gwax's rumblings

I set out yes­ter­day to climb Mount Whiteface and Mount Passaconoway up in that New Hampshire state thing. I planned it as a two day hike where I’d get as far as I could, set down with my sleep­ing bag, sleep and then fin­ish. I had myself loaded out with alto­gether too much gear because I wanted extra weight such that I can go about beat­ing myself into shape faster.

At any rate, I got to the park­ing area at around 11:30a yes­ter­day and got going on the Whiteface bit. Along the way there were a few places where the melt­ing snow/ice was flow­ing down the trail (some­times under ice sheets) and it was absolutely beau­ti­ful; pleas­ant sound as well. The path had a fairly low grade for a while and then nearer the top it got pretty steep. The steep bits were pretty icy at times and I had to use trees to haul myself up a cou­ple of times. There are a num­ber of rocky ledges on the upper parts of Whiteface that afford some spec­tac­u­lar views of the region. I could see Washington at a few points and that’s an impres­sive look­ing moun­tain (well, not just look­ing if you know any­thing about it). Eventually I reached the south­ern sum­mit of Whiteface, which has a great view south and is mostly just a rock face (prob­a­bly where the moun­tain name comes from). From there I pro­ceeded across the real sum­mit and over to Passaconoway. I started up the last bit of Passaconoway at about 4:30p and then stopped at Camp Rich (just a snow cov­ered tentsite) at about 5:00p. I dropped anchor, so to speak, and hopped in my sleep­ing bag for a long night. I’m not quite sure why but I wasn’t able to sleep and at around 2:00a I decided to go on. It was a full moon so there was plenty of light to go by, and I had a flash­light for the hard bits. I fin­ished up Passaconoway, which has a pretty dis­ap­point­ing sum­mit, and headed down. I made it back to the car by 5:20a, an hour before sun­rise, and then got home just a lit­tle after 8:00a.

I would rate Whiteface as pretty good with some fun scram­bles and some great views. Passaconoway would likely get a rat­ing of not really that great unless you just want to hike in the woods uphill. Also, hik­ing by moon­light is really quite nice.

That’s two four-thousand-footers down and forty-six to go.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2004 at 9:19 am and is filed under mountains. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.