2 day presidential traverse

[king tut]

I was going to title it"The Presidents make me weak in the knees", but thought that title might confuse people.

My friend kristine wanted to do some of the ridges near Jefferson, and I, having done all of those already, wanted to do the southern presidentials. So, we decided to do both. We decided to make it a 2 day adventure throughout the presidentials. Tuesday morning we met at Pinkham Notch and got a ticket to camp up in Hermit Lake. We then left my car there and took her car over to crawford notch and parked at the entrance to the crawford path. We started hiking at around 9:30 in the morning, and as usual, i had a very heavy pack full of food, water, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and clothes.

So we headed up the crawford path and it was a nice gentle grade for a few miles. Certainly a nice easy start to the day. We took the intersection towards the MItzpah Hut and went to check that out. It was a nice hut, and there was a young man inside playing guitar. Next we headed back up the ridge and rejoined the crawford path and ascended Mt's Pierce and Eisenhower. These were nice mt's, a little ascent up them but nothing all that difficult. The trail was a nice easy ascent of the ridgelines, and the only difficulty was having a big heavy pack cutting into my shoulders.

We reached Mt. Monroe in the early afternoon, and took the side trail up the first bump to the left. We weren't really sure if that was Mt Franklin or some other unnamed piece of rock, so we decided to rename it Mt. Bump. I'm sure there is an ideological reason that there are no summit signs on any of the presidentials, but it would be kind of nice to know the names of the summits and the elevations w/out having to refer to my so-so AT map that is confusing. So, after mt Bump, we ascended the rest of the next ridge of Mt. Monroe and took a few pictures of Lake of the Clouds and went down to the hut and basked in the warm sun and eat a variety of foods including granola bars, crackers, ring-dings, and pop tarts.

After a bit of rest in the gorgeous sun, we started ascending towards Mt. Washington. We went several hundred feet up the ridge and took the tuck's crossover trail and then headed down the ravine. The descent was about as steep as I remember, just a little more difficult w/ a big pack instead of a daypack. The flowers and plants were also very beautiful. We reached Hermit Lake at around 4:30 and picked out a tent site and set up camp for the night. We hung around the porch for the rest of the afternoon, ate some dinner, pumped some water for our bottles, and watched the beauty of the ravine as the sun dipped down. We also talked w/ the caretaker for a while, he was a really cool guy. Around 9, we got tired and decided to turn in for the night.

 

[king tut]

Day 2

Day 2 started around 5 in the morning when my alarm went off in my backpack. I guess when i put it in my pack the other day, it accidently switched on my alarm. So, after a casual morning, we got going at around 6:30. We headed up the lions head trail, and were excited about the forecast of a mostly sunny day, especially after yesterday's beautiful weather. The ascent was very foggy, cold, and miserable. The weather never cleared during the ascent, and 2 hours later we were standing at the top of mt Washington. Lion's head was more difficult then we could have imagined that morning. It was a little over 2 miles, and about 2200 vertical feet.

To our surprise, we were the first hikers inside the summit building at 8:30, and I got a nice cup of hot chocolate to warm myself up. The weather station inside said that it was 44 degrees w/ a sustained 26 mph wind. I also ate a ham sandwich and got a bottle of gatorade. After a while of lounging around up top, we went back out headed over to Mt Clay. When we got to the trail up Mt Clay, the visibility was still about 15 feet, so we decided to skip that summit and head over to Jefferson. The trail kept going down and down and down, and we realized it was going to be a good climb up to Jefferson.

So after a while we started climbing up insted of down and headed up the ridge towards Jefferson. After a good while of hiking up the fog, we reached the top of Jefferson, but it was still too foggy to get any views. It was a good ascent, probably a little less than 1000 feet from the bottom of the trail. The descent down jefferson was a lot more than I expected and there was a good size valley in between there and Adams. It was at this point that I realiezed that it was going to be a long day. The trip up to Adams was a nice steady walk, but the pitch was never steep, just a long steady walk.

