Moriah's Snowy Attempt

Trip Details
Date: January 22^nd, 2019
Total Distance: 8.52 mi (via Garmin fenix 5X)
Total Time: 5 hours 50 minutes
Total Elevation: 3100 ft gained
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Well BishopX and I finally met our match. In our decade or so of hiking we have never had a turn back or ditch our plans. Unfortunately we stacked the deck against us this time. Knowing our normal Friday hike was not going to work out due to other commitments, we took some time off from work and decided to go on a Tuesday. This Tuesday was two days after a massive snow storm hit the White Mountains (down south it turned into a dud and only dropped about a 1/4 of what they predicted). The temperatures and wind were also going to start incredibly low and high, respectively. It was predicted as the day went on those would both increase favorably. We had another friend scheduled to come with us to help with the trailbreaking. We also started early, but with the catch that we had to finish by 1400. Everything went to hell from there...

Early in the morning as BishopX was getting ready to leave our third canceled. That is fair. Things come up. We still headed north. The weather in BishopX's car was reporting -16ºF as he crossed the state north of the Presidentials. While I cut through Pinkham Notch, my car was reporting 10ºF. He called, we discussed, and from the side we were starting on the temperature seem okay. We continued on. BishopX picked me up at The Glen House who nicely let me park my electric car there to charge as we went hiking. A big kudos to them for that. We headed to Bangor Street in Gorham and the trailhead for the Carter Moriah Trailhead. The car now read 1ºF, which was 11 degrees warmer than our coldest hike to date. We got our snowshoes on and started breaking trail.

Just behind that giant plow pile on the right is room for two cars.

The bare boot lasted for 1/4 of a mile before they turned around.

We got up to Mt. Surprise in about 90 minutes. The temperature was not bad and the wind was not terrible as long as we kept moving. There were times when it would whip through the trees but it was not consistent and more often than not was not present at all. After Mt. Surprise that trail got surprising.

The northern Presidentials

The old filled in trail became harder to find through the woods due to significant drifting, which left us exploring a bit and then just making our way back to the trail via the GPS and map function on my watch. The snow drifts also started becoming increasingly higher and were regularly knee high and even up to waist high at times. The steep sections were slow going, but only because the fresh snow would just slide off as you tried to climb up. I almost would have prefered some ice so drive the spikes of the snowshoes into. We continued to push on but the trailbreaking had gotten the best of me. One of my knees was getting pretty soar and it was slowing me down. BishopX picked up a ton of slack but even his superhuman ability was getting tested. We just stopped making significant progress. Around noon we looked at where we were (about 3200 ft with about 3/4 to a mile left) and decided to make a last half hour push to see how far we could get before we hit the point of no return and turn around. Just over 20 minutes later we had ascended an additional 200 ft. It was not going to happen for us today. We needed more time and we did not half it, plus we were exhausted, and due to the cold (though it had warmed up to the high single digits and low teens by this time with minimal to no wind) we were just pushing too hard and not drinking and eating enough. With 90 minutes to go we figured we could make it down the four miles. Though at times it felt like we were going quite slow even down (usually something we can do quickly) we still made it down in about 90 minutes and just past 1400.

Lesson learned. Trailbreaking is exhausting work (for those that do it routinely I bow to you) and you really need a team of at least three people I would say. With two you never really get a break as the second person is breaking trail on the alternating steps of the first person. It was a butt kicking workout and we did technically still summit Mt. Surprise so we can say that at least, but now we must redo that trail to reach Mt. Moriah.

The drift whenever we stop is ridiculous. I would say this is off by at least a half mile.