winter hikes

Manly Men, 2009

In four of the past five years, Win Piper, Andy Anderson (undergraduate college buddies) and I have done a winter hike and since I started blogging about my bike rides, it occurred to me that I should blog about this too.  I’ll start with this year’s hike and work chronologically backwards.

This year’s hike took place on Monday, January 5, 2009.  As usual, we used Win’s hovel in Hanover, New Hampshire as a jump-off point.  (For those of you who don’t know Win and/or have never visited him, I am being just a touch facetious – hotel Piper is always spacious and comfortable.)  Andy and I usually arrive the night before and the three of us would try to leave as early possible the next morning.  Despite being in central New Hampshire, it still takes us 1.5-2 hours to get to our preferred trailheads in the White Mountains so it is a struggle to get on the trail before 10am.  This year we resolved to do better.

For the second year in a row, we decided to tackle Chocorua (3850’) in the Sandwich range.  In previous years we had climbed Moosilauke 4802’ (someone on-line said it’s over 5000’ but I think it’s more like 4200+’).  We did not make it to the summit last year so we had extra incentive this year.  In our defense, the 2008 climb up Chocorua was in single-digit weather and 18” of fresh powder.  It was a beautiful day but the conditions made the climb very challenging.  Knowing now where the summit is, we probably made it around 2/3 of the way to the top in 2008.  We never broke the tree line.

The drive to the trailhead in 2009 was not promising: there was a very low ceiling and we couldn’t see the tops of many hills bordering the road.  But when we reached the trailhead, the clouds broke and by the time we were climbing, the sun was shining through.  Unlike the year before, the weather was much more temperate: it was in the mid-20s in Hanover when we left the house and it was predicted to be in the mid-30s by mid-day.  There was a solid pack of snow on the ground, between 6-18”.  We used snowshoes.

The climb was strenuous but pleasant.  We had between two (Win) and three (Jeff and Andy) torso layers and as we gained elevation and the temperature dropped, we did not need to add clothing.  We didn’t have any trouble with freezing camelback lines although we practiced blow-back to keep water out of the line.  It was only when we approached the tree line that we began to bundle up for the wind blasts we were expecting at the top.

As usual, the hikes are really just an excuse to see Win’s newest additions to his collection of gear.  This year the addition was crampons and Win generously buys multiples of everything so that anyone could arrive in Bermuda shorts and sandals and still be ready for a winter hike.  True to form, Win had 3 sets of crampons and as we approached the tree line we took off the snowshoes and put on the crampons.  These crampons featured points about 2” long so while they worked well on ice and hard snow, they were a real liability on hard rock.  Above the tree line, the chances were 50-50 that we would be able to set our feet down in something that the crampons would grab.  Since it was the first time Andy and I had worn crampons, this added to the already-steep learning curve.  To top it off, the wind was blowing steadily by our estimation of 20-30 mph with gusts up to 40-50.  These estimates could be grossly inaccurate, of course – but it should suffice to say that when standing on a dozen metal points on a smooth rock surface, the wind was sufficiently strong so that getting blown over was a distinct possibility and mis-steps could lead to a long tumble.  The wind also kicked up snow, ice and gravel and not having goggles was a problem.  We all agreed at the end of the day that we had wind-burn.  

Eating lunch at the top was out of the question.  We retreated to the tree line and sat long enough to for Win to regale us with a couple of stories and start to get cold before we headed down.

Although we did not reach the summit, we were satisfied with the excursion and felt that we had performed enough manly activity for the year.

I should add that this year we had resolved to camp out at least one night.  Thankfully, that plan atrophied as this writer values sleep too much to want to spend the night in a lean-to.