White Mountain Traverse - Introduction

From Sunday June 24 through Saturday June 30, I joined four others to traverse the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  It was beautiful but probably the hardest physical challenge that I've ever done.  The trails are very steep and so rocky!  Much of the hike is above treeline (alpine zone), and often, the "trails" that are that high are just rocks that are marked with cairns of rock.

The entire hike was about 47 miles, and my average hiking speed was probably about one mile an hour.  Most days, I hiked at least 8-9 hours, and sometimes longer, to cover usually 7-8 miles.  Below is a good representation of the terrain.  It is ruggedly beautiful there.

The highlight of the trip was reaching the summit of Mount Washington, the highest mountain east of the Mississippi and north of North Carolina and Tennessee.  By that time, one of the group had dropped out so there were four of us left.  Also, my friend Chip, who took the photo, surprised me by coming over from Maine and hiking with me the last two days of the trip.

Mountain vistas were plentiful, and we generally had great weather, other than one miserable rainy day, and an afternoon when I got caught in a thunderstorm up in the alpine zone, which was plenty scary!

Along the way, we stayed each of the six nights at Appalachian Mountain Club high altitude huts, so we didn't need to carry breakfast or dinner, cook wear, or tents.  The track below shows the 47 mile route, going west to east (north along the Appalachian Trail for the most part).  The ending point was Pinkham Notch (red circle), and each hut we stayed at is indicated with a purple rectangle with an orange border.

Here is an elevation profile that I found.  We hiked right to left between the red and blue arrows.  You can see that it is hardly ever flat.

More to come - I'll write details about each day, as well as posting more photos.

Sunday June 24 - the hike begins with the hike up to Greenleaf Hut!
Monday June 25 - a very tough hike over two mountains from Greenleaf to Galehead Hut
Tuesday June 26 - we hiked from Galehead to beautiful Zealand Falls Hut
Wednesday June 27 - our longest hike of the week up to Mizpah Springs Hut
Thursday June 28 - a wet, miserable, and slippery hike up to Lakes of the Clouds Hut
Friday June 29 - on my dad's 100th birthday, we summitted Mount Washington and hiked over to Madison Springs Hut, surviving a high alpine thunderstorm on the way.
Saturday June 30 - over Mount Madison, and then down, down, down to the end of the trail back at Phikham Notch

Life in the AMC Huts - dinner, breakfast, and a dry bunk on the trail
Some Lessons Learned - if you don't learn something hiking nearly 50 miles across the Whites, you just were not paying attention!