I Survived The Whites!

So here I am in Gorham, NH, about 17 miles from the NH/ME border. Just under 300 miles remaining. The whites were undoubtedly my favorite part of the AT so far. The views are spectacular, and I love being above tree-line. It might just be because I was lucky with the weather though. It would not be good to be on exposed ridge line and in a thunder storm.

After my zero in Lincoln, the AT went over the most prominent mountain ranges in the Whites. Franconia Ridge, with mount Lafayette and Lincoln, and later the presidential range, with Mount Washington and a whole bunch of other peaks. For some unknown reason, the AT proper doesn’t summit many of the peaks in the presidentials, so for that section I technically didn’t follow the AT because I wanted to summit each and every one. Call me a blue blazer if you must, but in the end it just made my route more difficult, adding a whole lot more elevation gain and loss.

Like I said earlier, I was extremely fortunate with the weather. Every ridge line I was on I had good weather. I even had clear skies on Mount Washington, which boasts having the worst weather in all of America. I’ll actually go into detail with Mount Washington.

The day prior I did the first half of the presidentials, stopping at lake of the clouds hut. Because it’s the most popular hut, I refer to it as lake of the crowds. Due to bad weather prior, a large bubble of NOBO thru-hikers had formed, so there were about 20 of us there that night. This meant work for stay wasn’t an option, but they let me sleep on the common area floor for $10. Me and a fellow thru-hiker Mogley decided to catch the sunrise on Mount Washington the next morning. That morning I woke up at about 4:15 with a red headlight shining in my face, a little disorienting at first. As quietly as I could I grabbed my pack and walked outside. There were still patches of fog, but at times it cleared and you could see the moon and some stars. It was very beautiful. With my headlamp on we started the ascent. It’s 1.5 miles and a 1000 ft elevation gain from the hut, so close but not immediate. Unfortunately we were too late for the initial sun rise, but it wouldn’t have made a difference because it was still foggy at the time. That’s when we did our summit photos. Luckily by about 5:45 the fog cleared and we got some spectacular views. Unlike what I’d expect, the summit of Mount Washington is quite developed. A weather station is staffed year round by meteorologists and there’s even a cafe and museum. Not to mention a gift shop, post office, and parking lot. Yes, you can drive to the summit, or if that’s too much work you can take a train… Due to the train and road, Mount Washington sees lots of visitors. Especially on a day with such good weather as we had. For this reason I decided just to stick around until the snack bar opened and then make my way down. I timed my descent perfectly. There are many thru-hiker traditions. Jumping off the James River foot bridge in VA, hike naked day on the solstice, and mooning the cog railway on Mount Washington (the cog is the train that goes to the summit). As a NOBO, you walk away from the summit when you pass the cog, so I figured there would be little chance of getting in trouble. Also, it’s a once in a life time opportunity. How many times will you get the chance to show your ass to a bunch of tourists as they’re pulled up the side of a mountain at 5 mph? I thought it was comedic, maybe I’m the only one.

Again, so much happened that I just don’t have time to write about it all, so I’ll just attach a bunch of photos and share the beauty of the whites.

-Orion