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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.