| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-02-20 02:26:51 UTC-0500 |
| Description |
Madison and Adams on Presidents Eve 2/18/07 Valley Way, Star Lake Trail, Great Gully Trail, King Ravine Trail, Short Line, Randolph Path, Air Line Christian Holtze, Benedicte Py, and Monika Schleier-Smith Trip Report: We were thinking of doing an overnight hike in the northern presidentials but decided instead on a slightly lazier plan, driving up Saturday morning for a little xc skiing at Jackson, camping at the intervale yurt Saturday night, and waiting till Sunday to hike. After a 4:45 am wakeup followed by a stop at DD, we started snowshoeing up the Valley Way from Appalachia parking area around 7:30 am Sunday. We had no regrets about waiting till Sunday to hike when we saw how nicely Saturday's hikers had broken trail for us. The ascent up to Madison Hut was straightforward, and weather above treeline was surprisingly pleasant--no wind, some snow flurries. From there, we cruised up and down Madison, stopping only briefly to enjoy the "view" from the top. When we got back down to the hut, the snow was falling faster than before and all signs of our having been there the previous hour were obscured. It was 12:45 PM, and we figured that left time to hike Adams and maybe even (we optimistically thought) Jefferson... So, we started heading up Adams along the Star Lake trail. It soon became clear that this ascent would be trickier than the last. The cairns were sparser, and the snow was deeper--leaving us occasionally postholing. Christian, having the longest legs and a knack for stepping in the right places, valiantly took the lead and got us to the summit of Mt. Adams. By now, it was about 2:30 PM and visibility was rapidly getting worse--so, our only remaining objective for the day was to make our way back down to below-treeline trails and thence to the car. Without a detailed consideration of various possible routes back down from Mt. Adams, we followed a sign toward Appalachia--or, tried to follow the sign, quickly lost track of the trail but kept going in what we thought might be the right direction (occasionally going on instincts like "look, there are some people over that way"), started seeing cairns again, and eventually found the cairn of Thunderstorm Junction (which was so big that I at first thought it was just a boulder and not a cairn at all.) Here, we decided the most reliable way down--given the poor visibility--would be to follow the Great Gully Trail down its namesake gully. Much as expected, after the first few cairns we saw no further indications of the route, but we kept making our way down the gully all the way back to treeline (occasionally sinking waist-deep in snow, and eventually taking the hint and putting our snowshoes back on). We could see from the map that, by turning right once the gully began to flatten out below its steep section, we should hit the King Ravine Trail. After a short but intense section of bushwhacking in snowshoes, we did indeed hit the King Ravine Trail. It was unbroken, but still it was a trail, complete with blazes on trees, and all this before dark! And perhaps 50 yards down the King Ravine Trail, we found the intersection with the Great Gully Trail that we had meant to come from--so we were probably never very far off. On the King Ravine Trail, we passed from woods through a few sketchy rock scrambles (where we were afraid we'd lose the trail again) back into the woods, where we hit Short Line around dusk. Short Line would take us in about a mile to Randoph Path, which I was pretty sure was broken, both from seeing it at the intersection with Valley Way and from talking to several hikers who'd been at Gray Knob, presumably via Randolph Path. Contrary to the name, that mile along Short Line seemed like the longest mile I've ever gone. Christian had been doing the bulk of the trail- breaking, with me occasioanlly switching in and Bene steadily holding the second spot in line; but Christian's snowshoes were showing an inconvenient proclivity pop off. After the second time we had to probe the depths of powder to recover a delinquent snowshoe, I took over the lead in breaking the remainder of Short Line. The number of photos I took at the intersection of Short Line with Randolph Path says something about how relieved I was finally to reach this junction. Randolph Path was indeed well-broken, thanks in part, it seems, to these guys! The remaining two miles back to Appalachia along Randolph Path/Short Line/Air Line were a breeze. We made it back to the trailhead around 8:30 PM and, after a hearty dinner in North Conway, back to Boston around 3 AM... --Monika |