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| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2004-09-19 21:48:00 UTC-0400 |
| Description |
From kjelinek@MIT.EDU Thu Dec 13 19:32:19 2001 Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 19:22:51 -0500 (EST) From: Kurt Jelinek Subject: Trip Report [ The following text is in the "X-UNKNOWN" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Trip Report: Mt. Washington via Tuckerman Ravine ------------------------------------------------ Date: Saturday, December 8, 2001 Participants: An Nguyen, Christian Holtze and Kurt Jelinek After starting out at a decent hiker's time of 3 a.m. at the loading dock behind the MIT student center, we made it to Pinkham Notch just before sunrise (6:17 a.m. by An's watch). The visibility of stars and a bright moon lifted our spirit to have a great late fall hike ahead of us. Despite the lack of snow at Pinkham Notch, the crisp air reminded us that winter is not too far away. The initial shock of the cool air made a withdrawal into our cozy heated car essential. There we enjoyed a delicious breakfast of almost two days old bagels! Besides the fact that they were hard as a rock (we were not sure if they were frozen or just bone dry), they served the purpose of getting our dormant circulation going. As daylight slowly emerged, the surrounding landscape revealed the amazing beauty of nature. With great enthusiasm we started our ascent toward Tuckerman Ravine at 6:57 am. An, our geologist-in- resident pointed out several interesting rock and mineral compositions on the way uphill. Throughout the day, she collected some beautiful samples of Quartzite, Muscovite Schist, Hornblende, Augite and Biotite. No wonder An's backpack was that heavy! Around 8:30 am we arrived at Tuckerman Ravine shelter, where we asked the caretaker about the trail conditions. His response of "not too bad" and "crampons not necessary but good to have" encouraged us to forge ahead. From a distance we were able to see our first destination, the headwall of Tuckerman Ravine. The entire headwall, which is around 1000 feet wide and 800 feet high, looked like a big waterfall frozen to ice. We knew that there should be a trail somewhere up this headwall and speculated were it would be. Because there was not enough snow for skiing, and the ice was not stable enough for ice climbing, nobody else was around. What a luxury to have the entire Tuckerman Ravine for ourselves! There was an absolute silence in the ravine that was only periodically interrupted by falling icicles. This made us aware of the potential danger as we were watching from below how the ice was bouncing down the headwall. With a little apprehension we decided to proceed and re-evaluated our situation carefully as we gained in elevation. As safety conscious hikers we decided that it was time to put our crampons on. After crossing some ice fields with some difficulties, we took the time to enjoy the astonishing world of ice surrounding us. The crisp air, the reflecting light from the ice and the absolute silence made this spot at this particular day one of the most beautiful places in the entire White Mountains. After reaching the rim of the ravine we saw our next destination, the top of Mt. Washington, in front of us. The huge antennas on the summit looked like four feet tall fence post from that distance. Our decision to take off the crampons at this point was a minor mistake, as we had to cross some more icy snowfields. After mastering these obstacles with ease we attempted the final stretch. We did this in a straightforward approach without paying attention to existing trails. As environmental conscious hikers we used of course the leave- no-trace philosophy to ensure that we will not disturb the fragile high Alpine vegetation. The summit of Mt. Washington was reached around 10:45 a.m. in beautiful sunshine and at amazingly low wind speed of maybe 15 mph. Visibility was around 50 miles in each direction! Just the temperatures around 20 degrees Fahrenheit kept us from taking our T-shirts off. After spending 30 minutes at the summit we felt an urge to continue our hike. Mt. Monroe and Mt. Eisenhower were smiling at us from the West and after having a short hearing we were on our way to visit them. Near the Hut in the Clouds we came across a lonely frozen pond, which invited us to do some world class ice-skating performances and a vicious match of curling. Looking back, our most dangerous part of the entire hike happened there as Christian almost broke his elbow after falling in full swing. After arriving at the Hut we had lunch on the beautifully painted non-existing benches. There we devoured some more of the "oven fresh" bagels and enjoyed drinks near the freezing point. We really had to force ourselves to swallow these perfectly chilled drinks. To thaw up our cheeks and mouth we quickly bagged Mt. Monroe and the little knob next to it, thinking we had done Mt. Franklin. We congratulated each other with a high-five and "wimped" out on Mt. Eisenhower. By this time, the sun disappeared behind some clouds and approached the horizon at a low angle. We held a short executive meeting to define our strategy for the way back to the car. We tried to avoid the forecasted snowfall by going down the shortest way via the Boott Spur. The way down from 5500 ft to 2000 ft elevation was rugged and endless. We measured our progress by comparing how merged or distinguishable the two headlights shining up from the cars way below on Hwy 16 appeared to us. Particularly the last hour of night hiking down the trail seemed to us as being on a never-ending-trail. (Note: heading down Boott Spur Trail we realized that it has an amazing number of curves, loops, turns, ups and every now and then even a few downs). As we got closer to our starting point we actually appreciated to hear the noise from the cars driving along Hwy 16. The sound of cars indicated that we were almost there -- what a relief! Around 6 p.m. we were finally back at Pinkham Notch where we bumped into another MITOC group just by chance. What an awesome day of hiking we had! The MITOC-owned Intervale Cabin provided us a perfect place to stay overnight. Christian volunteered to prepare a hiker's meal, which would make up for the lost calories. The German style pasta feast consisted of 1-1/2 lbs of noodles, 1 lb of cheese, ½ lb of bacon and two big onions. An was choking over the melted cheese and pasta because she didn't drink enough water during the day. Wow, were we full afterwards - but the food was gone! The predicted arrival of winter finally materialized overnight, as several inches of snow covered the White Mountains in the color that fits its name. An, Christian and Kurt |