Hello to Winter Crag Cabin hikers -
We were going back - 50 years after our first triumph in 1956 - to snowshoe again up to "Crag Cabin" on the north slope of Mt. Adams in New Hampshire. I first led this winter hike, at the age of 15, with Mal Peck, in weather down to -26 degrees. Now Mal and I were going back to reprise this hike, with our friend Jonathan. Crag Cabin and a couple other shelters in that area are managed by the Randolph Mountain Club
We drove up to Boston from DC on Feb 2, 2006 through nice weather, and up to Gorham NH on Feb. 3, through heavy rain and warm weather. We stopped off at Joe Dodge's at Pinkham Notch Camp, to confirm the weather forecast. We stayed at a decent motel on the east end of Gorham, "Town and Country". The room was big, which was good as we had to spread out a lot while packing.
The hike started off in an amazing way: There was actually about 3" of snow left on the ground, at the road, and it was 43 degrees F, all the way up! But the snow was all tromped down on the trail, as quite a few people had been up that trail; about 5 guys went up just ahead of us. We started at about 9:30 AM. As we went up, the snow got deeper, but the trail was still hammered flat, so we did not need our snowshoes. The bridge at 1st crossing was very easy to cross, as the 2" of snow was trivial, compared to the 2 feet we usually met. We kept going up - the crossing of Spur Brook at 2nd crossing was not too bad. We continued up, nice and slow. We had a trivial easy crossing at 3rd crossing - we could barely see the water, but we could hear it. Of course that's the end of the Amphibrach, and then we were on the Spur Trail, along Spur Brook.
Now, WE all remember how steep and bitchy the trail was, between 3rd and 4th crossing. WE all remember the CHUTE that went up just to the right of a big stone wall (small stone cliff), for about 80 feet. That was really tough and nasty, with no easy way to get decent footing. Well - that part was utterly gone, bypassed, somehow. There were several mild angles (not really switchbacks) that made the grade liveable. There were a couple log ladders, each about 50' long, ascending nice and steep, between 3rd and 4th. But it was pretty easy. We stopped at each of the major crossings, 2, 3, and 4, for a rest.
Even the ascent from 4th Crossing to Crag was not too bad. Not as bad as it used to be. There was one 60' ladder - with a handrail! When we got to the "Lower Crag", we knew we were in good shape, even though there were several more steep pitches, and we got into Crag about 4:15 PM, an hour before dark. We surveyed the cabin, and started cooking supper (lamb curry on instant rice). About 7 young guys from Middlebury College Outing Club had come over from Lakes Of The Clouds' dungeon, on a day of great weather. They were pretty cheerful, and mostly a bunch of good sports. When we had more curry than we could eat - they helped us finish it!
Crag Cabin, as rebuilt, is NOTHING like we knew, 50 years ago. There are 3 bunk rooms, for 8, 8 and 4 people. Ladders are provided to go up to the upper berths. The lower berths have about 4' of headroom. We had plenty of space on the lower deck. There is no wood stove, no fireplace, BUT there are about 3 nice long cooking areas, high counters faced in tile, laid out in a U. About 20 feet of counter, total, and a sink that drains into a bucket. We had plenty of room for cooking. Then there are 3 nice tables, and plenty of benches for dining. The east end of the building has LOTS of windows, and very good views. Unfortunately, it has a Cathedral Ceiling so the heat tends to rise. Crag now has no Mouseproof, and no steel-yard. But they have a nice new composting toilet.
About 30 minutes after we got in, the WIND began to howl. We were quite glad we did not have to go any further or later. The wind howled for an hour and then it began to rain. The weather reports had warned us to expect exactly that. It rained on and off, and then in the morning, it began to snow. Obviously we were not going up any higher, on Sunday.
The 7 kids went down, after we had some nice visits. They respected that after 50 years of winter hiking, we knew a few things they didn't - and of course they knew a lot of things we didn't. So we had fun talking and listening.
The Caretaker came over - Chris Fithien. We visited, and gave him a small vial of Blackberry Brandy, too. (We sent out small samples of Blackberry Brandy, to a few dozen friends, so we could all toast our old leaders of 1955, Jack Williams and Fred Torrey.)
