Hiked by: Tim and Valerie on September 9, 2006 - via the Edmand's Path
Conditions: Driving up I-93 from Ashland, we followed a RAV4 with the license plate "PKBAGGR" and also a Toyota Tundra with a VFTT (Views From The Top) sticker on it. You can tell there will be a lot of people in the woods today!!
Started hiking from the Edmand's Path parking lot at 9am. Beautiful trail - started out flat for quite a while. Still, 2.9 miles without any real milestones is a long walk. At the 2-hour mark, we caught a glimpse through the trees of a mountain we thought might be our destination. As it turned out, that mountain was just a bump on the side of Mt Franklin. Not even a PEAK!
Took a snack break right before we broke out at treeline. In order to get to the ridge, it's necessary to walk across a debris field from an earlier avalanche. You look up the mountain, all you see are boulders piled en-masse - from softball-sized to sofa-sized. Look down, same thing. It's like crossing a river. We tiptoed across, then we could see the signpost at the intersection with the Crawford Path (AT).
At the junction, we started up the last 0.3-0.4 miles to the top of Mt Eisenhower. We were totally above treeline and could see miles in all directions. there were a lot of people around at this time - coming from Mt Franklin, Edmand's Path and Mt Pierce. We got to the top just as the members of Darwin's Team started setting up the flag. Quite a difficult feat in the high winds! They managed to get the lines tied down very tightly to the surrounding rocks. The wind blew hard, but the pole didn't waver.
We ate some lunch and then used the binoculars to scope out the other peaks - we could see the flags on Mts Jackson and Pierce. Couldn't find them on the other "close" mountains. A big black cloud sat over Mts Monroe and Washington for the entire time that we were on the summit, so no flag viewing there either.
The trip down was slow, as usual. We met up with a young man who had been planning a cross-Presidential hike, but had hurt his knee on Eisenhower. We walked with him and chatted about mountains and working with I.T. personnel in Bangalore. He'd actually been there on business.
Soon, the rain that had been threatening all day starting pouring down. As amazing as it is, this was the first time that Valerie had ever had to hike in the rain in the Adirondacks or NH. It was only 15 minutes to the car, and the rain stopped while we were packing up. Driving out to Rt 302, it was obvious that people in the valley were enjoying a really sunny day with no sign any rain had fallen at all.
Stats: 6.6 miles RT, 5 hrs 15 mins with a long stay at the top