, and we got to chatting as we hiked along. It turned out that they weren't actually hiking together, but they were in the same thru-hiker bubble, so they knew each other. On this day, I think they were staying together for the sake of safety, as the conditions were treacherous.
In fact, the conditions were so treacherous that Hiker B fell and hurt himself, sliding down a rock. I stayed back with him and helped him up again, while Hiker A just hiked on. The wet rocks as we descended Jefferson, combined with the wind beating us up, made for terrible conditions. If you notice that there aren't many pictures in this section, that's the reason. I couldn't use my phone for much more than navigation, and even that wasn't great, as it got wet quickly. There wasn't really much to take pictures of, anyway.
Well, Hiker B took another fall, and this time he snapped his trekking pole. He was quite frustrated by this point. I tried to help again, but he asked me to go on. He said that he was just going to take it very slow and easy to try to avoid any more falls, and that would be easier alone. I hesitantly agreed.
As I picked back up to my normal pace, I eventually caught up with Hiker A as we were starting to ascent Mt. Adams, the second tallest mountain in New England. Thankfully, much like Monroe and Eisenhower, the Appalachian Trail doesn't actually go over the summits of Jefferson and Adams, but instead skirts around them. That makes it easier, but not easy.
I was getting hungry, so I stopped for a snack and Hiker A left me behind. I never saw him again after that. I was now in an awkward position, with no one else within sight of me, and fighting my way through really bad conditions. I didn't like the situation one bit. Fog and clouds were obscuring the trail so that I couldn't really see much, and I couldn't use my phone to navigate because it was wet. Add in the constantly pelting rain and the wind that almost knocked me down a couple times, and it was a classic Presidential range summer hike. The only way I could really navigate was by cairns. I would hike to one cairn, and then look to try to figure out where the next one was. I would hike to that one, and then repeat the process.
I should point out that this was only a 7.2 mile hike, so very short by the standards of what I usually do, but it was one of the toughest hikes that I have ever done because of the weather conditions. It took me six hours to complete it. You know things are rough when I am barely making one mile per hour.
I was so relieved when I finally began to descend Mt. Adams and the hut appeared off in the distance. I have been to Madison Springs Hut many times, but I don't know if I have ever been happier to see it. When I walked in, I was cold and soaking wet. The croo member who greeted me asked how it was going, and I said, "So much better now that I'm here!"
I was very happy to get changed out of my soaking wet hiking clothes and into my camp clothes. The Madison Springs croo did a good job, but not quite as good as what I had experienced at Lakes of the Clouds the night before. I have a feeling that all future hut croos will have a hard time measuring up to the standard at Lakes. Come to think of it, I think Lakes was actually my first summer hut stay, period, so that makes it even more difficult to measure up to.
Eventually, the other people that I had been hiking with filtered in. Some people had been planning to camp out, but ended up buying bunks in the hut to get out of the weather. Hiker B made it, and told me that he was going to push on and try to end his day at the Osgood Tentsite. I didn't think that was a great idea, given that it would involve three more miles of hiking, a trip over Mt. Madison and across the Madison ridge, and about 2,000 feet of descent on the wet rocks. Still, the conditions had gotten a bit better, so it wasn't impossible, and he was determined. I wished him well.
The bunk room I was in had a group of adults and kids in there. They might have been a family group, but I suspect they were some type of scout troop. Anyway, the kids got there soon after me and grabbed a lot of the bottom bunks for themselves (I had already grabbed one of them). When the adults got there, they kicked the kids out of the bottom bunks and claimed them for themselves. I did my best to ignore the whole group as best as I could, as they were quite loud.
The following morning, as we were eating breakfast, the hut croo read the weather report to us. It said that winds across the Madison ridge were going to be sustained at 60-80 mph. I asked the hut croo for their advice, and they said that they didn't think it was safe to cross the Madison ridge in those kinds of winds.
All the hikers that were there now split into two camps. One camp, made up mostly of Appalachian Trail Northbounders, proclaimed that the weather wouldn't be that bad, and said that they were going to go anyway. Another group, mostly those with a lot of White Mountain experience, or very little hiking experience at all, were looking for another option. Knowing the White Mountains as I do, I said that the best option was to hike down Valley Way, which is a very protected trail, and get a pickup at the bottom of the trail. Another hiker who heard I was going to do this (we'll call him Hiker C), asked if he could join me. I said sure. Being able to split the cost of the ride and having a hiking partner for the way down Valley Way was a win-win for me. I called the Trail Angels Hiker Service, and I was able to arrange a pickup. Quite frankly, I am impressed that I was able to get enough service at the hut to arrange the pickup.
I want to spend a moment talking about the stupidity of going across the ridge in those kinds of conditions. To me, it has two pieces. First, there's safety. You are putting the lives of yourself and your hiking party on the line if you decide to cross the ridge in those winds. Some of the people who decided to go had kids with them. More than that, you're putting the lives of rescuers at risk if they have to come up to rescue you because you got into trouble. Bad decision making is at the heart of most White Mountain disasters. You have to respect the mountains. There's a reason so many people have died in them.
Second, there's the financial piece. New Hampshire will charge you for rescue if you are negligent. Anyone who heard the weather report, and then heard the hut croo say it wasn't safe to go across the ridge, and decided to go anyway was negligent. I guarantee you that they would have been charged for rescue if a rescue was necessary. Rescues can easily run $10,000, especially if there's a helicopter involved. That doesn't even count any medical expenses that might be incurred.
Anyway, I'll put my soapbox away. Hiker C and I headed down the Valley Way Trail. The trail starts right near the hut, and almost immediately enters the woods. During the Kate Matrosova incident in 2015, Valley Way was the primary trail that the rescuers used to try to find her, especially because they weren't able to break tree line given the conditions that night. Heck, some rescuers got into trouble even on the Valley Way Trail because the conditions were so bad.
Thankfully, conditions on this day were not like the conditions on that night, and Hiker C and I didn't run into any trouble on the way down. We did encounter several other hikers who had decided to be smart and take the safe way down. I enjoyed his conversation. He was new to the White Mountains, but did have hiking experience elsewhere, and decided that he didn't want to challenge the wrath of the Whites on his first hike in them.
When we got to the Appalachia Trailhead parking lot at the bottom of Valley Way, Trail Angels made it there quickly to pick us up. I was disappointed that I had lost the last piece of my Presidential Traverse, but I figured that I would just have to go back and get it in the future. I was appreciative to have someone to split the pickup cost with, and Hiker C insisted on being allowed to do the tip. I protested a little, but eventually just let it go.
When we arrived at Pinkham Notch where our cars were, I went into the main building to hit the restrooms. As I was coming out, I was into none other than Hiker B! He had made it down to Osgood Tentsite the previous night, and then had an easy hike into Pinkham in the morning. He also explained to me that Hiker A had decided to get off trail, which I don't think made Hiker B very sad. I said my goodbyes, got into my CRV, and headed for Maine. It had been quite an adventure, but as you know, you can't take flight until you spread your wings!
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