kltilton
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- Nov 22, 2004
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Spam. It’s the one word I think of every time I look at the Moat Ridge. The conditioned response dates back to the time in high school when Marc Chauvin, Tim Livingston, and Steve Bamsey took me for my first mountain run to get me ready for the Mt. Washington Road Race. When they told me that we were going to be running the Moats I didn’t even know what they were. Needless to say I was way under prepared for a run like this. I was muttering about being hungry the whole time, and somewhere near Middle Moat Marc asked me if I would eat a can of Spam, and that if I did would I scrape the jelly off first. Crude.
Time Warp 2005: Paul Kirsch and I had been talking about running up the Mt. Washington Auto Road all winter. We had planned on doing it on the last Sunday of my spring break, but after running w/ Tim Livingston earlier in the week (he’s the guy who ran the Sandwich Sidehiller 4 Miler in shorts and a singlet) he suggested running the Moats on snowshoes. I ran the idea by Paul and next thing I knew it was 6AM and we were standing at the Diana’s Bath trailhead putting on our snowshoes.
6AM is awfully early to be on snowshoes, hell it’s awfully early anyway. After cruising along the flats after Diana’s Bath we started to warm up and shed some layers at the Moat Mountain Trail intersection. The climb up North Moat is pretty steep, and I started to have flash backs to the Spam run. We pretty much hiked the whole way up North Moat, trying not to look back at the incredible views until we reached the summit.
The trail opened up and the rocky summit appeared in front of us. It was a little windy on top, but not unbearable. There are 360-degree views from the summit, something I wasn’t able to enjoy on my last trip. Seeing the Presidentials covered in snow from that spot was amazing. You could see Chocorua to the south and other mountains in every direction. Absolutely breathtaking.
And now for the adventure part. Coming down off of North Moat there are a few small cliffs that are easily negotiable in the summer, but can be tricky during the winter. Someone had been there before us, so we chose to follow there bushwhack to get around the ledges. Bad idea. When we first left the trail we saw larges holes in the snow that looked like a moose had made a bedding area. We figured that couldn’t be the right way, so we searched for the trail but had no luck. We followed the bushwhack, falling in several spruce traps, and wound our way down the west side of the mountain. We reached a point where we thought that if we went any further that we would end up on the Kanc, so we made another bushwhack to find the ridge. We found more spruce traps and finally found the trail on the ridge. I bet we only cut a ¼ of a mile off of the trail. Oh well.
The trail wasn’t blazed very well as we made our way towards Red Ridge, but we were able to follow the trail pretty well. We ran what we could, but had to break a lot of trail and duck under a lot of branches. It was pretty cool making our way through the forest, with no signs of human beings anywhere. We theorized though about what would happen if we stumbled across a backwoods mountain man. Paul figured his name would be Fred Moat, and that if we came across his ‘still in the mountains he wouldn’t be too happy. Apparently Fred has family up there too, as his wife Diana and his brother Red were brought into the conversation.
We popped out at the top of Red Ridge and took a snack break. Fred and his kin were nowhere to be found. The Red Ridge Trail was our bailout route if anything happened, so from this point on it was South Moat or bust.
We dropped back down into the scrub for a little while and eventually popped out on Middle Moat. By now the temperature was probably around 45 degrees and there was a slight breeze. The view over to South Moat was unobstructed and the ridge was exposed. Traversing to South Moat was a blast as we ran across the snowy ridge. I didn’t want to leave. The thought of going back to classes the next day was not very appealing.
We took one more break at South Moat, knowing it was going to be the last of the great views. Looking back across the ridge you could see our snowshoe tracks. How cool is that? We still hadn’t seen another person yet, and we were enjoying it. We looked down at North Conway knowing that not much was going on at 9:30AM, but we had already hiked 3 mountains.
Descending a mountain on snowshoes can bring out the little kid in you. The snow on the south-facing trail was starting to soften up. We met up with the first people we had seen all day as we bounced down the trail. We noticed ski tracks in the open areas and figured that we wouldn’t let the skiers hog the unbroken snow! Tim and I somersaulted in the snow as Paul ran around like it was the first time he had seen the white stuff.
After exiting the snowfields we hammered back down to Paul’s car where we got looks from some of the hikers that had just arrived. Tim and Paul had the idea that we should pretend that someone was chasing us as we hit the parking lot. We were well behaved though; I think they thought we were weird when they saw us running on snowshoes anyways.
