This is more than just a trip report. It's a whole weekend report!
We started on Friday, June 25, around noon. We left our house in Ashland and headed up I-93. With a couple short stops for supplies, we arrived at Moose Brook about 2pm. The day was *gorgeous* with clear skies and very low humidity. We set up camp and took a short swim at the "pool".
We left around 4:30 to head down to North Conway to register. It was a long drive and Rt 16 was a parking lot as we approached the town. We got to the Eastern Slope Inn and headed inside, finally. Immediately, we were greeted by Kevin (KDTalbot), Rex (Rockin' Rex) and his son, Madison. We also ran into Melissa (Rudabaga) whom we hiked with last year. We registered, spent a few minutes chatting with folks, then needed to head back up Rt 16. Debi, Larry and the kids were expected around 7pm.
When they arrived, the kids spread out a tarp and immediately started working on dessert - mint chocolate chip ice cream. The adults got the tents set up. We had a nice dinner of hot dogs/sausages, corn-on-the-cob, couscous, and of course the ice cream. Rex, Madison and Erich (BlueDog) stopped by and we talked hiking while the kids played.
We were up early - by 5AM. We organized ourselves, ate breakfast and then we (Debi, Tim and Valerie) headed to Pinkham Notch Visitor Center. We started hiking at 7AM. It was a gorgeous morning! The streams were running very full due to all the rain we've had recently. We stayed on the Tuckerman Ravine Trail for the first two miles. It's a wide trail with lots of people, always.
After the 2-mile mark, we turned off onto Lion's Head trail. We met very few people on this trail, but we did run into Brad, Charlie and Corey. Brad and Charlie are on the forum, and we met Brad last year on the very same trail! The Lion's Head trail is a lot steeper and a lot more work than we'd expended thus far. Some parts require some rock scrambling and there's one place that has a ladder.
Soon, we were moving above treeline... We could see our first objective, the top of Lion's Head.
We got our first look into Tuckerman Ravine, and Tim pointed out some landmarks to Debi. We made the push to the top of Lion's Head.
From the top of Lion's Head, we had a great view into Tuckerman Ravine and a stiff breeze!
We crossed the Alpine Garden and continued up to the intersection with Tuckerman Ravine trail. At that point, we met up with Rex and Madison. Madison (age 8?) was doing great and they soon were disappearing out of sight ahead of us. The "Rockpile" was difficult, as usual, but we were happy to finally see the headlights and grills of the cars in the parking lot!
We took our summit shot, ate lunch, changed our clothes and had an abbreviated tour of the observatory. No sign of Marty, but three types of cookies to try!
As we started down the stairs, we heard "Hey, are you Tim?". We turned to meet a couple, Armando and Christine (NJGail11), from New Jersey who were in NH on vacation. Armando said that he read our web site regularly and that he thought he might see us while they were on Mount Washington. We couldn't believe the luck of actually running into them just as we were about to head off the summit. And Armando RECOGNIZED US from our pictures on the web! They were very generous in their praise of our trip reports. We were humbled that anyone actually reads these reports!!
During the trip down, we tried to take pictures in both directions so that everyone could get a feel for the walking.
At the base of Tuckerman Ravine, we found the remains of the snow arch. Everyone on the forum had hoped that the snow arch would last until Seek-the-Peak, but it apparently fell a few days earlier. It was still amazing to see so much snow on July 26.
From this point down, we took less pictures and just headed out. One quick stop at Hermit Lake Shelter, where we chatted with Shelley (Storygirll) then on to PNVC to get OUT OF THOSE BOOTS.
At the Seek-the-Peak dinner, we sat at the table for Mount Washington Observatory forum members and enjoyed a great dinner. Scot, the MWO executive director (fifteendays), gave a great speech and then lots of door prizes. We met more new friends like Steve (WSR88D), Joe (CaffeineAddict) and Mark (MTruman).
That night, we had some family time around the fire while the kids told us about their day. They had spent some time on the Valley Way and Brookside trails at the base of Mt Adams (Appalachia parking lot) - photographing waterfalls. Then they had come to the summit to meet us, but had missed us by a few minutes unfortunately. Lastly, they got to go swimming at the "pool" at Moose Brook. They were as exhausted as we were by the end of the day, but we made some s'mores around the campfire. They (and Debi) were ready for bed before 8:30PM. Tim & Val had intended to go over to Kevin's after-party at that point, but the thunder and lightning started in earnest, and we starting picking up camp in preparation for a thunderstorm. It was a bad one, and we ended up just going into our tent and hanging out there until we went to bed. Tim had to dig some trenches around one side of the tent, in the pouring rain, to keep the water from flowing directly into our vestibule. We worried about the kids in their little two-man tent by themselves, with just an incredible amount of lightning and thunder around us for probably an hour.
The next morning, we were looking for something to "stretch our legs" but not a summit. We decided to walk into Carter Notch Hut via 19-Mile Brook Trail (3.8 miles each way, about 2000 feet of elevation gain). OK, this might have been too much for the day after STP. Or maybe it was just the humidity, mud, and bugs. Either way, this trail beat at least one of us up emotionally.
The ponds at the hut were beautiful, and the surrounding mountains were really impressive. We chatted for half an hour at the hut with a Southbound thru-hiker who had great things to say about NH but not much good to say about Maine trails. We also worked to keep the naked sunbather out of our pictures at the pond.