| Summary | Kathleen, Ben, RIchard, and I accidentally hiked up Mt. Monroe in the middle of the night. |
| Owner | Dana Sulas |
| Creation Date | 2009-04-27 17:35:39 UTC-0400 |
| Description | At 1am on Saturday morning (04/25), Richard, Ben, Kathleen, and I began a walk on the Ammonoosec trail up the western side of Mt. Washington. After we'd been merrily skipping along for about an hour, Richard noticed that the trail did not look like the Ammonoosec that he knew and loved. We checked the map to find that we should, indeed, be following a river up a gully, as we were. We all chuckled at the possibility of being lost, and continued on our way.
An hour later, we noticed that all footprints had disappeared, and we were left following ski tracks up a really steep chute. Consulting the map and compass convinced us that we had followed Monroe Brook up the wrong gully. We booked it up (really, straight up) and rejoiced (very loudly) when Richard pointed out a trail on the summit of Monroe at around 3:40am. We took a break on Monroe to eat, drink, clothe ourselves, and regain some strength after the vertical sprint up the mountain. We carried on down to the saddle between Monroe and Washington, but took surprisingly long to find the Lakes of the Clouds hut, despite Kathleen pointing and saying "hey, guys, isn't that a roof? ...like, one on a house?" several times. After we'd hiked about 1/3 of the way to Mt Washington, the sky began to lighten up, we saw a great many dark clouds sweeping over the summit, it started to rain, and lightning broke out to the west. We decided that marked a good time to head back to the hut and have lunch. Once the winds picked up and it began to rain harder, we started to mosey our way down the mountain toward a shallow-looking gully that we hoped would take us to the Ammonoosec trail. We started to make our way down just as lost and confused as the way we came up, and suddenly (gasp) we saw a blue trail blaze on a tree! We all rejoiced (again, quite loudly), Kathleen broke out her celebratory sled, and we all frolicked/slid merrily down the trail. When we finally reached the Ammonoosec River (which we should have followed on the way up), we were delightfully surprised by a nice little swimming pool. Kathleen and I eagerly stripped and hopped in for a relaxing swim. Minutes later, hikers and boyscouts began to wander by on their "early" start up the trail. A side note: Although hardly anything went as planned, this was some of the most fun I've had in a long time. Kathleen, Richard, and Ben are the most optimistic and wonderful people I've ever spent a night on a steep snow field with. This was exactly what I needed. Thanks guys :-) |