What was your toughest winter summit?

Couchy-no doubt in my mind. I postholed the postholes.

Mansfield, yesterday!

Turning back from near the summit is, I have decided, a wonderfully virtuous thing.

I attempted Mansfield yesterday, solo. I've never been up there. Seemed like a perfect day: The forecast was for warming from the -15 in the early AM, and the winds were moderate. Just a little fresh snow. Until the ridge, that is. Then the drifts completely obscured whatever evidence of trail there might be. I struggled up to just below the chin, wading through the hip deep snow. The summit was just .2 miles away, and it was so obviously so nicely encusted with ice, which seemed like another bad idea now that I was so close. It was turn around time, which I honored without a second thought. I bowed to the mountain and turned back. I'll be back.

I have to add, all of these posts with the 1/8 mile per hour forward speeds made me feel even better.

happy holidays

Cliff

Cliff on 1/27/01. We had a big, strong group and expected to make the summit in short order from Upper Works and Flowed Lands. It didn't work out that way. We had heard of people climbing Cliff this way and getting back to their cars well before dark, and we were confident. But conditions were horrendous. The snow was deep but unconsolidated. There hadn't been a thaw yet that winter for the snow to harden up and provide a base. We floundered in deep snow through the thick blowdown and kept falling into spruce holes and hidden holes between the blowdown. Some of the holes required many minutes to extricate from, delaying the whole group. It was extremely tiring and somewhat dangerous. It took us 5.5 hours from Flowed Lands to the summit ridge, and we nearly turned back before I spotted the canister stcking out of the snow at 3:30 p.m. We got back to Flowed Lands at 6:00 and Upper Works at 8:00. One guy in the group was climbing his first winter high peak and I don't know if he ever did another!

Mt. Washington - March, 1997. As I recall, it was -18F at the bottom of the cone. Didn't checkit at the summit. Winds 40-50 mph and occasionally more. This was my first winter hiking experience, and all I had was my normal ski wear - cotton sweatshirt, standard nylon ski jacket, etc. - and two layers of socks with SUMMER hiking boots. Thank God for these little chemical heat packs. I must have had a dozen of those things stashed in my clothes, and eventually by boots. Ended up getting very minor frostbite on my cheek at a small gap between my goggles and face mask. Was never so glad to get back to the car.

The Baldpates, East and West. Didn't get to East in the winter (back in the mid-80s) until the third try, thanks to ice on the first two attempts.

Probably Santanoni with a hiking partner who was feeling ill. I had to break trail all the way from the parking lot to the summit thru 18" to 24" or more of unconsolidated snow. It was a death march, but I was in tip top condition and the farther we got, the more determined I was to hit the cannister.

Also on the list was a bushwack up Panther over to Couch and back. Perfect day, cold and clear. Not enough water and food intake though, and I ended up back at BP after dark, 90 min after my companions, exhausted, dehydrated and well into hypothermia. They thought I was behind them on the way down, and in reality I was hallucinating, stumbling and falling every other pitch.
Even though we all were in great shape, this is the trip that pointed out the danger of taking things for granted and what would have happened if I had been solo.

Lillian Brook Descent off Dix range , Winter after Hurricane Floyd 2000

I've had some tough ones, but this one sticks out the most in my memory.

My stupid decision to descend Lillian Brook a few months after Floyd.

My buddy Shane and I, climbed Macomb via the slide and camped in the col between S Dix and Macomb. After crawling and doing the usual tricks in horrendous blow down to get to Macomb's slide, you would think I would have learned. The next day after doing S Dix, Hough and E dix, we decided to descend Lillian brook back to the main dix trail.
Big mistake!

With deep snow , no visible trail, darkness setting in, and the horrendous blow down and spruce traps, we made it to the trail 6 hours later. In places, it looked like a bomb had gone off. We hiked the last 5 miles on the main trail in the dark back to Elk Lake, then hugged each other and said, "I'm glad we made it."

We ran out of fuel the night before, and were completely soaked from head to toe. The temps dropped that night into the minus 20's.
There were a few times on the decent when Shane and I looked at each other exhausted, and didn't have to say a word. Hiking almost due west, we watched the sun set and could feel the chill setting in. We knew things could go really bad.

Then we raped the Gas station in Chester I think, of at least a half dozen slow rollers(hotdogs), and bags full of drinks.

That's easy. My last hike up Redfield. Unbeknownst to me my gut had ceased absorbing anything long before we even hit the herd trail. I had been playing very hard core end to end hockey with a gang of teenagers for the previous 5 days, had gotten up at 4 am. etc. Then, we hiked in to Uphill Lean-to from Upper Works with heavy winter packs. I couldn't understand why my ass was dragging so badly but I really, really struggled up what should have been an open and shut hike. You know, 60 seconds of hiking followed by 30 seconds of leaning over your poles soaked in sweat. Not exactly dream vacation stuff. Turned out I had gastroenteritis and spent the night upchucking. That was my hardest hike so far.

Almost done with my winter 46. Half have been tough, half easy.

Toughest single stretch was climbing to the Blake Colvin col in unconsolidated snow from the lake. Pieces of my lungs are still quivering on the ground along that trail!

Carson and Grace in sub-zero conditions with a rolicking descent down the southern waterfalls off Grace was quite the scream.

Dix to Hough and back over Dix was pretty brutal. Actually broke through the ice on the Boquet and filled our water bottles to ward off dehydration without treatment ... and no ill effects.

Donaldson on opening day last year, Couchy and Panther, breaking trail in wet snow to Marshall, the long slog of Allen.

Only 4 trailed peaks left ... And I'll be cherry picking the weather for them, and bringing along the suntan lotion!

Adams + Madison same day

There may have been some weather related issues with this trip, but it had to be Madison attempt via Lowe's Path over Adams ect.

Fogged up googles resulted in my eyes being pelted with wind blown sleet (70mph+ gust on Mt. Washington that day) + heavy fog allowing limited visiblity. Apon arrving at the base of the summit cone of Madison I looked up and it seemed the mountain vanished in the heavy fog and sleet. From that day on I will only believe there is one less 4000 footer in NH!


Here are the pics - Adams/Madison Trip (Gray Knob)

When it comes to the Winter ADK's, which was the hardest, I had to say, "All of Them." Because they all can/are darn tough !!!

Madison, Thanksgiving weekend, 2004

It wasn't technically winter yet, but with 100+ mph gusts on the summit, and 0 degree temps, it might as well have been. Scary as heck, but my friend and I tagged the peak, and quickly (and veeeeeery carefully) got the heck off.

Cannon 2/04. Actually bagging the summit wasn't that hard at all. We were foolhardy enough to think we could do the Kinsmans in the same day and after the summit of Cannon headed off over the cannon balls with fresh snow (knee deep in spots) falling. For some reason that hike just took it out of me. When we hit Fishin' Jimmy, we headed down.