Hiked August 23, 2008 by Tim & Valerie via Valley Way, the AT (Gulfside and Osgood), and a bit of Air Line trail
We parked the car at the Appalachia parking lot and headed up the Valley Way trail about 8:15AM. The first two miles were really nice walking. This part will be a pleasure on the downhill half of the trip too. It's always nice to have good trail near the end. The next 1.7 miles took us a lot longer, as the trail became more rocky. It was a long walk before we got out of the trees. Tim told Valerie repeatedly throughout the day that we should have come up the Air Line instead of Valley Way. The views would have been a better distraction than just continuing up through the canopied valley. Valerie, on the other hand, always wants to increase the odds of success on our first trip up any new mountain - thus, we plan for the route most traveled on our first trip. Since we plan to hike all the mountains repeatedly over the next couple decades, we will eventually hit all the trails. Finally, *finally*, the trees started shrinking and we got our first look at the mountains (and back towards Berlin).
The Madison Spring hut was just a couple minutes away, and soon we saw our path to Mt Adams. As you can see, it was a perfect day! In fact, Mount Washington blew away it's previous record high temperature for the day. It had been 63 degrees, and they reached 67 on this day. It felt like 80 while we were walking. We even stopped at the hut and put on sunscreen.
We met a nice young woman at the intersection of Air Line and Gulfside trails. She had just come up the King Ravine trail and was traveling alone. Tim chatted with her as we made the final ascent of Mt Adams. Valerie listened, but needed to concentrate on her feet too much to hold a real conversation. It was just a little over a mile from the hut to the summit, but took us more than an hour.
The summit was abuzz with BUGS. All the hikers were calling them "Adams Bugs". There were actually several different varieties - flying ant-looking things, some sort of small bee, and others. They were only within a few yards of the actual summit. They seemed especially fond of Valerie's yellow shirt. Obviously, the views were glorious.
Soon we were on our way down, which was - surprisingly - easier than up.
And then it was UP again as we headed up Madison. Madison was only half as far and half as high from the hut as Adams, so it seemed easy by comparison. Also, it felt like the rocks were more stable and grippy. That must be ridiculous, since the two mountains sit right next to each other, but that was our perception. Views from Madison were fantastic (again).
Overall, we hiked a lot slower than we thought we would, and thus longer into the day. As we met each milestone along the way, Tim was re-estimating our arrival time back at the car. In reality, it was just about 6PM when we reached the car. It was a long day but incredibly rewarding.