Mt. Pierce Jan. 24th

[max]

Carole and I had a brisk but enjoyable day doing this relatively easy climb from Crawford Notch on Saturday morning. Neither of us had a thermometer, but best guess was around -10 or so at the parking lot when we left at 8:00 AM. For the most part, enough traffic had been on the Crawford Path that one could bare-boot it to the summit. Carole put on her snowshoes early, but I waited for the last 1/2 mile and for some of the windblown drifts to get larger before strapping mine on. It actually seemed a relatively calm day, but that would shortly be dispelled. About 20 minutes before treeline, we ran into the campsite where a couple of guys had spent the night (brrr....). We put on our wind protection just before the final trail junction...good thing too. The increased wind on the last exposed section was more than we would have believed from down lower in the trees. Visibility was a couple hundred yards, and the last scramble to the summit over hard ice and jumbled rocks took a bit of care.

We simply reversed our route on the way down, deciding not to go to Eisenhower (our original plan) due to the high winds, cold temps and limited visibility. We met several people ascending and noticed a few cases of frostbite developing on some of them. Having much exposed skin was not a good idea!

A few pictures can be seen here, just open the album for Mt. Pierce. And yes we were as chilly as we look!

Max

 

[donna]

Pierce

Sounds like a fun trip. The pictures are awesome. I'll be hiking Pierce in the next couple of weeks. I hope all that snow is still there... love that look.

 

[sp1936]

Nice trip. You had more guts than me, hiking up into that wind. I was over in the Great Gulf on that day, enjoying the bright sunshine and the protection from the wind. Temps were just as low, though.

Steve

 

[MichaelJ]

Great pix! Sorry to see you didn't have any better views than we did back on 1/1.

But looking at the cairn and the surrounding scrub, the snow is a *LOT* deeper. Sli ... would you agree?

 

[max]

Yes it sure was drifted on the summit Michael. I had been there in October and had stood at the summit cairn, but this past weekend I thought for a moment that it looked like the scrub area off to the west was higher ground. Silly me, it was only the heavy drifts that made it appear that way. At least I didn't wander out that way looking for a higher spot.