MtWashington

So, after doing the Rim2Rim hike, John asked me if I wanted to visit his family's lake cabin in Maine and do some White Mountain hikes. I said sure, and we scheduled a week long visit for June 2025 (May 31 - June 8). Elizabeth and Tammy would join us for the week, and we would do Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park while we were there, as well as do some hikes.

Unfortunately Elizabeth got pretty sick right before our scheduled departure with pertussis/Whooping Cough, and we backed out at the last minute. John and Tammy went, and had a great trip, but JT and I still wanted to do some hiking, so we rescheduled for a long weekend near my birthday in September. We ended up scheduling for the 25th through the 30th, 2025.

Peaks Bagged This Trip

Mt. Washington   6,288'          Mt. Monroe   5,384'          Little Monroe
Mt. Franklin          4,974'         Mt. Pierce   4,310'            Mt. Eisenhower   4,780'

Thursday 25 September 2025

We flew out on Thursday the 25th, with a cold front moving off. The weather on arrival was OK, but it turned to a steady rain shortly after we arrived in Portland, ME (we flew American through Philly, and generally the flights went OK). For the flight out we left really early, leaving the house at 5a for a 7:48 am departure, and arrived in Portland by 9:40. The idea was we would have some time to do some sightseeing or something, but with the rain we just got a few groceries and settled in for the night.

Friday 26 September 2025

On Friday the 26th we hiked (AllTrails link) from Grafton Notch up Baldpate (western Maine near the NH border), hitting table rock first. We got there pretty early, and the rain had stopped about 5 am, but it was pretty moist and high humidity. I was careful to stay in ketosis so I would have good energy and not need to eat, and was pretty diligent with my hydration as well. JT struggled all day, though, with a racing heart rate and intense sweating and low energy. I think he was low on sodium, and maybe bonked on no nutrition late in the hike, but we weren't sure. All we know for certain is he was feeling well. We got to the top of Table Rock fairly quickly and took some pictures, then proceeded on to West Baldpate peak (3,583').

We had planned to go down, and then back up to the East peak (3,576'), but with John feeling so poorly we just took a prolonged break for food and hydration, and then headed back down. He was so sweaty, I made him take his shirt off and gave him my grey wool pullover. It was fairly comfortable on top of the mountain, but it was on the cool side with some wind, and being wet was not great.

Saturday 27 September 2025

On Saturday we decided to just head into Portland and see the sites a bit, and then hang out on the lake in the afternoon when the sun came out. I'd never been to Maine, and our legs were a bit sore from the previous day's hike, and we wanted to be fresh for Sunday/Monday's epic hike of Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range. So, we took the ~hour long ride into the city to see the Head Light and park/museum. Once back at the cabin, we took John's canoe out and paddled the lake a bit to get a better lay of the land. The water is really clear, but because it's basically lined with granite rocks, it has a deep brown or black appearance when you look straight down unless the sun is at a good angle (near sunrise or sunset). In fact, I was struck with how strange Maine's landscape is. It's really just huge broken stone everywhere, covered by a very thin layer of dirt. In the evening we relaxed and got our backpacks packed up as we decided we really needed to be setting out on trail by dawn (6:30a) to be sure we'd have enough time to get into our overnight stay at Mizpah Hut before sunset (about 6:30p). It was going to be about an hour in the car, so we agreed to be out the door by 5am... and for me on time is late, so I was ready by 4:30, which stressed JT out a bit.

Sunday 28 September 2025

It was a cool morning when we arrive at Pinkham Notch to start up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail, but the forecast was for clearing skies and generally warm temperatures. We made a quick bathroom break, but were on trail basically at sun up. The first part of the trail was really wide and fairly well maintained, an old 'tractor' road, though it was still pretty rocky. We saw a few folks on the trail all day, but being off season (and after school was back in session) it was an smaller, older crowd. We made pretty good time on the entire climb up, and in particular were at the avalanche/first aid station pretty early. From here the climb was a pretty standard, rough and fairly ascending trail, and we continued to make good time and take just the occasional break.

Eventually, though, we were into the Ravine proper, and had to climb the head wall. This is where things were really different than any hiking I'd ever done. First, the (~25 lbs) of weight in my pack made it a bit awkward to climb this face, as the weight kept wanting to pull me backwards and off the face. Also, the rock steps were really large, and very vertical, so it was often hard to find a way to usefully use my hiking poles, so you ended up just holding them a lot, and climbing the face of the mountain like a rock climber. This section seemed a lot easier to go up than it would be down, where your weight would be trying to accelerate you down the face, and it would be a bit trickier to plant your foot or pole in something solid to arrest your momentum. Things really slowed down here, though it was still really beautiful. Pretty quickly, though, we were in the Alpine Zone, and above tree line, with gently flowing streams flowing off of the mountain and following the trail turned to looking for cairns.