We cooked up pancakes for breakfast -- as I'd planned, it took a couple HOURS! -- but they were tasty, with lots of butter and a pint of Maple-type syrup. About 2 PM, the weather had stopped being too nasty, so we hiked over to Gray Knob. We said hello to Chris, and put on our crampons, which took a while. Then we hiked up toward timberline. We got up a couple hundred yards, and turned around. We went back, and got all our water-bottles full at the spring (barely 60' below the trail, half-way between Crag and Gray Knob.) I had never found that Spring before, in winter. It was running about 2 liters per second. It was pretty good water. Signs warned us to boil or purify the water, but I didn't bother. At that time of year, the purity and dilution were ~ OK.
We made up supper of mashed potatoes and peas and Buffalo Burger. It was very tasty. Then Chris came over, and Steve Weber (whom I had met on the internet just a week ago). We all sipped our Blackberry Brandy, and toasted Jack Williams and to the memory of Fred Torrey, at the right time, 7 PM. We went to bed after a while.
The next morning (Monday) it was blowing harder. We ate our Cream O'Wheat with Apricots and Sausage. We decided to go up to Treeline and a little higher. We went straight up the Spur Trail, with our crampons on, right from Crag. We got up to tree line in about 20 minutes, and the wind was blowing hard. We decided to go up about 100 yards, and we went past 4 cairns, and turned around and retreated. It was definitely as far as we should go.
We knew that if we just filled all our water-bottles at the spring, we would run them dry very quickly. So I decided to bring over some Plastic newspaper bags. Each one would hold at least 3 or 4 liters, and they were not leaking at any significant rate. We filled them at the spring, and carted the whole mess back to the Cabin. The leak rate was - quite small. So we had plenty of water. (Even if I did have icicles leaking down from my pack.)
Unfortunately it was cooling off rapidly. The outside temperature had fallen from about 30 degrees to 12. We knew the water in the cabin would freeze, but we salvaged a lot of it in pots, and it didn't freeze solid. We cooked up the pea soup with veggies and turkey hot-dog, and that was very good. We used about 7 cups of water and we ate it all.
Next morning, the outside temperature was about + 4 degrees F, and inside was 12 degrees. It felt cold. About 7 AM , Jonathan called his wife, and she recited the weather forecast from Mt. Washington: -8 degrees C, with freezing fog, and about 50 mph winds, with wind-chill to -58 degrees. Well, obviously, it would be MUCH better at Mt Adams, maybe only -38 degrees F. We immediately decided to pack down 1 day early, as the next day's weather was forecast to be about the same. We ate our oatmeal, and packed, and started down on crampons, about 11:50 AM. If we had tried to descend without crampons, it might have been messy, but we did not go fast. We were being VERY careful on the steep pitches.
We got down to 3rd Crossing (about 0.8 miles) in - - two hours. We took a good rest there, and then got down to 2nd Crossing in about an hour. We had a good rest there, as it was quite tricky to get across the stream. Then it was about 3:45. We knew it would be getting dark in less than 2 hours, and we had 2 miles to go. We stomped down the hill at a deliberate pace, about 1 mph. We got out on the RR roadbed at 5:25, and walked back to the car by 5:45. We stowed our stuff into the car, and went back to pick up our stuff that we left at the Motel. We also had some soup. By the time we got down as far as Pinkham, it was 8:45 PM. But we felt pretty good. We had not reached the summit, but we knew how to do it, and we would have made it if the wind was not so strong. We had said that we would get to the summit of Adams if there were just 3 days of bad weather in a row. Unfortunately, we had 4 days of bad weather. But it was still fun!
More later!! Best regards, / rap
Technical Reports on - Equipment and Activities....
Our stove. Jon's old Optimus 111B (a 1950 design) needed its pump leather oiled and tweaked, and after that, it ran and started perfectly, whether on gas or alcohol. Its flame was not perfectly symmetrical, but it throttled up and down very nicely. We had plenty of flame. We left behind about 6 ounces of gasoline, and carried down a pint. The stove was steady and wonderful. We only needed a dozen matches for 4 days....
