An Overnight Adventure in the White Mountains
I was a bit to optimistic when I thought the title of this post would be "The White Mountains Hut to Hut Traverse." ... the original plan. Anyways, below is the story of my adventure this past weekend complete with some things I learned and need take into account before tackling something like this again.
The hut traverse is a 46 mile route with 16,000' climbing through the White Mountains of New Hampshire that visits all 8 of the Appalachian Mountain club huts. Since these huts are a ways from any road crossings, the route ends up really being 51.3 miles with 19,500' climbing.
My plan was to start at the east end (Carter Notch) and work my way back to the West Side (Lonesome Lake). I booked a campsite at the Dolly Copp campground for Amy and Neil for Friday night, where I would start from, and if all went to plan, I would meet them at the Old Bridle path trail head at 2pm Saturday where they would join me for the 1.5 mile hike to Lonesome Lake.
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| Crossing the Peabody River |
After exiting the campground, we used the Great Gulf Link trail to Great Gulf trail to cross the river back to rt 16. About 1/2 mile later, we took the Nineteen Mile Brook trail the 3.8 miles (with 1,900' climbing) up to the Carter Notch Hut. While the temps had cooled a bit (down to the upper 70s from in the 90s earlier in the day), the humidity had gone up to nearly 100% and we were immediate dripping wet.
We arrived at the hut just past 10pm, re-filled our water, had a snack, and started blitzing back down the trail. We dubbed this section "the warmup" even thought we were already 6 miles / 2000' climbing in (1 hour 41 minutes). This may have been the first inclination that I had over committed just a bit as we were finally getting really started now.
The descent back down to 16 from Carter Notch went pretty well. The first mile was fairly technical and a bit slow, but we got a good groove going. We also weren't struggling at all with the dark which definately helped. Just under 52 minutes later we were back on 16 and headed back to the Great Gulf Trail.
As we reached the junction of Great Gulf / Great Gulf link, we chuckled briefly noting we had been there just over 2.5 hours earlier. This was the first bail out point and a bail out wasn't even on our minds.
The next couple of miles were fairly insignificant. We did a mixture of running and fast hiking with nothing too technical. At mile 13.2, we reached the junction of Great Gulf, Madison Gulf, and Osgood cutoff. In my research, I read that Madison Gulf is hard to follow, technical, and all around pretty hard, but it lops off a few hundred feet of climbing as it avoids going over the summit of Madison and is the most direct way to the hut. In one video, a woman working at the Madison hut advised against taking it saying "it simply isn't worth it." Still, I was chasing the dangling carrot of less climbing and took it anyways. Boy was this a bad decision.
- We immediately got lost and wasted over 10 minutes trying to find the trail.
- The trail kept crossing back and forth over a couple of streams and every time it cross, we struggled to find the trail again
- It was fairly technical in the lower sections even when our climbing rate was low, which just made it slow going.
Eventually, we reached the real climb which was an all our scramble (1200' mile) before we reached the
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| Madison Hut |
From here, we stayed on the Gulf Side trail, skipping the summits of Adam's and Jefferson, hoping that would help with time. This is the third time I have been in the Northern Presidential's and there really is no easy way through. The whole place is just a giant boulder field. Additionally, trying to site cairns by headlamp made it even slower going.
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| Southwest side of Adams. Pic compliment of Keith |
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| Jefferson Sunrise Pic compliments of Keith |
By 4am, the fatigue was really setting in (I had been up for 22 hours). I have never actually fully pushed through the night before. I've run two, 100 mile races in the past, but both times missed the sunrise (finished before it in the first one and took a nap and slept through it in the second). Sleep deprivation was something I have yet to master. By 4:50 the sun started to show a hint of it's glow behind us. We took a short break to take it in.
By 5:20, we were able to shut off our head lamps. Shortly there after we reached the crossing of the Cog Railway. Knowing it was not yet running this early on Saturday morning, we snapped a quick picture while crossing.Being over 3 hours behind pace, we decided it was time to officially pull an audible and took Davis Path to S Side trail to Tuckerman's crossover to Tuckerman's Ravine trail towards Pinkham Notch. We were over 22 miles in and frankly just ready to be done.
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| The Cog Pic compliments of Keith |
The decent down Tuckerman's was both really hard and absolutely beautiful. Last time I had hiked here was on my 30th birthday, before I even had an inclination to run an ultramarathon. We were treated with clear weather that had not yet heated the place up for the day.
As you can imagine, I have a lot of friends that like to get out in nature. A handful of them, including myself, have been to the Grand Canyon in the past year, and speak of the beauty of its vast landscape. For anyone that shares that deep appreciation, you really need to see Tuckerman's ravine on clear day. As we watched a stream falling hundreds off feet over rocks, mother nature's power was on full display showing how it can carve a landscape.
We reached the Hermit lake shelter just before 7am and after a quick snack break started our final 2.4 mile descent. It wasn't until this time that we saw another hiker after leaving the campsite nearly 10.5 hours earlier. As we started to pass hikers heading up Washington, we to got the questions that are just fun to answer.
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| Descending the col before Washington Pic compliments of Keith |
"When did you start?" - "8:30pm" - "Nice"
"Where did you start from?" - "Dolly Copp" - "Awesome"
"How far have you gone?" - "Just over 26 miles" - "Wow"
Arriving at Pinkham Notch, we took our packs off and sat down for a break and texted Amy to come pick us up. It was just before 8am and we had our fingers crossed that she would check her messages (which required leaving the campsite as she didn't have reception). At 9am, we decided we mind as well run the 6 miles back to the campsite.
After a 50 minute slog down rt 16, we made it back to the campsite completing our run. A good nights work or as David Roche would say, "a life-affirming, beautiful, stupidly brilliant, shitshow."
-- 31.72 miles -- 8,025' climbing -- 9:34:16 moving time (12:21 elapsed) -- 18:06 / mile --
What I learned (or re-learned)
1. If someone familiar with a trail says "Don't take that trail." Don't take that trail.
2. Trying to do the hut traverse while doing my first full push through the night was not a great idea.
3. Never underestimate the northern presidential range.
4. Moving in the dark is just slower, no matter what.
5. Be a bit more pessimistic with planned paces.
Glad to get the experience of this run in and super thankful that Keith was able to accompany as I probably would have called it much earlier. I'll be back to do this one again even if I decide to do it with an overnight in the middle.
Scot
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| I'll be back Pic compliments of Keith |
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