HuiYeng
Active member
When you see your hiking friends more often in bars than on a trail, you know you have a problem. So when giggy asked if I wanted to join his group to climb Adams Slide, I signed up without much hesitation.
Most of the group were camped out at White Birches the night before, I probably the only one drove up that morning. We met up at 8AM at the Great Gulf trailhead and hit the trail around 8:20 AM. The group were giggy, NH_Mtn_Hiker, arm, Gillian, cbcbd, marchowes, Jen, Jeff, Karen, Woody who we later caught up with at the junction of Great Gulf and Wamsutta Trail and me (the "after thought"
as Gillian put it ).
It was a warm sunny morning. Jen commented that there was enough people here that our forces combined finally broke giggy's curse of wet hikes. Apparently giggy has a reputation of bringing rain to his hikes. We strolled along the Great Gulf trail without much incident until while crossing the west branch Peabody River just after the Madison Gulf Trail, giggy slipped on a wet rock and got himself a bloody elbow. "Oh good, now that giggy is wet we probably won't be rained on." said Jen jokingly.
We got to Buttress trail just before the talus slope, took a brief break and geared up for the bushwhack up Adams Slide. The bushwhacking wasn't too bad, we spotted a couple of red blazes here and there, some sections of the slide were still in good shape. A couple of places were somewhat confusing, according to NH_Mtn_Hiker our expert bushwhacker, "When in doubt, keep right." Half an hour or so later, we made it out of the woods and embraced by gorgeous views of the Great Gulf and Jefferson Ravine. Simply awesome!!
The bushwhack was over but it was still a way to get to the summit of Adams, we hopped few more rocks, negotiated more short scrubs and one false summit after another.... finally arrived at the real summit around 1:30 PM. Took a long break here and discussed our descent routes. Most of us decided to take Osgood trial back to Great Gulf but 3 uber hikers, Jen, Karen and cbcbd would continue to Mt Washington.
While on our way to Madison Hut, we ran into Dave, Stan, Mad Townie and Bubba. What a nice surprise. We strolled down to the hut together and chatted more there. NH_Mtn_Hiker decided to ditch us and went with Dave's group (Their group had Scotch and Tequila, and we got some filtered water from the stream. which group would you pick?). Dave advised us to climb up Madison to get to Osgood trail instead of taking Parepet trail. So we did...
The real butt kicker of the day was Osgood trail. It went up and down and it was pretty challenging to maintain balance on those sharp rocks and not to swayed by the relentless wind. Despite that, giggy and Gillian flew down the trail, Jeff and I emerged shortly before 6 PM. What a beautiful day to be on the Northern Presi with a this group of amazing hikers, we couldn't ask for a better weather (thanks giggy for sacrificed himself)
And of course the fun continued after the hike back at the White Birches. What wonderful weekend, gorgeous weather and great gathering! Thanks all for your company.
Pictures
Most of the group were camped out at White Birches the night before, I probably the only one drove up that morning. We met up at 8AM at the Great Gulf trailhead and hit the trail around 8:20 AM. The group were giggy, NH_Mtn_Hiker, arm, Gillian, cbcbd, marchowes, Jen, Jeff, Karen, Woody who we later caught up with at the junction of Great Gulf and Wamsutta Trail and me (the "after thought"
as Gillian put it ).It was a warm sunny morning. Jen commented that there was enough people here that our forces combined finally broke giggy's curse of wet hikes. Apparently giggy has a reputation of bringing rain to his hikes. We strolled along the Great Gulf trail without much incident until while crossing the west branch Peabody River just after the Madison Gulf Trail, giggy slipped on a wet rock and got himself a bloody elbow. "Oh good, now that giggy is wet we probably won't be rained on." said Jen jokingly
.We got to Buttress trail just before the talus slope, took a brief break and geared up for the bushwhack up Adams Slide. The bushwhacking wasn't too bad, we spotted a couple of red blazes here and there, some sections of the slide were still in good shape. A couple of places were somewhat confusing, according to NH_Mtn_Hiker our expert bushwhacker, "When in doubt, keep right." Half an hour or so later, we made it out of the woods and embraced by gorgeous views of the Great Gulf and Jefferson Ravine. Simply awesome!!
The bushwhack was over but it was still a way to get to the summit of Adams, we hopped few more rocks, negotiated more short scrubs and one false summit after another.... finally arrived at the real summit around 1:30 PM. Took a long break here and discussed our descent routes. Most of us decided to take Osgood trial back to Great Gulf but 3 uber hikers, Jen, Karen and cbcbd would continue to Mt Washington.
While on our way to Madison Hut, we ran into Dave, Stan, Mad Townie and Bubba. What a nice surprise. We strolled down to the hut together and chatted more there. NH_Mtn_Hiker decided to ditch us and went with Dave's group (Their group had Scotch and Tequila, and we got some filtered water from the stream. which group would you pick?). Dave advised us to climb up Madison to get to Osgood trail instead of taking Parepet trail. So we did...
The real butt kicker of the day was Osgood trail. It went up and down and it was pretty challenging to maintain balance on those sharp rocks and not to swayed by the relentless wind. Despite that, giggy and Gillian flew down the trail, Jeff and I emerged shortly before 6 PM. What a beautiful day to be on the Northern Presi with a this group of amazing hikers, we couldn't ask for a better weather (thanks giggy for sacrificed himself
)And of course the fun continued after the hike back at the White Birches. What wonderful weekend, gorgeous weather and great gathering! Thanks all for your company.
Pictures
