John's Adventures

In the first week of September I went up to New Hampshire to hike for 3 days in the Presidentail Range. My friend Ben came with me on this trip. We both flew from Baltimore to Manchester, NH and then drove up to North Conway. Parts of this trip were paid for using my loyalty programs. I travel a lot for work so the hotel room on the first and last nights were free curtesy of Holiday Inn, and the rental car was reduced by $200 curtesy of American Express.

We hiked up the Crawford Path and then over to the Mitzpah Springs Hut on the first day. We had reservations at the hut so we dropped the heavy packs and then hiked over to Mt. Jackson. The next day we hiked north along the ridge visiting Mt. Pierce, Eisenhower, Franklin, and Monroe before arriving at the Lakes of the Clouds Hut.

The weather was deteriorating throughout the day and it was supposed to be worse the next day so we left the heavy packs at the hut and hiked to the summit of Mt. Washington. The summit was completely surrounded by clouds and the wind gusts were in 50 mile per hour range. Nasty up there, but at least it wasn't raining.

The next morning we woke up to worse weather at the hut. We already had plans to hike down to Mt. Eisenhower and then down to the car we had parked at the end of the Edmands Path. We started off hiking through rain, fog, and high winds. We were making good time though.

Ben took a picture of me that day. I usaully wear my shorts 360 days a year. In this picture, I'm wearing full length long pants with a rain/wind proof shell, a rain/wind proof jacket, and a wool hat. I considered wearing gloves too, but talked myself out of it. Anyway, it got a lot warmer when we reached the tree line and not much later I was removing the outer layers.

The rest of the hike was uneventful, and we made it down to the Muddy Moose in North Conway for cheeseburgers!