Rainy Weekend 4000'ers - 11-12/May/98
Brenda and I rented a cabin up north with the idea that starting the day
up there would let us get early starts and long days. Things didn't
quite work out that way as Saturday morning we arrived at the Crawford
Notch Hostel around 11:00, later than our starts when we left from
Nashua or Boston. Oh well. It didn't really matter, as the weather was
grey all day, with occasional rain. At least I used the weekend to test out my
new Platypus water system.
The hike was to bag Tom,
Field, and Willey, three 4000'ers without much
by way of views. In bad weather, choose viewless peaks. We made it up
to the summit of Tom first, and met a woman and her dog up there. They
turned out to be about the only creatures we saw all day. The summit is
in trees but there may be a view into the Pemi on a clear day. After
snacks we headed back down and across the ridge to Field. We met the
woman again at the Avalon trail junction. She had given up on going
over to Willey and the dog looked very happy about the decision. The
summit of Field is just past the junction. It looks like there are some
limited views from a spot just before the summit.
The ridge over to Willey was uneventful, but pleasant enough. We
weren't sure about the summit, but eventually found the
cairn where
we celebrated three more peaks and had a lunch of pita, tomatoes,
hummus, and fruit. Then we headed back to Field and down the Avalon
trail. The summit of Avalon is a great short hike for views of
Crawford Notch, but not today. There was however a
very weird tree
on the way down. The is lots of ice storm damage along the trail
but most everything has been cleared. It looks bad in the woods.
We made it back to the trailhead at the
railroad station in Crawford Notch
and headed out to a well deserved dinner.
The next day it was still rainy and chilly, so we picked a smaller
hike to Mt Hale. The trailhead is halfway in the Zealand Road where
we met some of the worst blackflies I've ever seen. We ran up the
trail to get away from them. This hike is only 2.2 miles each way
and we sped up in fairly short time. The summit is partly open with
some nice views but again,
we saw nothing. Just a Grey Jay trying to
get our food. So, four 4000'ers in two days, not bad for a rainy
weekend in May.
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