1HappyHiker
Well-known member
For this summer (thus far), it has been a challenge to find a day where the forecast didn’t include rain and/or overcast conditions. One of those rare days finally presented itself this Saturday. And so, it was decided to make the most of it by spending a long day in the Presidentials by doing a traverse of Mt. Jefferson (up the Castle Trail, and down the Caps Ridge Trail.)
Participating in this trek were Zman and me, plus Zman’s friend & colleague whose name is Grant (although tempting, he shall not be dubbed Gman)!
Our trek got off to a good start. The crossing of the Israel River involved some rock hopping but was very doable.
There was still a lot of mist in the air as we started our climb, which we hoped would clear by the time we reached the higher elevations.
It was a busy day on the Castle Trail. Lots of fellow hikers were out enjoying the fine day. And as we would occasionally look back to where we had been, we could see that things were clearing out nicely at the lower elevations.
As we continued to climb higher, we could see huge patches of Diapensia in full bloom. At a quick glance, it could almost be mistaken for patches of light snow. The photo below doesn’t nearly do justice to the complete vista we witnessed.
Along the way we bumped into two other VFTT folks. It was Wowser and P2Piper who were hiking to Jefferson to complete their dog’s final Presidential peak as part of the quest to eventually have them complete all the 4K peaks. (Not sure, but I think Wowser & P2Piper have already completed theirs.)
Also, we were delighted that we could enable Wowser, P2Piper (and doggies) to do the same traverse as us by providing them with a ride from the Caps Ridge trailhead to the trailhead at Bowman.
By the time we reached Mt. Jefferson, things had cleared out and we had views! Since all of us have seen tons of photos taken from the high peaks in the Presidential Range, I’ll only bore you with one photo of Mt. Adams.
It was delightful to spend an hour or so just lingering around the summit of Jefferson. It was warm, sunny and very little wind. But all good things must come to an end, and so we eventually had to pack up our gear and start heading down the Caps Ridge Trail.
As we were descending along this trail, it was so awesome to look over to our right and see the castellated ridge that we had climbed on our ascent of Jefferson.
So, although being “castellated and capped” might possibly sound like it could be a painful or unpleasant experience. Trust me, it isn’t, at least not on day like the one we had for our traverse of Mt. Jefferson.
1HappyHiker
Participating in this trek were Zman and me, plus Zman’s friend & colleague whose name is Grant (although tempting, he shall not be dubbed Gman)!
Our trek got off to a good start. The crossing of the Israel River involved some rock hopping but was very doable.
There was still a lot of mist in the air as we started our climb, which we hoped would clear by the time we reached the higher elevations.
It was a busy day on the Castle Trail. Lots of fellow hikers were out enjoying the fine day. And as we would occasionally look back to where we had been, we could see that things were clearing out nicely at the lower elevations.
As we continued to climb higher, we could see huge patches of Diapensia in full bloom. At a quick glance, it could almost be mistaken for patches of light snow. The photo below doesn’t nearly do justice to the complete vista we witnessed.
Along the way we bumped into two other VFTT folks. It was Wowser and P2Piper who were hiking to Jefferson to complete their dog’s final Presidential peak as part of the quest to eventually have them complete all the 4K peaks. (Not sure, but I think Wowser & P2Piper have already completed theirs.)
Also, we were delighted that we could enable Wowser, P2Piper (and doggies) to do the same traverse as us by providing them with a ride from the Caps Ridge trailhead to the trailhead at Bowman.
By the time we reached Mt. Jefferson, things had cleared out and we had views! Since all of us have seen tons of photos taken from the high peaks in the Presidential Range, I’ll only bore you with one photo of Mt. Adams.
It was delightful to spend an hour or so just lingering around the summit of Jefferson. It was warm, sunny and very little wind. But all good things must come to an end, and so we eventually had to pack up our gear and start heading down the Caps Ridge Trail.
As we were descending along this trail, it was so awesome to look over to our right and see the castellated ridge that we had climbed on our ascent of Jefferson.
So, although being “castellated and capped” might possibly sound like it could be a painful or unpleasant experience. Trust me, it isn’t, at least not on day like the one we had for our traverse of Mt. Jefferson.
1HappyHiker
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