Hiking Mt. Washington, NH

[Silent3]

In a General Discussion thread that I'd started...

A year and a half after "70 lbs. down. Now I can rant about obnoxious fitness fanatics"...

...I'd posted some pictures, and ended up getting a few requests for more. So here are several shots from my two times hiking Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, last fall and this past summer.


September 2013

This is the Cog Railway. I didn't use it to go up the mountain, but I did use it for the return trip, as the weather turned cold, foggy, and very windy soon after I reached the summit.









































































I got called a noob for doing this hike wearing jeans. Well, I was noob, so fair call! The problem with jeans is you don't want to get caught in damp cotton if the weather turns cold and wet. Mt. Washington's famously unpredictable weather means you should be prepared no matter how nice the weather seems to be.















June 2014


This was the first time I could officially (by AMC rules) claim to have climbed Mt. Washington, because I went both up and down, not just up, under my own power. I still think of it as my second climb, however.


This is outside the hotel where I stayed overnight to get an early start for my climb.
































































No jeans this time! My backpack contained a fleece jacket, a hooded shell jacket, and pullover hiking pants in case the weather took a turn for the worse.

[northoftheborder]

1. Absolutely awesome. Congratulations for your achievement and wonderful photos.

[Scuba]

2. Good on you, and thanks for all the great pics!!!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. What a lot of wonderful pictures!

Very beautiful.

Thank you for your considerable effort!

[Solly Mack]

4. Thanks for sharing your adventure!

Enjoyed the nice photos.

[catnhatnh]

5. Great shots and congratulations on your hikes!

For the train fans the 2 locomotives shown run on bio-diesel from a local plant and were designed and built on-site. I've added a link with build info and general cog railway info:

http://thecog.com/cog_technology.php

[niyad]

6. k and r and thanks for the beautiful pics!

[mnhtnbb]

7. Wow! Great job on the weight loss and the hikes and the photos!

Some beautiful country. How fun that you were able to enjoy it and thanks for sharing with us.
I loved the sign about "the worst weather" and advice to turn back! Yikes!

[Tom Kitten]

8. Love the story and the pics!

Impressive, to say the least! I've always been curious about Mt. Washington and now I know. The thirteenth picture, of the trail with the boulders like a staircase...that cannot be a natural formation, can it? Those rocks look awfully big to move around...but I suppose they've had a few hundred years to do it.

[Silent3]

9. I didn't realize until recently that there's plenty of artificial engineering...

...that goes into both building and maintaining these hiking trails, not just in the trails with a more obvious staircase-like appearance. A lot of the rocks you see along a trail have been moved and shaped to make the trail, they've just been in place for so long (decades, even a hundred years or more in some cases) that they look very weathered and natural in place.

I don't know the details of how these trails have been made, but my guess is that they represent quite a bit of back-breaking manual labor, perhaps with the help of horses and mules in the old days, or nowadays with whatever power equipment you can manage to haul along the trail. I'd guess that people would often have to camp out in the woods while doing this work since going back and forth to a work site far along a trail would be even more work than camping out to get the job done.

[handmade34]

10. LOVE the photos!

I appreciate them as I am missing home... I have been up 3 times and it never fails to Wow! me... No easy feat to get up and down...

your comment on the trails made me think of hiking with my son (he works for the Green Mountain Club) and I love when he points out the work he has personally done (steps, clearing, etc... with the help of great crews of volunteers)...

I hope to get back up there someday!!

my boys on the trail... Washington and AT....



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[Silent3]

11. Please thank your son for me...

...for all of his work on the trails.

Great pictures too. I'd love to find that spot with the slanted rock wall.