Two-day Pemigewasset Loop Winter Hike

Summary
OwnerMITOC Gallery Administrator
Creation Date2004-09-16 00:34:59 UTC-0400
DescriptionTrip report: Winter Pemi Loop

Date: January 3-4, 2003

Participants: Dave Andersen, Robert Zeithammer

Written by Robert Zeithammer


"This is going to be a big one! Ten to twenty inches tonight, and
continuing into tomorrow". These are not the words you want to hear at 5:30
AM in Plymouth's Dunkin Donuts as you are parting with such gifts of
civilization like a heated room and the number two combo-meal. A Nor'easter
of that magnitude can swiftly erase all the broken trails in the mountains,
and turn an easy hike into a hard one. But what would it change a hard hike
into? We were about to find out!

When you look at the AMC map of the Whites, one obvious loop jumps out at
you, perhaps because of the darker green color of the Pemigewasset
Wilderness it encircles. Lovingly called "The Pemi Death March" and "The
Debilitation Trek" by previous parties, it connects ten 4000 ft. peaks
(with optional side-trips to a few more) on the Franconia, Garfield, Twin
and Bond ridges along its 32 mile course. In the summer, it has been done
as a single-push effort in 16 hours, but winter is a whole different game
(to refresh your memory of the 16-hour effort, see
http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~hbriceno/climb/franconia99/ ). We hoped it
could be done in two days as we packed a stove, pot, and one freeze-dried
dinner each for the planned single bivouac in sleeping bags. Expecting lots
of deep powder snow, we also brought along the largest snowshoes we could
find, and spent a long evening trying to eliminate all unnecessary gear
from our packs.

The packs ended up weighing about 25 pounds as we started into the frigid
darkness of the Pemi Wilderness from Lincoln Woods around daybreak. The
Osseo trail was in perfect condition, so we soon (read "in 3 hours") stood
atop Mount Flume three thousand feet above our car, and enjoyed the
familiar view of the Franconia Ridge to the north and the Sandwich Range to
the south. But wait a minute, there was no Sandwich Range! Just a dark-gray
wall of clouds slowly creeping towards us. The trail was not broken beyond
Mount Liberty, but the snow was not deep enough to require snowshoes, so we
kept up the pace and tried to outrun the wall. Ahead of us was the
Franconia Ridge the key to the whole circuit because of its exposure to
the elements. It being January, we had imagined this sharp ridge covered in
packed snow, but the mountains presented us with rocks floating in a river
of solid ice, only the cairns suggested this was actually the trail. And to
the south, there was a dark wall of clouds about to erase Mount Flume from
our view. Getting to the top of Mount Lincoln was surprisingly easy despite
the ice, but friction was very much lacking as we stumbled down into the
col before Lafayette. There, the wall caught up with us and the views
disappeared and the wind picked up and we were miserable, walking with a
tilt so as not to be blown off the mountain. But the tallest mountain still
loomed ahead, so we literally ran up it, envious of the other hikers who
were about to head down to Greenleaf hut and their cosy warm cars.

Now, all those hikers thought they had just hiked the Franconia Ridge, but
we now know better. The Ridge continues above treeline for a good extra
mile as it plunges precipitously towards the much less glamorous Garfield
Ridge. We plunged with it, and we were tired, and the ice was slicker, and
we were more tired, and then Dave started self-arresting with a hiking
pole, and we continued to get more tired, and the trees on Garfield Ridge
were still deep below us. At the junction with the Skookumchuck trail, we
found a headlamp half encased in clear solid ice; digging it out provided
some much-needed rest. The trees grew closer, and suddenly we were among
them, up to our waist in pristine snow. Just like last year at this time,
the trail was not broken. Sane people do not go to the Garfield Ridge in
the winter, and we don't blame them. Garfield "ridge" is actually the
Garfield Abyss chock-full of dips, notches, and bumps. We continued our
half-controlled free-fall from Lafayette on snowshoes, and life didn't seem
too bad. But then came the uphills. And more uphills. And a sudden drop. So
even more uphills. And just when we thought we were already climbing Mount
Garfield, another drop, this one deeper than the previous ones! Dave
started muttering to himself quietly, and I became convinced my altimeter
must be broken, but we had to go on.

There were no views waiting at the summit, just the gloom of a raging
snowstorm at dusk. Moments later, we stood in front of the Garfield
lean-to. The plan had been to camp out in the snow wilderness-style, but
the little wooden house looked way too inviting. The powder snowflakes
whirled around us, the wind was turning our shells into ice-jackets, and
the darkness enveloped us completely. Almost without a discussion, we
stepped into the lean-to and made it our home for the night. Fifteen miles
and 7000 feet of elevation gain in a little over ten hours had exhausted us
so completely, that we bundled up sitting down and restricted motion to
lifting of our spoons and pumping up the gas stove to melt enough water for
dinner and the next day. And then we slept through the night, our alarm
clock, and an early morning visit by a small four-legged animal whose
tracks were still visible in the shallow snow on the shelter floor. Eleven
hours after turning the stove off, we rose to a foot of powder and
wind-driven snow still falling. There were no views that morning, just a
faint trail, deep snowdrifts, and more notches. A few hours later, we
passed the Galehead hut, and attacked the day's main ascent head on.

The Twinway trail covers the 1100 feet to the summit of South Twin mountain
in 0.9 miles, pretty much straight up. Not fun on snowshoes! But after that
ordeal, the trail continued much more gently downward towards Mount Guyot,
which greeted us with a shower of freezing rain. Welcome to the White
Mountains! It is too bad that Guyot doesn't count for "the list" because it
is a very pretty rocky outcrop in the sea of boring forest. At this point,
only Mount Bond lay between us and the descent to the car. No wonder an
intermediate bump convinced us it was "it". The real summit was even nicer,
the weather relented a bit and started showing us some of the scenery. Bond
is the most remote spot in the Whites, 11 miles from the nearest road. It
takes guts to hike towards it all day in a raging Nor'easter, but then
again, "guts" rhymes with "nuts". The clock was showing 2 PM, a good time
to go down. On the way, we passed over Bondcliff one of the most beautiful
summits in the area complete with a classic "hiker on cliff" Kodak
situation. We were done mentally, physically, and in terms of ascents, but
the car was still ten mind-numbing miles away. Down through small pinetrees
laden with fresh snow, down towards more pinetrees laden with fresh snow,
down through dark forests towards the Pemi river, down towards the surely
broken Wilderness Trail. Wrong! Nobody had made it that far since the
storm. So more plodding through deep snow... The last five miles are a blur
in our minds. Just a straight tunnel with a white carpet through quiet
darkness. But we knew we had succeeded, it was only a matter of time before
one reached the suspension bridge at Lincoln Woods, and then the car, the
restaurants of Lincoln, the luxuries of civilization.

We made it to the bridge at 7:30 PM, about ten and a half hours after
starting in the morning. Not bad for 17 miles of hiking with 2600 feet of
elevation gain and a massive elevation loss, most of it through deep powder
snow. Would we do it again? Of course not! But if you have an idea for a
similar adventure somewhere nearby, let us know!

Trip statistics:

Day 1: 15 miles, 7000 feet up, 3500 feet down, 10.5 hours, 6 peaks (Flume,
Liberty, Little Haystack, Lincoln, Lafayette, Garfield)

Day 2: 17 miles, 2600 feet up, 6100 feet down, 10 hours, 4 peaks (South
Twin, Guyot, Bond, Bondcliff).

Total peaks that "count" for the 4000-footer list: 6