Mahoosuc Notch in Winter

SummaryNone
OwnerEric Gilbertson
Creation Date2010-02-11 00:07:03 UTC-0500
DescriptionMahoosuc Notch in Winter
Eric Gilbertson, Matthew Gilbertson, Jake Osterberg
2.6.2010-2.7.2010
Author: Eric


Mahoosuc Notch is known infamously as the most difficult mile of the Appalachian Trail, and for good reason. The notch is basically a mile-long boulderfield trapped deep between two cliffs near the New Hampshire – Maine state border. The trail winds over, around, and even under boulders following the path of least resistance while trapped between Full Goose and Mahoosuc Mountains. Many thru-hikers report taking several hours just to traverse that single mile. In the summertime the notch is always about 10 degrees cooler than the surrounding landscape because snow stays trapped in between the boulders year-round. The notch is just deep enough and the boulders large enough that not enough light gets in to melt all the snow. If the trail is that tough in the summer, just imagine how fun it would be to traverse in the winter…

Matthew, Jake, and I set out to cross the notch in full winter conditions. I had heard from Dave Custer that there’s some ice climbing in the notch, but I’d never heard of anyone else hiking across the notch and an online search yielded zero trip reports about it. Not that I really expected too many people to venture to such a remote location in the winter: It’s a ~4 hour drive from Boston to the Appalachian Trailhead in Grafton Notch, then a 9-mile hike in over Old Spec mountain and Mahoosuc Arm just to get to the edge of the notch. Or you can walk along Success Pond road (usually unplowed) from Grafton Notch for about 8 miles to another trail which is a 3-mile hike into the notch. Finally, you could potentially drive to near the Sunday River ski resort and bushwack in for maybe 4 miles to the east edge of the notch. All of these options seem pretty difficult, but we decided to try our luck on Success Pond road.

We started from Intervale Saturday morning and drove to the edge of Success Pond road. Jake, an experienced Minnesotan drive, was at the wheel and thought his car could probably make it up the unplowed road if it didn’t get too steep. As we were about to try it, though, a group of snowmobilers roared by. I thought the first guy was waving at us but then we figured out from other gestures that he was actually intending to give us the finger. We didn’t want to further offend the snowmobilers, especially since we had an out-of-state license plate, so we parked right there and started hiking up the road.

We had the trailhead marked on the GPS and with Jake telling us our average pace and ETA every 15 minutes we covered the 8 miles in about 3 hours. Not too bad for the winter. When we got to the trailhead we were astounded to see the road was plowed! The plow must have started in Berlin and plowed north to the trailhead, then turned off on some side road. If only we had discovered that earlier! The area hadn’t received much snow in the past few weeks and I’m guessing in a normal winter the road would remain unplowed most of the season.

We were also equally surprised to see another car parked at the trailhead and tracks leading up towards the notch. Who else would go to all the trouble to get to mahoosuc notch in the winter?

We donned snowshoes and started up the 3 mile trail, reaching the edge of the notch by about 3pm. We dropped our tent and sleeping bags at the edge and suited up, not sure exactly what we would find. Would the notch be filled in with snow, smoothing over the boulderfield? Or would it be an icy, cold, impenetrable maze even trickier than in the summer? We soon discovered it was a combination of both.

While the snow outside the notch had been only 1 or 2 feet deep, inside the notch it was at least two or three times that. Trees were bent over from the weight of snow and the boulders looked like huge seracs. The snow had filled in a lot of the spaces between the boulders, but there were still gaps at the edges and you could never be certain if you were crossing solid 10-ft deep snow or a narrow snow bridge. When I was leading, with each step I took the snow would make a “whoomff” sound and settle about an inch, which was pretty a bit unnerving when I suspected I was on a fragile snowbridge. Jake actually punched through a snowbridge one time and had to catch himself with his arms to stop himself from falling further. It was basically like crossing a mini-glacier.

Several times even with the extremely deep snow the only way to proceed was by crawling under boulders, which we had to do at least three times. Snowshoes make the crawling process even more interesting.

Near the beginning of the notch we looked up to the side and saw a few ice climbers on a route. They were too far away to talk to but I figured it had to be Dave Custer or some of his friends, since nobody else would even think of coming to mahoosuc notch in the winter.

We got to the northeast edge of the notch shortly before sunset and turned around to try to cross it again before dark. This time we knew we could trust all of the snow we had already compacted, and we had some fun jumping off the higher boulders and making some good pictures.

We made it back to camp by dusk and got a nice big fire going before crawling into our -15F bags for bed. We settled for a tent this time because it was a bit late to start the 3+ hour snowshelter building process.

The next morning we hiked out and made it back to Boston in time for Jake to watch the second half of the super bowl.

If travelling to the notch I would recommend first driving to Berlin to check if the road there is plowed. If not, drive to grafton notch and xc ski up success pond road pulling sleds to the trailhead. That’s a lot of gear but would be much funner than walking in.

Note: I later learned it was, in fact, Dave Custer and friends climbing in the notch that day.