Winter Hiking on Mt. Pierce

Trip Details
Date: January 27^th, 2017
Total Distance: 6.38 mi (via Trimble Outdoors Navigator Pro on iPhone 4S. I forgot to start the trip until we were on the Crawford Path. Have to add approximately 0.42 miles.)
Total Time: 3 hours 1 minutes (due to the snafu, add approximately 10-15 minutes.)
Total Elevation: 2384 ft gained
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Well this was a tough one, decision wise. The forecast in the seacoast region and southern New Hampshire was sunny with mild temperatures in the 40s. Hell, this was not much different from the Conway area. The mountains on the other hand were all expected to get snow showers all day, with temperatures in the teens and decreasing as the day went on, and winds on Mt. Washington exceeding 80 mph. This meant the notches that we would have to pass through had a solid chance of getting snow and neither of us prefer to extend our drives by adding the extra time it takes to drive in snow. We knew we would have to stay in the trees and really wanted to try and do one that we could knock out rather quickly and finish before the conditions deteriorated too much. We decided on Mt. Pierce via the Crawford Path. This provided us with the necessary tree cover except for about a tenth of a mile that would put us above treeline as we made our way to the summit.

The Crawford Path is known as a highway in the winter, but after the frequent small amounts of snowfall that had occurred over the past few days we found it with unpacked fluffy powder covering the whole trail. At times you could feel the monorail below this, but the depth of the unpacked powder varied significantly on the trail so it was a snowshoe day car-to-car.

As we were gearing up in the basically empty Crawford Connector Trailhead parking lot a police officer drove in and asked us some questions. He was just checking on the area because apparently it is not routinely plowed, but on this day it was completely plowed and one other car was already in the lot before us. I thought this was a year-round maintained lot? In addition, why do they gate off Mt. Clinton Rd. and then plow the whole thing anyway?

Looks like they maintain the lot to me. The bathrooms were even unlocked.

Crawford Connector and Crawford Path are boring trails. Until you reach the alpine zone there really is not much going on. The alpine zone was interesting as in our few years of winter hiking we really have never seen rime ice or the frozen tundra that these mountains are known for. Well, we got that experience today.

At some point I am going to need to head up the Crawford Cliff Trail and see what is up there.

Ice bridges are starting to form again, which is much better than two weeks ago.

Well I guess Mizpah Springs Hut is out of the question today...bummer!

The trail to Mizpah Springs Hut is going to need some real work if anyone wants to go.

Once we got onto the Webster Cliff Trail, all bets were off as the trail was no longer visible. We followed the footsteps of the individual in front of us but the tracks went way off the real trail and then eventually ended up going back into the woods. From past trips to this summit I knew this meant we had passed the summit. I checked the GPS and confirmed this. We back tracked and found one of the large cairns on the trail and then we could see the outline of the real trail. As we looked further down, additional cairns came into view as the trail descends back down to the junction with the Crawford Path. So we turned back around and went to where the GPS said the summit was. In the middle of the area was this one smallish flat rock that was just sticking out of the snow. I wondered if this was the summit cairn filled in. You could see that drifts had filled in this area. I shoveled away some snow and you could see more rocks below it. We took some photos on the summit and then started our decent back to the parking lot. It is real easy to see how people can get lost in these situations.

I started to get excited at this point because it meant we may finally get to see one of the classic rime iced trail signs.

The Crawford Path/Webster Cliff Trail junction sign rimed up.

Looking back towards the trail we just came from.

Looking towards the Webster Cliff Trail.

Looking off the side of the mountain in the the abyss.

That rock in front of my poles is the summit cairn...covered in snow. What makes this even more interesting is that the trail cairn that is right before the summit area is completely uncovered and fully visible.

BishopX and myself. What you may not notice is how much identical/palette swapped gear we have o

No butt sliding really on this trail, but we made quick work of the decent and the trail was nicely packed in after the three of us that snowshoed car-to-car.

Gibbs Falls

The GPS is off by at least 0.42 miles and then probably another half a mile or so. It came in very handy today when the summit cairn was tricky to find.