Mt. Adams: NYE Day 2014

This is the next adventure in my series of "catching up" to current events.  Last winter, Eliot and I decided to try our hand at a winter hike up Old Speck in western Maine.  And an arctic adventure it certainly was.

I read somewhere on a mountaineering blog that there are two types of fun.  First degree fun is the kind of fun that most people would consider fun (perhaps a party to see friends, or maybe going to the beach). Second degree fun is usually miserable during but fun after the fact.  It's one of those things that you look back on and say "Yeah! That was awesome.  It sucked when we were there, but man, we did it!"  Let's just say that with -20°F at the car, and only getting colder as we ascended, our Old Speck winter hike started as nice first degree fun and quickly became second degree fun as we pushed upward and our digits became closer to what you might call frozen.  A tribute to last year:

Last year on Jan. 1st, 2014 near the Eyebrow & Old Speck Trail junction.

The idea was to make it a tradition and try for it again, since we underestimated the difficulty of our undertaking, and only made it about 3 miles up.  The mileage to the summit is 3.8, and this is a dome-like mountain so we had gained most of our elevation, yet I believe another 0.8 miles up may have killed us.  There were lots of expletives describing the coldness at our turnaround point.  But despite our strong-willed attitude, we thought it best to turn around.  This is the backstory for this year's New Year's hike.

After a night of brainstorming ideas, we eventually decided that a new mountain was in order for this winter.  I admit this was mainly because I was sick of climbing that mountain after having climbed it 3 times this year, and 3 times prior to that as well.  The only trait that makes it worth the climb in our mind was the fire tower on top which allows you to see past the nicely forest-covered summit.  So we broke out the White Mountains map and looked for summits above tree line, since we wanted views.  We decided on Mt. Adams - the highest mountain in the northeast without a road to the top.  Luckily we were in for better temperatures this year, but not by more than 15 or 20 degrees.  Turns out the temps hovered around 0° or less.

We were attempting to make it back into the midcoast area for a Watershed School alumni reunion on Jan 1, 2015, so we pushed our hike back one day, and decided "oh we'll just camp partway up, summit in the morning, and come down with time to spare."  This avoided the problem of having to get up near midnight, drive 4 hours, hike for 10 or so, and drive 4 hours back in one day.  However, we now needed to carry overnight gear.  And to get used to the idea of outdoor camping, I slept outside in my tent the night before.  It went considerably well, considering it was 6°F.  I have a 20° bag, but I also tend to run hot.  Not so with Eliot.  Tends not to run hot, but we thought we could still pull it off, as we planned carefully and had foot/hand-warmers, he had a 0° bag, and several pads between us for maximum insulation.  Below, observe most of my gear laid out on the floor.  I felt sorta like a climber who lays out their gear for insurance purposes...

Craziness.  Hoping not to forget anything important.

So things went as planned in the morning of Dec. 31, 2014.  I drove to Camden to pick up Eliot, we were a tad late once we get things repacked (I was carrying part of his tent in my pack), but nothing horrendous.  After  a miserable battle of heater on/heater off, we found Appalachia along Rt. 2 past Gorham, NH.

Possibly overdressed for hiking...great for standing around.

Also possibly overdressed.

Turns out we didn't need to use snowshoes, as the trail was broken and very firm, but quite icy, so microspikes were required.  Our plan was to go up the Airline Trail, take the cutoff to Valley Way Campsite, and then summit Adams in the morning, and come down Valley Way.

I was equipped with a thermometer, who determined it was a balmy 0°. We set off, and discovered this was nicely opposite from Old Speck in that the trail starts off nice and easy.  Although I knew at this point that we would have to make it up at some point with steepness.

It's always important to catch photos on the way up since I am notorious for not taking ANY on the way down.  The sun rose over the ridge in front of us, and the breeze wasn't bad at all, although the forecast did mention high winds on exposed areas.  The layers kept coming off as we worked up our body temperature.  I found new ways to attach the extra layers with bungees and it made my pack look much larger than it was.  Eliot found new ways too - primarily sticking everything on his ice axe.

The trail rose noticeably and we were getting cold, which means we needed to eat.  I ate half a carton of Double Stuf Oreos.  Never have those tasted so good...mmmm!  Anything you can eat with mittens on really.  It began to lightly snow as we approached the beginning of the Airline Ridge.  The cutoff dips below tree line right after entering it, so we expected to be out of the weather soon after entering it.  The warning sign came first though:

STOP! Does today count as bad weather?  I'm never sure...

