Jewell trail to Mts. Clay & Washington

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Dana

Member
Joined
Sep 3, 2003
Messages
188
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11
Location
usually somewhere in Harriman...
Did this trip with my two twentysomething daughters and the younger daughter’s boyfriend Andy, who hails from New Zealand. The younger girl isn’t a real strong hiker, and the Jewell trail is one of the best “bang for the buck” approaches to Mt. Washington.

Arrived at the trailhead right at sunset on Saturday. (Hint: Don’t plan on getting the parking permit at the last location on the road; the Bretton Woods Irving was out of permits, so we had to drive back to Twin Mountain to get the permit.) Our usual plan is to have dinner on the road, then hike a short distance in the dark and find a place to crash, thus being already in the woods and getting an early start the next day. We parked at the Ammonoosuc Ravine trailhead, since the bridge near the cog railway base was washed out from Irene and the spur trail was closed. Lots of roads in the area were still closed but we had no problems getting in on 302 from 91.

We hiked up to the junction with the closed spur trail, passing several hikers coming out after dark. The trail is in good shape with a small amount of mud in the lower portions. One said there was a good campsite near the river crossing just past the spur trail, but we didn’t see anything good in the dark, so we went back and went a short distance down the closed trail past the barricade, and set up camp there… wouldn’t normally camp as close to the trail as we did but we figured it was closed so there would be nobody passing by. Wrong, around midnight two people came up the trail, they didn’t reply to my hello, just kept clumping along. In the morning two more came by just as we were leaving; they said the bridge was indeed damaged but they were able to cross it anyway.

Sunday morning we took it easy and reached treeline around noon, encountering lots of people along the trail. There are two good campsites just below treeline; one right next to the trail (well maybe it’s not that good) and a much better one farther back on the other side, where we dropped our packs. After lunch we continued on up to the Gulfside Trail onto Mt. Clay to get water from the spring (which is running well, and well marked).

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The weather was good but Mt. Washington was still mostly in the clouds. From this point I headed back down to the campsite with one daughter, while the other two continued to the top of Mt. Clay, being rewarded with spectacular views in all directions.

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Around this time Mt. Washington cleared and we encountered numerous hikers on the way down who were bummed, having seeing nothing from the summit, only to have it clear after they’d left. We got back to the campsite, the others arrived a bit later, dinner and crash. Lots of good hammock trees, which my older daughter prefers to sleeping on the ground.

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Monday dawned foggy, but as the forecast for Mt. Washington was “in and out of the clouds”, we headed back up; the first part was the same as yesterday’s climb to Clay. It was actually nice; the fog kept it cool and the reduced visibility made it a different hike. Visibility was sometimes less than 50 feet. Where the trail passes close to the cog railway we heard it pass by but only got the briefest glimpse of the locomotive coming out of the fog and then back in again, very spooky. We started to get very brief glances at the valley through short breaks in the clouds, but we were within 50’ of the summit before we got a tiny glimpse of one of the towers on the summit.

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At the top, strange scene for a mountaintop as cars, people, and a cafeteria / gift shop seem out of place in a place like that, but the hot soup they sell was VERY welcome on that chilly, windy, damp day. We hung out there for a couple of hours as the clouds gradually cleared; we never got a full 360° view but we did get great views in all directions at different times. Andy wanted to do the virtual geocache which requires getting in one of the summit webcam pictures, so we did that:

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By the time we got about 200’ below the summit on the way down, we were completely out of the clouds and we had beautiful views all the way down.

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We deviated a bit, took the Nelson Crag trail down from the summit until it crossed the railway, then followed the gravel road along the railway...

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...down to the Westside trail, which brought us back to the way we came up. Another night at the same campsite… at 9:30 pm the full moon was so bright that we got out of our sleeping bags and climbed back up to treeline and hung out there for a half hour or so, while my daughter played with time exposures:

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We slept late on Tuesday. After breakfast we broke camp and headed on down, still good weather. Arrived at the car around noon. As it was quite warm by then I filled my water bottles with the cold water from the last stream and poured them over my head when we got back to the parking lot, ahhhh… a cold celebratory beverage and then we hit the road.

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Burgers and local beer at the Oasis in Littleton, then the drive back to Connecticut.
 
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