The Presidential Picnic

In the world of Fastest Known Time, when you combine a run with a bike it is known as a picnic.  This past Friday, my friends (Mat & Donal) and I took on and completed what is known as the "Presidential Picnic."  This combined a Presidential Traverse, 7 peaks in NH's White Mountains, with a 27 mile bike back to the car.  

My day started with a 4:07 AM alarm.  Mat picked me and my bike up at 4:30 and we reached the AMC Highland Center just before 7:30.  After dropping the bikes and picking up Donal (who wasn't doing the bike leg), we headed up to the Appalachia trail head arriving at 8.  

The Presidential Traverse is a point to point route that covers roughly 18 miles and can be done either North to South or South to North.  At a minimum it covers the 7 presidential peaks (Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Monroe, Eisenhower, and Pierce), but multiple sub peaks (4000' peaks without prominence) and Jackson (Charles Jackson not Andrew) can easily be added. 

For our traverse, we planned to go from North to South, which gets almost all of the climbing in first 10 miles.  We also planned to tack Jackson on the end which gives you 8 of the NH 4000 footers making it 20 miles with 9000' climbing.  

The day started at 8:09 and we optimistically put on sun screen before heading into the woods.  The route is un-relentless from the beginning with 4000' of climbing in the first 3.6 miles.  We took Valley Way to Watson Path and reached the summit of Madison (5367') around 9:45 and were greeted with 55+ MPH winds.  It was challenging to move and even more challenging to stand still.  We had to take our hats off so we didn't loose them.  Less then 12 minutes later, we had descended down to the Madison Springs Hut and were happy to be back on stable ground.  

Top of Madison

After a quick break and water refill, we back at it with our next gnarly climb, Adams (5774' - 2nd highest peak in the Whites) via the Star Lake Trail.  It was 1 mile with a 1000' of gain.  We reached the summit around 10:30 and once again were greeted with crazy winds.  I had always heard you really don't want to be on the high peaks when the wind is over 50 MPH and I am glad the wind wasn't any stronger then it was.  

From Adam's to Jefferson (5712') is roughly 2 miles and includes about an 800' descent and ascent.  We took the Gulfside Trail to the Mnt Jefferson loop and then continued back to the Gulfside trail.  At this point, we were just over 7 miles in with 3:30 elapsed time.  They say the Northern Presidential's is the hard part.  We were eager to get some reprieve from this climbing.  

On a bit of downhill coming on Jefferson, we were able to run some and even get in an 18 minute mile.  As we approached some hikers, I tried to skip by on their left and my foot slipped and I went down on my left shoulder.  Normally this wouldn't have been too bad, but I went over the handle bars on my mountain bike last fall and have a lingering injury.  Even now, a few days later it hurts to lift my arm above my head.  Once my friends realized I was ok to continue, one of them even accused me of embarrassing them in front of the hikers.  All I could do was laugh.   

The Cog

We stayed on the Gulfside Trail all the way up Washington (6288') skipping over the Clay loop.  We waived at those riding the Cog Railway just as it was starting to rain.  With about quarter mile to the top that light rain turned to a torrential downpour, hail, and 40 MPH winds.  They say the weather on Washington is some of worst in the US and it sure didn't disappoint that day.  10 miles and over 7000' of climbing completed thus far.

After a failed attempt at warming up in the visitor's center.  We headed down to the Lake in the Cloud's hut.  Luckily, with rain jackets now on, we were able to warm back up even when descending.  As you may expect, with the dense fog, you could barely make out the lake or the hut until you were on top of them (and you wonder why they call in lake in the clouds).  

Look closely at the sign

Over the past few years as I have gotten more and more into mountain running, I had been reading books to ensure that we are taking important safety precautions.  With the fickle weather up there, you never truly know what you are going to get and having multiple backup plans is essential.  I recently read "The Last Traverse" by Ty Gagne and highly recommend it.  It chronicles a daring rescue on the Franconia Ridge in February of 2008 with all those involved.  On today's route, we each left a copy of the itinerary with our spouses, had rain jackets, hats, gloves, and each had the route on our GPS watches.  Even with that, if the weather had been 15-20 degrees colder we may have had quite a large purchase the gift shop at the top of the mountain (Even so Mat ended up buying a new Winter Hat). 

Next up was Monroe (5384' -- my 1st new peak of the day -- 31) via the Crawford Path, just a half mile past the hut.  With a bit more descending and running in this section we were starting to feel a lot better.  We continued on the Crawford Path past the Franklin Loop and straight to Eisenhower (4780' -- 32), which was only about a 300' climb (fairly easy by today's standards).  

As we were ascending Eisenhower, a woman hiking towards us had the biggest grin you could imagine on her face.  As we stopped to chat for a few, she told us that Monroe was going to be her 48th peak and she was super excited.  Seeing how happy people can be in 30+ MPH rain and fog, can't help but put a smile on your face as well.  When we told her that we started at Applachia, she said "You guys are flying."

We continued to pick up speed en route to Pierce (4310' -- 33) before descending down to our 3rd, and final hut of the day, the Mitzpah Spring Hut.  We were just over 15 miles in, finally back out of the clouds, and had a beautiful view of the Mount Washington Hotel.  

It was already after 3pm and with a 27 mile bike still ahead of us, Mat and I decided to go straight to the Highland Center (Mitzpah Cutoff back to Crawford Path), while Donal chose to go onto Jackson before driving straight home.  

Mat and I finished the traverse around 4:30 with 6 hours and 54 minutes of moving time and were ready to flush out legs out on the bike.

After somewhat quick transition, we headed down RT 302 to Carrol where we would pick up route 3 north.  The first few miles were going great and we were holding a pretty good clip and then lost all our momentum when I had a flat tire.  This wasn't totally unexpected as I was on a road bike I took out of storage and probably hadn't ridden in at least 2 years.   After tire change, were back on our way.  

By 8 miles in I was starting to feel the strain of the long day, but was still able to hold a reasonable pace.  We had short food break with 7 miles to go (just before turning on RT 2) and then were greeted with a 2 mile climb which was a complete grind to get through.  From there was smooth sailing down hill to finish.  We completed the bike leg in 1:48 (15.1 MPH).  

Finish of the Bike

 

-- Total Elapsed Time 10:55 -- Traverse Moving -- 6:54 -- Bike Moving -- 1:48 --

All and all had a great experience on this adventure.  Pleasantly surprised to see how much running we were able to do on the 2nd half of the traverse and while the bike was tough, happy to be able to grind it out.  

Finally made back home at 10:40 PM and already thinking about the next adventure. 

- Scot