Photo Friday: Hitting the High Points

At some point in our recent wanderings I realized we'd hit the high points in three states--the literal high points, as in the highest peaks.

I wrote about climbing Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park a couple of weeks ago. It's not absolutely the highest point in Nevada, but it is the highest peak entirely within the state (the high point of Nevada is Boundary Peak, and the border with California runs right over the summit of that one). So I'm calling that my first state high point.

A week or so later, we were backpacking in the Presidential Range in New Hampshire and I had the realization that it would be only a little farther, and a lot less descending (though it would be a bunch more climbing, that was less daunting to either of us than climbing back down the very steep and rough trails we'd climbed to our hut) to go to the summit of Mt. Washington. Since only one of us could do that, I descended to the car and drove up Mt. Washington to pick up my husband. As a veteran mountain driver, I wasn't all that impressed with the hype about the scary road, but the views from the summit were great.
 

On the summit of Mt. Adams, with Mt. Washington behind my husband.

From the summit of Mt. Washington I could see back to Mts. Adams (left) and Madison where we'd been the day before. You could also see the two easy ways to get to the summit--the road and the cog railway.

I like trains, and the cog rail is pretty cool. Each car has an engine that pushes it up the mountain, literally on a cogged track to keep it from slipping backwards (or from running out of control when descending). Tourists were pouring off the train cars to stand in line to take their pictures with the summit sign. We passed on that rite.

Another week later, we hit our third and most challenging high point: Mt. Katahdin in Maine. We started from the Roaring Brook campground at first light, pretty much (6:30 a.m.), and took on arguably the most challenging route: the Helon Taylor trail to the "Knife edge" with a return via the Cathedral Trail to Chimney Pond (more on that later).

Starting out early but with good weather--blue skies reflected in a stream crossing a mile up the mountain.

 A light overcast came and went, muting the fall colors (which were a bit short of their peak in any case). In the distance is Traveler Mountain, which we climbed last year.

 

Our route will follow the ridge on the left and up. The actual summit is one of the lower-looking bumps to the right, I think.

Doesn't look too bad

I find I didn't take many photos of the "interesting" bits. My husband got a few of me scaling things that made me a bit uncomfortable, but for the most part, despite the intimidating looks, the knife edge wasn't bad.  

Just follow the blue blazes. You can see that it's not that narrow, and it's not vertical on either side. The hard part was just getting over some of the big rock blocks.

Katahdin is a popular climb. It is also the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and with the park closing in 2 weeks from our visit, people were pushing to finish during any window of good weather (like the day we climbed, as opposed to the next day which was cold and wet). They have more cause to celebrate the summit than we do--or to regret the end of a 6-month's journey.

Through-hiker finishing up.

As they say, it ain't over until it's over. We had to get down, and our trail wen right down that middle ridge, mostly over the bump at the end and off the other side. The descent was brutal, and occasionally terrifying. It was fun at first, but before we hit flat(ish) ground and a real trail it had definitely stopped being fun.

Pretty much the universal reaction to our choice of trail down, both by those we met who were going up and by some we spoke to after was, "You came DOWN the Cathedral trail???! No one goes down that." We understood why. 

I don't think we'll be launching a "50 summits" venture anytime soon. But it was fun to check out the high points in a few states, and I'm glad to have climbed Katahdin.

And now... back to writing!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2019

As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Photo Friday: Baldface Mountain, New Hampshire

As we move into November, it's hard to cast my mind back to mid-September, when it was still quite warm, and the trees were mostly still green. It's nice to think about being warm, anyway, as I'm trying now to hone my cycling wardrobe to allow for at least short rides in temperatures down into the 30s!

We spent the night of Sept. 14 at the Basin Pond campground in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, in order to make a very early start on the Bald Mountain Loop, since all the accounts we'd read suggested it was a long and strenuous--and the weather forecast said there'd be rain before the end of the afternoon.

We drove past the trailhead on our way to camp Sunday afternoon, and the cars were parked for quite a ways either side of the lot. But at 7 on Monday morning, we had the place to ourselves.

The sun was up--somewhere. We started our hike under a low layer of clouds.

It took a little looking to find the trail, but we eventually got started in the right direction.

Just over an hour of hiking took us up past the South Baldface hut, and at last to some open views. That also marked the beginning of "the slabs," which reports warned were a fun scramble.

We had hoped to climb above the clouds--and we did.

Turning around revealed the cloud shield below us.

Looking more or less towards Maine, which isn't far off--the hike is very near the border.

I wouldn't much want to do this in the rain, let alone the snow, but on a sunny dry day, the slabs were a lot of fun.

The route was well marked, for the most part, with blue blazes painted on rocks and trees.

As we neared the top, a long line of truly massive cairns over the bald shoulder of the mountain suggested the possibility of white-out conditions where you might need a giant guidepost every 50 feet.

Still going up.

Nearly three hours in, we hit the first, and highest, summit, South Baldface. We had a modest drop and climb to North Baldface, then a descending traverse to the point, behind and to the left of my husband, where we would descend the Bicknell Ridge trail back toward our starting point.

Still enjoying being above the clouds.

We took time for lunch--and to dry our sweat-soaked shirts--atop North Baldface. Even as we enjoyed the sun and food, we kept an eye on the gathering clouds, which never stopped swirling around the summit of Mt. Washington, a ridge to our west.

I don't have a lot to say about the descent. As advertised, it was steep and rough, and exactly the sort of conditions to make my knees very unhappy. But we enjoyed what we saw along the way.

Lichen growing in rings on the rock. In some places, the "colonies" of lichen had covered a dozen square feet or more in these geometric patterns.

This one looked to me like a miniature zen garden.

Leaves had begun turning here and there, and were still a novelty.

I hadn't known that turning color could be so... splotchy.

Halfway down we stopped to enjoy the Eagle Creek Cascades, in a green world.

By the time we reached the Emerald Pool, less than a mile from the trailhead, we'd been on the go for over 7 hours. It took some strength of will to detour a quarter mile or so each way, but it was worth it, for a pool that really was as emerald green as I could imagine.

If anything, it was greener than this.

In case anyone's reading this with a thought to doing the hike (in another season--I wouldn't recommend it at this time of year, though some do manage winter ascents), our stats were about 7.5 hours for the loop, which is about 9 3/4 miles. We are reasonably strong, but not so young any more, and as you can see, easily distracted by photography, so we are on the slower end of times reported by other hikers. On our day, we saw only one, possibly two other parties doing the full loop, and they might have caught us had we not taken the less-used option on the descent (Bicknell Ridge, rather than Eagle Crag and the north side of the loop). We saw two other parties near the end doing short hikes; obviously a weekday after Labor Day turns this often-crowded hike into a chance for some solitude!

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.