The next section was also nearly vertical, but was just large granite boulders, and although there were cairns showing the basically direction of travel, it wasn't always clear where the 'trail' actually was. You just would look 10' or so up trail, find a series of foot placements you were happy with, and move that direction. This is where we both put on a wind layer, and got our skullcaps and gloves on. I'd fortunately packed travel facial tissue in my pack, as my nose would run off and on the rest of the hike. While we were in motion, I never really got cold, and I had more layers I didn't use, but my ears and hands would've been cold without the extra layers. At one point we ended up clearly off trail, in a field of scattered boulders with large open crevices that was really disconcerting. In places the vertical steps were quite large, and our quads were getting pretty burnt up, and it took a lot of effort to keep moving uphill. It was also really challenging in that all of the minor muscles in your legs and ankles were fatigued as they usually do not get this much work - not just because of the vertical nature of the climb, but because the rock is so uneven they are continually having to steady your balance. John and I both started to look drunk, or as if we had some neurological disorder, as we swayed back and forth. The hiking poles were very welcome in the places you could actually find to plant them into something.

But, in just over 3:30 we were at the steps to the auto road, and then the steps up to the observatory. Climbing the steps was extremely challenging, and overall the hike to the summit was the hardest physical challenge of my life. We would go on to hike a bit more than 6 miles to get to our hut, but by the time we got to the gift shop and museum at the summit my legs felt entire spent and far more fatigued than when I ran the Cincinnati Marathon or hike the Grand Canyon Rim-2-Rim. The summit was mostly covered in clouds, and the winds were generally over 30 MPH with gusts over 55. The windchill was in the 30s F. We got a few pictures on the summit, and John got a coffee to warm up while I got a summit sticker for my car. We sat down and warmed up for 15 or 20 minutes, took a bathroom break, and refilled our water bottles, before heading down the Crawford Trail across the ridge towards the other Presidential peaks we would bag.

Heading down the Crawford was fairly nice, we were out in the open wind above tree line almost all the way to Mizpah which was a bit annoying, but it wasn't really cold. Occasionally we would look back on Washington, and it was clear of clouds for some of the afternoon (which we were sad to have missed). There was a fair amount of up-and-down to get to the other peaks, and it seemed like all of trails off of the summits were better/easier than the approaches, but maybe that's just perception. We also saw several trail runners on this section, which was pretty dumbfounding as we were struggling just to walk the ridge with all of the rocks. The longest stretch felt like the hike down to Lake of the Clouds, which was beautiful, but the hut had closed for the season (and therefore had no water for us).

After Lake of the Clouds, we summitted Mt. Monroe and Little Monroe. This was cool as there was a summit pin, and included a couple of hundred feet of climb. We then went down some, and about 400' back up to Mt. Franklin, which was a less interesting peak. Next was a longish section to Mt. Eisenhower, which had a interesting rock ring on top. The final stretch was also longish to Mt. Pierce just before dropping back below the tree line for the run down to Mizpah. The last mile or so to Mizpah was steeply downhill on some very large boulders, which slowed us down quite a bit.

Once at the hut, we got checked in and picked our bunks. I'd already started charging my phone, backup battery, and watch (they'd started to die on the ridge hike), but I popped those out and put them on my bunk to charge while we checked out the hut. We took our "cowboy" shower with my wet wipes, and got our pillow cases and sleeping bag liners onto our bunks. We were able get the bottom bunks near the window. It was toasty warm in the hut just from sunlight hitting the windows, even though it was chilly outside. Some folks opened their windows in the other bunk rooms, which ended up making it a bit chilly in the hut overnight.

We were a bit early for dinner, and as I was settling in, John was talking to some folks down in the common area. One of those folks was an older lady, whom he thought was running the hut, but turns out that she was just the mother of one of the hut workers (she and several of her friends hiked up for the day). In any event, he shared our plan to hike the Dry Wilderness (Dry River Cutoff, Isolation, Davis Path, Boot Spur Trails). She expressed skeptisism about this, saying "those trails are not well maintained", which freaked us out a bit. I was a bit nervous about John's foot already, and we were both reasonably fatigued from Day 1. We really needed to get to the car, and back to the house, on Day 2. so I was very concerned if we were to get several miles into the return hike, only to find that we had to backtrack several miles to reroute due to a blowdown or washout or something.

That concern might have been overblown, as the son eventually told us he'd been on the trail earlier in the summer, and that it was OK, but that some of the trail gets hard to find, particularly around some of the water crossings (where you think you're meant to walk in the creek, but that's not really the trail). Had we heard this first, we probably would've proceeded - especially even with blowdowns I've never really found that to be a problem, but not having hiked out here before it was concerning. Recall that it took us about 10 hours to get to Mizpah, so if we ended up with a significant (2-3 mile) reroute, we could easily have been out on trail after dark. At the end of the day, I'm still super conflicted on whether or not this was the right choice. It certainly was less stressful, but we probably could've done this hike. But, we texted/called several ride folks, and reserved a ride from Highland the next day, and decided we'd sleep "in" and eat breakfast, and just hike down to Highland Center the next morning.

Monday 29 September 2025

So, we decided to not do the 10 mile Dry Wilderness hike we'd plan on the way out. Between the guidance that "that trail is not well maintained", and John's bad toe, it seemed like a bad idea. The weather was really good though, and when we set out after breakfast it felt like a mistake to just take the easy 3 mile hike down the Mizpah cutoff and Crawford Trail to the Highland Center.