The trip took 4 hours and 30 minutes and only cost me 3 hours of sleep, and a package of Reese’s peanut butter cups. The best part is that I didn’t have to resort to Spam as a form of caloric intake.
Photos
Time Warp 2005: Paul Kirsch and I had been talking about running up the Mt. Washington Auto Road all winter. We had planned on doing it on the last Sunday of my spring break, but after running w/ Tim Livingston earlier in the week (he’s the guy who ran the Sandwich Sidehiller 4 Miler in shorts and a singlet) he suggested running the Moats on snowshoes. I ran the idea by Paul and next thing I knew it was 6AM and we were standing at the Diana’s Bath trailhead putting on our snowshoes.
6AM is awfully early to be on snowshoes, hell it’s awfully early anyway. After cruising along the flats after Diana’s Bath we started to warm up and shed some layers at the Moat Mountain Trail intersection. The climb up North Moat is pretty steep, and I started to have flash backs to the Spam run. We pretty much hiked the whole way up North Moat, trying not to look back at the incredible views until we reached the summit.
The trail opened up and the rocky summit appeared in front of us. It was a little windy on top, but not unbearable. There are 360-degree views from the summit, something I wasn’t able to enjoy on my last trip. Seeing the Presidentials covered in snow from that spot was amazing. You could see Chocorua to the south and other mountains in every direction. Absolutely breathtaking.
And now for the adventure part. Coming down off of North Moat there are a few small cliffs that are easily negotiable in the summer, but can be tricky during the winter. Someone had been there before us, so we chose to follow there bushwhack to get around the ledges. Bad idea. When we first left the trail we saw larges holes in the snow that looked like a moose had made a bedding area. We figured that couldn’t be the right way, so we searched for the trail but had no luck. We followed the bushwhack, falling in several spruce traps, and wound our way down the west side of the mountain. We reached a point where we thought that if we went any further that we would end up on the Kanc, so we made another bushwhack to find the ridge. We found more spruce traps and finally found the trail on the ridge. I bet we only cut a ¼ of a mile off of the trail. Oh well.
The trail wasn’t blazed very well as we made our way towards Red Ridge, but we were able to follow the trail pretty well. We ran what we could, but had to break a lot of trail and duck under a lot of branches. It was pretty cool making our way through the forest, with no signs of human beings anywhere. We theorized though about what would happen if we stumbled across a backwoods mountain man. Paul figured his name would be Fred Moat, and that if we came across his ‘still in the mountains he wouldn’t be too happy. Apparently Fred has family up there too, as his wife Diana and his brother Red were brought into the conversation.
We popped out at the top of Red Ridge and took a snack break. Fred and his kin were nowhere to be found. The Red Ridge Trail was our bailout route if anything happened, so from this point on it was South Moat or bust.
We dropped back down into the scrub for a little while and eventually popped out on Middle Moat. By now the temperature was probably around 45 degrees and there was a slight breeze. The view over to South Moat was unobstructed and the ridge was exposed. Traversing to South Moat was a blast as we ran across the snowy ridge. I didn’t want to leave. The thought of going back to classes the next day was not very appealing.
We took one more break at South Moat, knowing it was going to be the last of the great views. Looking back across the ridge you could see our snowshoe tracks. How cool is that? We still hadn’t seen another person yet, and we were enjoying it. We looked down at North Conway knowing that not much was going on at 9:30AM, but we had already hiked 3 mountains.
Descending a mountain on snowshoes can bring out the little kid in you. The snow on the south-facing trail was starting to soften up. We met up with the first people we had seen all day as we bounced down the trail. We noticed ski tracks in the open areas and figured that we wouldn’t let the skiers hog the unbroken snow! Tim and I somersaulted in the snow as Paul ran around like it was the first time he had seen the white stuff.
After exiting the snowfields we hammered back down to Paul’s car where we got looks from some of the hikers that had just arrived. Tim and Paul had the idea that we should pretend that someone was chasing us as we hit the parking lot. We were well behaved though; I think they thought we were weird when they saw us running on snowshoes anyways.
The trip took 4 hours and 30 minutes and only cost me 3 hours of sleep, and a package of Reese’s peanut butter cups. The best part is that I didn’t have to resort to Spam as a form of caloric intake.
Photos