We figured we would give it a shot since we were only supposed to be out in it for a few minutes.  We fastened our ski goggles and tightened any loose clothes on our packs, and headed up into the alpine zone! This was the moment I had come 4 hours for right here.  Not sure Eliot was so hot about it, but we had all skin and eyes covered to avoid possible corneal freezing.  We discovered the high winds to be quite high, at least 30 or 40 mph.  I'm a bad judge for that though, but let's just say it was challenging to keep our balance.  The photo below is the north flank of Mt. Madison.  We couldn't see Adams as it was in the clouds to the right.

As the blue sky briefly made itself known, we saw the valley below and intermittent rocky summits.  King Ravine was looking pretty stark.  We were glad to see the sign to turn left down into the woods for protection. I'd have to be pretty motivated to hike over a mile in those conditions, and I was thinking about maybe not summiting, depending on the weather in the morning.

We finally made it to the Valley Way Campsite, which seemed considerably further than it ought to have been, but how accurate are maps anyway?  We inspected the different sites, and found one that was larger to accommodate our tent.  The view from the site was absolutely spectacular, and thankfully Eliot snapped a pic from there.  I was busy being cold from setting up the tent.  We had set up the tent, and put our stuff inside, and tried to warm up inside our sleeping bags.

Mt. Madison from Valley Way Tentsite.

At this point, we discovered that we really knew nothing about winter camping.  Not with the temperatures at -5°F.  The difference between the night before sleeping in the tent was that I came from a nice cozy woodstove-heated room, and now I was coming from cold boots and not moving around.  We had one thing right, which was to keep water from freezing while hiking, keep it inside your jacket above the hip belt of the backpack.  That was working fine.  I had read that to maintain liquid water while in a tent, you put it in your sleeping bag.  They don't mention that like a cold drink in warm air, it sweats condensation...inside my sleeping bag.  Not fun.  It was staying liquid, but it was getting my chilled, even though I was able to stay warm enough inside my bag.

Eliot was not able to stay warm in his bag, even with all layers still on. We learned afterward from some talking with smarter people, that I think he just didn't eat enough food to stay warm, specifically fatty things.  (I did chug a thermos of buttery hot chocolate, as I had done this while working at Baxter State Park on chilly days with great effects.  This I think made the difference between us staying warm or not.)  I slowly ate an XL hershey bar, as it was frozen and hard to chew.  But that did help my moral slightly.  The only problem was that I needed to get out of my sleeping bag to eat properly, the consequence being that I got cold.

I had the bright idea to go try and start a fire in the fire pit, since there was an ax lying around, presumably for said purpose.  It did warm me up, although putting on the boots was awful.  They had gotten cold while I was in the tent, and foot warmers had no effect at that point. Nevertheless, I tried to collect some wood.  We tried to start it and failed, after several attempts with lighters and my camp stove.  With water freezing before our eyes, cold feet, and no fire, we had to make the decision of whether to spend the night or not.  Your mind gets really affected when you're cold, and I was suffering from that.  I had the will power to keep going, maybe to even summit that night, but at some point I had to realize that that's dumb to split up our party of two.  We talked ourselves into packing up everything and heading down that night.  Lighting was not an issue, as we both had multiple headlamps.

So the packing and shoving began.  It's hard to deflate air mattresses when it's really cold.  Foam pads win here.  A frozen tent doesn't like to be squished.  But we squished it anyway.  Surprisingly, we did get everything back into our packs, albeit quite haphazardly.  Then the impossible happened.  Our feet and hands and bodies got warm.  Purely with motion, we were able to get back into a comfortable temperature!  We came down Valley Way Trail, as the campsite was right along that trail anyway.  With warmth, came positive attitudes, and horrible photo lighting:

Partway down the Valley Way trail.  Spirits have improved.

While we had set up camp, the clouds had cleared away, and the winds died down, and the full moon had come into view, providing a beautiful blue light through the forest.  Almost enough to make our way down without lights.  We paused many times just to admire the situation we were in.  We had been very very cold, and then we made the smart decision to come down, we got warm, and we had the moonlight to guide us back to the car.  Around 8:30, we stopped and heard some sort of booming sounds in the distance.  Possibly New Year's Eve celebration fireworks?  That's what we assumed.  After nearly 10 hours of being on a mountain, and following the harsh directions of the mountain, we did arrive back at the parking lot.  We drove home, and drove into the new year of 2015, which, for a couple of weirdos who like driving, is quite the way to start a new year.

The mountain did not want us to summit that day, and I suppose that's the way it goes.  We clearly didn't learn our lesson about turning back last year.  The battle of willpower and reason is never-ending in winter conditions.  Today, reason won.  Not forever though...

Coming soon: Tackling Tumbledown in Winter