Mt. Washington scramble
(New Hampshire)

17 Jul 2004 - by Sid Rao

Trip leader: Mike McKenna; Participants: Sid Rao, Joe, Joe's friend

We stayed overnight at Joe Dodge bunk lodge at Pinkham lodge E of Mt Washington. Plan was to start at 8am and do the Huntington ravine trail to the peak. We started at 9am and headed up the trail its around 4 miles and 4200 ft. This is short and sweet hike and its steep, coupled with unpredictable weather makes this a interesting mountain at 6200' tall.

I needed to practise for Rainier 2 weeks away and was carrying a 50lb pack. Since I've been in East coast 3 months I figured acclimatizing for Rainier would be impossible. I tried to simulate lack of oxygen by wearing a nose plug on this hike. Not sure about the effect of it, I did feel out of breath most of time but not enough to require breaks.

Since it had drizzled a little in the morning and overnight we decided to do Tuckerman ravine instead of the huntington which supposedly has some class 3 sections!

We were moving at a really good pace and the trail is pretty much rock scramble. It was cloudy all through and threatened to rain a few times. Luckily we were on wind shaded side. Trail is well marked and enought people on it. We reached the peak slightly before 1pm. Had a bowl of chili at the restaurant on top. Wind was around 15 mph, mild for this mountain.

After a long break and signs of darkenening clounds I made my way down via Lion head trail, which I had much better views than the trail we went up. Others went to a hut about a mile from the peak.

Will try to do Huntington ravine on another day.


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