Between Cloud Layers on Moriah, 3/16/2012

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BIGEarl

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Location
Nashua, NH
March 16, 2012: Moriah

Trails: Stony Brook Trail, Carter-Moriah Trail

Summits: Moriah

Hikers: Trail Trotter (Sue) and me



Early in the week Sue knew I had been spending a lot of time with the various weather forecasting sites I use in hike planning and asked how things looked for the weekend. My response was:

“The forecast for Friday is good enough for Moriah and the forecast for Saturday is terrific for anything.”

With that we made our selection for the weekend targets.

Before leaving to drive to the mountains I made the rounds and printed out the forecasts and graphs from my favorite sites; with a three-hour drive we can discuss any details along the way. We arrived at the trailhead in a light rain. One of the forecast sites was predicting the precipitation to stop by early morning and not restart until late afternoon. We waited at the trailhead for a while and the rain stopped. That was our sign to get hiking. We grabbed our things and set off.

The bridge over Stony Brook was glazed with ice and wet. We really needed to be careful just getting to the other side and down the few steps to the trail. The trail was wet ice and really slippery. Out came the MicroSpikes and they stayed on until we returned to the bridge on the way out. With the traction problem taken care of we headed for Moriah.

The trail is pretty solid as long as you stay on the tread way. Drift a little left or right and expect to posthole. Higher elevations means deeper postholes. Other than this basic rule for the hike we were able to make good progress through the hike. The stream crossings were all easy. The streams are open but not running very high at all. Rock-hop crossings on the large crossing down low (Sue used one crossing place and I used another) are very easy.

We made pretty good time to the upper crossing of Stony Brook and got into the steeper sections leading to the junction with Carter-Moriah Trail. Even though I like the benefits of the televators on my MSRs, I continued with the MicroSpikes and we climbed to the ridge. For most of the distance since the trailhead we have been hiking in gray but relatively open conditions. As we climbed toward the ridge everything closed in and we had visibility limited to 100 to 200 feet; we climbed into the low-hanging clouds. Stony Brook Trail is sheltered and we weren’t missing out on any views; we were enjoying very high humidity but it wasn’t raining. A couple hundred feet below the ridge the temperature seemed to drop, and the wind picked up. We knew uncomfortable conditions were waiting on the ridge. As we made our way up the final steep pitch to the Carter-Moriah Trail visibility opened up and we could see the trees above doing a lot of dancing. The trees were also loaded with snow and ice. The wind was coming strong from the east. The thick conifers offered great protection from the wind. We reached the trail junction and headed for the ledges.

When we stepped onto the first section of open ledge we found ourselves between cloud layers with solid overcast above and broken undercast below. The views were really interesting. Also, the trees were all loaded with rime that I assume had developed overnight and in the previous few hours. I was looking forward to climbing into more interesting icing conditions.

We stopped at various open ledges along the climb for pictures and to enjoy the views. As we climbed the conditions changed. One of the changes we noticed was temperature; with higher elevation the temperature seemed to get warmer. Before we were half-way through the upper climb the trees were again clear of all ice and snow, and the wind had become calm. We still had some really nice undercast views.

We reached the top of the climb with our MicroSpikes providing adequate traction for the icing conditions we encountered. All we had left was a short walk across to the actual high point and a small final climb. By the time we reached the summit clouds blew in and the terrific undercast views were gone. We got our summit pictures and u-turned for our exit. Somewhere between the top of Stony Brook Trail and the top of Moriah a light rain shower started but never became significant. Sue pulled out her pack cover first and before heading down from the summit area I pulled out mine. I was thinking this could get interesting before we make it back to the trailhead, or it could stop after we give up some elevation.

We started our exit hike. As we approached the ridge and the junction with Stony Brook Trail the air was cold and the trees were still iced up. I don’t understand it. We started down from the ridge on Stony Brook Trail and as hoped, once we gave up some elevation the precipitation stopped. It seems we were on the line separating bad weather from really bad weather. We were again hiking in limited visibility with a mission to reach the trailhead before the forecasted afternoon rain starts.

The hike out went quickly and we managed to reach the trailhead before anything bad happened with the weather. That’s the good news. The bad news is as soon as Sue opened the truck tailgate the rain started. We only needed a few minutes, ten would have been plenty. We tossed our things into the back of the truck and tossed ourselves into the front. With the engine running we waited for the defroster to start doing its job.

It wasn’t a blue bird day but everything went well and I think we probably didn’t come out any wetter than usual. The upper portion of this hike has nice views to enjoy and this time through we got some pretty special ones.


:)


I’ve posted some pictures from the day.


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:)
 
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