Timing is Everything.
I headed out yesterday morning to meet up with Amy. As I got to the first traffic light, I could see the bottom of the overcast along the horizon turning pink and orange. That would make a cool picture. Picture? Yeah, I'd need a camera for that. U-turn. Having now retrieved my camera and since I had been running a few minutes late anyway, I figured I was at least 15 minutes behind now. At the time, it was annoying and seemed like a poor start to the day, but it triggered a sequence of events that likely wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Shortly after 9, we pulled into the parking lot for the Crawford Connector. As we did, we noticed a red fox standing on the plowbank. I stopped the car and he stopped. I rolled down the window and he proceeded to pose. Now it was clear that if I had remembered to pack the camera it would be in my pack instead of up front. And we would have been 20 minutes earlier so we probably would have missed seeing this little guy. As we were gearing up for the hike, the fox continued to wander around the parking lot. He seemed very tame as if he was doing a gray jay impression. Ah, what the hell, I took out the BlackBerry and posted his picture on Facebook, thus seemingly wasting even more time.
The Crawford Connector and Crawford Path were both pounded down hard and we choose to bareboot. Despite barely being above zero, it felt so much better than last week's -9 start. We stopped to check out the completely frozen Gibbs Falls and continued up as the sun began to filter through the trees and the sky cleared to a deep blue. A little before the Mizpah junction we encountered a descending ScenicNH. We stopped to chat, probably for at least 20 minutes or so. When we finally started back up again, mostly because Amy's toes were getting cold, we figured we probably stopped to chat for too long, based on the time spent not on the company. However, had we been on time, we probably would have run into him further up in the windier sections and not stopped for as long.
We stopped briefly at Mizpah junction, but there were no gray jays here today. The trail was not as firm from this point, but we continued barebooting anyway. As we reached the alpine zone, we had a good view all the way up the Presi Range. We decided to head to Eisenhower first. It was quite windy at the trail junction so I continued past it thinking there was a sheltered spot just past it. Erin had warned us that the tracks we'd find didn't quite follow the trail in places and this must be one of them. I didn't find the sheltered spot I was looking for, but I did find a great big hole. Down I went stopping only when the combination of pack and torso was too wide for the opening. As my left boot began to fill with snow I could tell that it was not touching bottom. I'm not sure how deep this was and I wasn't going to try to find out. I also quickly became aware that I was still in the wind and was not dressed for it. I struggled to get my hat out of the top of my pack to replace my headband which was now woefully inadequate. I also grabbed the balaclava whilst fumbling around and so put that on too. Next I carefully extricated myself and looked for a spot out of the wind to put on snowshoes and another layer. Four deep postholes later, I just stopped and decided to do it right where I was, wind or no. My wool pullover had absorbed considerable moisture and I wanted to changed it. But this would require taking the hat and balaclava back off so I just threw my primaloft jacket on over it and then the windbreaker. This was not the most comfortable setup as I could barely zip the windbreaker. After putting on the snowshoes, I went to look for Amy. If she fell in that hole, she might not be found until spring. But she had wisely retreated to gear up after coming around the corner and seeing the hole.
The trip across the ridge was a mix of strong wind and calm areas. In the first calm zone, I stopped to rearrange my outfit and we continued. It wasn't that cold when out of the wind, and even the wind wasn't bad if you turned your back to it. The last hundred feet or so up Eisenhower though it was right in your face. The views were nice, but because of the breeze we took a couple of pictures and headed back. The trip back was so much easier with the tailwind. Pierce was interesting. The last time I climbed it in the winter there was a lot of blowing snow and a semi-defined path (that's right sports-fans, I've actually now repeated a winter peak). This time the entire surface was hard and you could see where everyone took their own route. From the summit looking back we could see a big wave of blowing snow on Monroe and agreed that we went about as far north in the range today as we should.
On the way down, I switched out of snowshoes at the Mizpah cutoff. I tried doing the buttslide a couple of times but to little effect. We did retrieve a lost bottle in one of the small brook crossings. Since the Highland Center was so close, we headed there to change clothes and leave the bottle with the front desk. I'm not sure that I got the message across to the front desk person, when I told her that I found this on the Crawford Path, she looked like she'd never heard of it. On the way in, we ran into Wendy and Lindsay on their way out. Again, had we been on time today, we probably would have missed them. Later we stopped for at the pizza place in Twin Mt and ran into BobandGeri and Whichway who we would also have missed had we been on time today.
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