Crampons. MY crampons (1956 Army Surplus) worked. JUST plain worked.They went on easily, and did not fall off. They did not bend or break. Malcolm's good (forged) crampons (that we borrowed from Nancy) worked well, but we had to rig new straps. When we first tried to get them on, the old tired leather thong broke - and broke again. But after that, the leather thong did NOT break again, and was quite strong, and the combination of nylon and leather just worked well.
Jonathan's crampons (that I picked up for $21 in Kathmandu) did NOT fit well They were not quite big enough. We finally figured out how to add more straps. The first day, the right crampon fell off after 20 minutes. The second day, after 1 hour. We kept adding more straps, and the third day, they never fell off. It was still MUCH too much work to get them on, and too slow, but we felt it a minor triumph that we got them to hold on so well. (The left one never fell off. Not sure why not...) Refer to "What's All This Crampon Stuff, Anyhow?" in Electronic Design, Jan. 2006.
The crampon work at high altitude was good tough work. The wind was moderate, and did not really blow us over. But we knew we should turn around and descend, as we had no safety factor in the cool wind, about + 12 degrees, with 20 or 30 mph winds, and gusts near 40. We were correct to not try to force our way up. If a crampon had fallen off, we would have frozen our hands trying to fix it. We did see one young hiker, Jeff, who came up the trail, and went straight on up to the summit, and came down just as we were turning around. We were not in quite as good shape as he was.
Descending all the 3.5 miles to the road was really tough work. All that crunching on the frozen snow was VERY tough walking, even though any single step was not bad. Now back at Boston, as I type, I recognize my calves are quite tired and sore. After 10 hours of driving, today, I'm gonna be a basket case, trying to stand up and totter!
As we were descending, I was concerned that I'd get a big headache from all that crunching. (Didn't quite.) It was easy to step on a frozen knob of snow, or a rock, that tried to twist our ankles, and we could never really relax, even though the traction was good. All 3 crampons balled up occasionally with ice under the heel or instep, after we stepped into ice/water, running across the trail, but we gradually learned to avoid that, and knock off the ice.
Jackets, hats - all worked pretty well. Pants, Leggins (gaiters) - worked well.
Malcolm's boots were somewhat cold, as they got damp, but they were OK after he got them dried out. My Vasque boots I had just coated with shoe goo, and they seemed to stay dead dry. And comfy warm. I was wearing thin socks plus good Bridgedales, and I was prepared to double up on the warm socks, but I never had to.
Mittens were generally OK. We had good mittens, but our hands still got cold, especially during cooking at 12 degrees. We all tried those "Hand warmers", and we were surprised how long they heated - 9 to 12 hours, even for the "7.5 hour" ones. They made life liveable. We had several to spare.
Our sleeping bag "systems" were good. We each had a ~2-pound cheap knock-off down-and-feather bag that I bought in Kathmandu, AND we had home-made flannel inner bags, very important. And I insisted we wear flannel pajamas, to keep us warm. This was just about enough.
Snowshoes - we never even tried them on. I had run out of space inside my pack, so Jon carried several of my things, and I carried his snowshoes along with mine, lashed to the back of my pack. Malcolm carried the old rawhide ones - up AND down. We knew it was unlikely to get 20" of snow, but we did not want to get stuck up at Crag, with no snowshoes.
Food - we had enough at all meals, and plenty left over at a few. We learned not to cook a full pot, but just what we could eat. We had enough lunches for a week, and lots of gorp. ("Good Old Raisins and Peanuts (and chocolate bits))"
My camcorder tried to work, almost not at all. It seemed like the battery was refusing to connect to the camcorder. This had never happened before. By holding the battery down with a large force, I was sometimes able to get some video - and more often, NOT able to get it to run. Quite annoying. I finally got it working by shoving some tinfoil into the contact spaces.
Jon's cell phone worked well. He checked in with his wife every evening about 7 PM, and the signal strength was good, about 3 bars. (The antenna up on Pine Mt. had blown down, but their patch of the antenna seemed to be working fine.) Mostly we just said hello, and that we were OK, and confirmed that the weather was as bad as it seemed.