But, about a mile in John's foot started bothering him again, and it was pretty clear it was likely the best choice. Were down the mountain in no time, and in the comfy AMC lodge on WiFi looking for a ride. We'd reserved on with someone at 2pm ($100), but it was only 10 am or so when we got to Highland with a couple of other guys also looking for a ride. They did eventually get a ride with Bill (trail angel) for about 11:30 in a Honda Fit, an agreed to let us pile in with them if we could fit all our packs. They were trying to get to Appalachian Center I think, which was closer than our Pinkham Notch (about 20 miles, or an hour drive) location. It ended up taking us nearly an hour and a half to get to our car, but we were still on the road back to the cabin before our scheduled ride would've even picked us up. We ended up paying our $100 ride, but the two brothers from NY that we carpooled with paid the $80 to get us to our car. Nice guys.

We ended up back at the cabin by about 4 pm or so, having stopped for Johnny's "Victory Lap" lunch at McDonald's. Since we were done with the physical portion of the trip, I indulged in an 8 piece chicken nuggets, fries, and a sundae myself. We also popped into the "Umbrella Factory" grocery for a few more supplies, and I got a Red Baron brickhouse style pepperoni pizza for dinner and a few snacks (including a pint of cookie dough ice cream and a Maine "Whoopie Pie" - kind of like a Suzie Q).

Once back, I recharged all of my devices and started organizing my luggage, putting all of my dirty laundry into my ziplocks and getting my hiking gear stowed back into the luggage. Once I was organized I got my shower in (JT showers morning an after exercise, but I told him I just needed to get clean, and wouldn't shower again in the morning) and we just relaxed a bit on the dock and I watched some Wild Homestead YouTube that I'd downloaded prior to the trip.

Tuesday 30 September 2025

Fly home. Our plane left midday - we planned it that way so JT could get the cabin closed up for the winter. I vacuumed up most of the house, and washed my dishes, and pulled my towels and bedding for Johnny to wash first thing in the morning. Then I helped him take in the deck chairs and hammock, and get the garbage out to the curb. The trashman barely arrived before we needed to leave a 11 for the airport, as did the tax surveyor. But, we got it all done, and his cans put back, turned off the power, and locked up so we could head to the airport.

Portland is only about 45 minutes away, but we needed to fill and return the Avis rental car, and John didn't have PreCheck. The weather was severe clear everywhere east of the Rockies, so our planes were both scheduled on time (we ended up with a short delay in Philly when our copilot was not on the manifest for some reason, but they made it up in flight). I breezed through security and got a snack, and in no time we were on our way home. We had a 3 hour layover in Philly (really 2:30 till our scheduled boarding), and I got a really tasty Smash Burger there. They didn't give me enough ketchup, though, and their shake was terrible, so I went over to Chick-fil-a for a good shake. We were in Cincy by about 10, grabbed our bags, and Johnny dropped me at the house by 11. I sorted my clothes and was in bed by midnight, a tired boy.

For some reason, the lack of sleep I'd been experiencing didn't catch up to me until the travel day. I'd struggled to get to sleep the first night in the cabin, so I'd ended up taking Advil PM both the first two nights, and although I slept a fair amount in the hut without my CPAP, I woke up several times, so that by Tuesday I really did feel sleep deprived... so I slept hard this night.

Clothes and things I packed in

For the hike itself, I wore a long sleeve black Merino wool 1/4 zip baselayer from REI and my tan Montane hiking pants, Darn Tough wool socks (with glide on my toes, and silicone heel protectors covering my spurs) and Merrill Moad 3 shoes with ankle gaiters. I wore my Outdoor Research sun hat and used my Fizan Compact 3 hiking poles, and used my 30L (larger than my day pack) Mystery Ranch Coulee backpack. I had my 2L Platypus bladder full of clear water, and 2 750ml Smart Water bottles with citrus LMNT packs. In the pack I had a bottle of 500 mg Vitassium Electrolyte Capsules, and another dozen or so LMNT packs, a couple of Nick's keto bars as well as a couple of Kind Zero nut bars for nutrition.

For emergencies, JT carried his Garmin InReach, and we both carrying headlamps and extra batteries. I had a couple of mylar emergency blankets, a signal mirror and whistle, lighter for starting fires, a variety of medicines (Tylenol and Advil, inhaler for asthma and my daily vitamins) as well as my first aid kit. I also carried extra Nexrad toe tape, glide, and spare socks. I carried a sleeping bag liner and pillow case for the bunk at Mizpah, and wet wipes to clean up with. I had my sunshirt and heavy quarter zip green mid layer to warm up with, as well as wool leggings to sleep in (and in case I got too cold hiking). I couldn't fit my puffy coat, but I did carry my hard shell rain jacket and pants in a ziplock, and another ziplock with my beanie and gloves, as well as my sea-to-summit dry back with my Anker power bank and charging cables. All and all, it was pretty tight in there, even for the 30L pack.