We got to the top of Adams, and it was very windy. The sustained wind must have been around 35 mph or so. We took about 5 minutes at the top and then headed down towards Madison Hut. The descent was a little slow as my friend did not bring any hiking poles and her knees were hurting from all the descents. Luckily i had my poles and my knees were feeling ok. I offered her one of my poles several times, but she declined. So, after a while we reached Madison Hut, and we decided in the interest of saving some cartilage to do the Osgood cutoff and skip the top of Madison that day. The cut-off trail was interesting, but probably easier than going over the summit. We met up again w/ the Osgood trail and made our way down the rest of the ridge.

The descent from here was slow, but we made it down safe and sound. We saw quite a few people heading up the ridge that were going to Madison Hut that night. From the bottom of the ridge we made our way back to pinkham notch via the AT. That trail took forever. We were moving, but it seemed like we were never going to reach the auto road. After an eternity we reached the auto road and the sign said 1.9 miles till the notch. We did this in maybe another 40 minutes and were soooooo happy to be back at the car. Today's climb's were around 16 miles and somewhere around 4k vertical. So, overall the trip was around 27 miles and between 7-8 k vertical i believe.

Here are some of the pics http://eshare.hpphoto.com/en/home/welcome.asp?JobID=10b8d26b-e582-4f68-b0e6-158e5a50f827

 

[David Metsky]

Mt Franklin is to the right (east) of the Crawford Path before you reach the Mt Monroe Loop trail. It's easier to spot the unmarked Franklin loop trail from the north. The actual peak is just a short distance from the Crawford Path and only rises maybe 50 feet or so? It sounds like you went up South Monroe.

If the Osgood Cut-Off you mentioned was the Parapet trail, you might well have been easier on you legs if you had gone over the summit. That trail has a bad reputation.

Sounds like a fine couple of days of hiking. You'll have to go back when you can get some views on Jefferson.

-dave-

 

[king tut]

We descended Adams via the main route, i think it is the top of Airline maybe? I ascended via the parapet trail about 3 weeks ago, and it was pretty rugged, i wouldn't recommend it for descent, especially with a multi day pack. Unfortunately there were no views when we were on Jefferson but we did get a few good views back towards Jefferson from Adams as the clouds cleared.

Alright, the one i ascended a few weeks ago was from star lake up to Mt Adams. All the trails in that area are confusing w/ the trail signs and the AT map i had. I especially found all the trails named "gulf" seem to intersect around the same point, go in about 5 different directions and are not marked well on the AT map. Makes my head dizzy thinking about it.

 

[David Metsky]

The two trails on Adams or the Airline (standard route) and the Star Lake trail, which goes past Star Lake of all places. SL is rougher than Airline.

The route around Madison is the Parapet trail, it connects with the Osgood Ridge trail on the other side of the summit from the hut. That one is notoriously difficult.

Of course, I have no map in front of me and my memory ain't what it used to be...

-dave-

 

[jjo]

Good report and pics. Sorry about the weather. The views off Jeff are usually great!! Try it again...

 

[arghman]

Nice report. One of these days I want to go back to Madison & hike the section of AT from the Parapet Tr / Danl Webster Tr junction to Pinkham (sounds kind of arduous / boring below treeline )

re: trails--
maps from TopoZone:
(I can't get the bitmap to display here for some reason)

Parapet Trail is the one that bypasses Madison on the south side. It's on my don't-do-it-again-except-in-a-horrible-emergency list. It's mostly level on a large scale (so it's easy on the heart & lungs) but lots of nasty boulder hopping, and the middle part is in a sea of boulders not well-marked with cairns. It doesn't give you much shelter from the weather (except a little scrub / stunted trees toward the west end).

Pine Link Trail bypasses Madison on the north side, never very steep, lots of boulder hopping but not as bad as Parapet Trail, IMHO. Exposed to the weather its whole way, until it drops below treeline near the Howker Ridge Tr.

I don't see either of these as being much safer or easier than taking the AT over Madison. (yes you have to climb up & descend, but it's much more ledgy/stair-ish than boulder-traversing)