What am I forgetting? Not too much. The fingertips on my right hand got a little frosted, and are very slightly numb and painful, but when I get typing, they are not really noticeably uncomfortable. I'm sure they'll be OK in a while. But I did recognize, I had no safety factor in that cool weather. Especially while cooking at + 12 degrees F. Earworms: I got one song into my head - the sign-on theme from "Your Box At The Opera" on WTIC from 1946-1966 - and Jon and Mal told me what it was, the "fate" theme from Carmen. There was another one that came into my ahead every night ( I suspect it was the sign-off theme for the same program) but I could not remember it in the morning. It will turn up! *** Got It!
Could we have gone up through a lot of fresh snow? Probably. If we had 6 or 8" of new snow, taking the snowshoes off our packs would have made our packs lighter, so that wouldn't have slowed us down much. We would have had good footing. If we had 14 or 20" of snow, and we had to bivouac in snow, we would have been OK. However, we really were not prepared for so much rain. Could we have bivouacked OK? What's all this Bivouac Stuff, Anyhow? Yes, there were adequate flat spots up to 3rd crossing - and not above there. When we saw there was only a little snow, and no new snow, we knew we would make it up, so we left our tarps and tube-tent down in the car. If we had our tube-tent, and it were to rain and blow, we would have been damp and miserable, but we would have made it.
Could we go back another year, and try for the summit? Yeah, we could, BUT in the words of a well-known politician - "It would be wrong". I think we can check some old weather reports, and see that the odds of finding good weather for one day out of 4, are just too thin. We had one good day, and we used that to get up to Crag, and then the next 4 days of weather were too cold and windy. I guess when we went up there in the past, we were pretty lucky to get such nice weather! If YOU live in the Boston area, and you want to climb Mt. Adams in winter - check the weather, and head up early, on a good day!
There is a report on the weather and trail conditions at nearby Gray Knob (for the last week or so).
The Weather Forecast for the Mt. Washington area is posted every morning.
All for now! /rap
(Jon and Malcolm can add comments as they wish.)
P.S. - Well, we DID get to visit our old 1955 hike leader Jack Williams in Mirror Lake NH. He seems to be quite healthy and happy, at 87. We visited for 1/2 hour, and then came down Route 11 from Alton to Rochester, to get to the NH pike to Boston. Mr. Williams has a handsome voice, as if from a barrel chest. I told him I loved to hear his voice - it reminded me of some other guy's voice - but I couldn't think of whose.
This report has been amended for people who have NOT been to Crag.
Snow fleas. We found some "dust" on the snow, as we approached Crag. Malcolm thought it was some kind of dust or industrial effluvia, but when I peered closely, I could see them move. The Caretaker didn't know much about these "snow fleas", but Jack Williams' wife said that they come up from the ground, as the spring weather warms up, and they jump around. She said they have a little claw. Total length about 1/32" long. They do tend to cluster in the footsteps! - and in our snow-melt water. We strained our melted snow through a clean handkerchief. Then we minimized their problems by using the spring water. We'll find some more info on them. Google up those snow fleas! (Are they a version of "springtail"? Yeah....)
Best wishes! / rap
Reading Material. We sat around in Crag, and read excerpts from a notorious book "Not Without Peril", about a lot of people who climbed up Mt. Washington and died of the horrendous cold weather - even in the summer, even in "good weather". Then, in the gathering gloom, at 12 degrees F, I pulled out and read a copy of Robert Service' "The Cremation of Sam McGee". Perfect poem for a cold evening!
Other significant topics: It is hard to buy reasonably-priced Sun-goggles that will go over glasses. Most sun-goggles are apparently for rich yuppy skiers who wear contacts. We found work-arounds: some old goggles, to keep the cold wind off our faces, in conjunction with balaclavas.
It's hard to buy good mitten INNERS. (The mitten shells are quite available at REI or EMS, but the inners are best found at local stores or at Campmor.com).
It's not easy to buy ski-poles with big baskets, as most modern ski-pole baskets are tiny for fastest schussing, but some large baskets can be added to small ski-pole baskets, or to hiking poles. So we wouldn't sink into deep snow.
Comments invited. / rap ( Recipes for the classic one-pot meals are available on request.)
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