| NH48
Winter 4000'ers in 9 Days |
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March
14 - Day 9 - Waumbek and The Kinsmans |
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Rain and patchy fog will continue throughout the morning and early afternoon hours as a cold front approaches the region. As the front passes this afternoon, temperatures will drop allowing any lingering rain showers to change to snow showers. The chance for snow showers will continue tonight and into tomorrow, with the best chances for accumulating snow confined to the mountains and points north and west. Tim
Markle 
Flood watch. A rainy night followed by yet more rain at dawn led to a
bit of a sag in the team morale on tuesday morning, but we shook it off
and were on the trail to Waumbek by 7:50 am in a steady drizzle and mist.
Not the kind of weather that normally inspires folks to head up a snowy
mountain. We made the summit slightly before ten, and headed down into
rapidly improving conditions. In the Jefferson area, the sun quickly burnt
off the remaining moisture, the temperatures soaring into the 50's as
we barreled towards Franconia Notch. |
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 Our late start and the possible flooding along Pine Bend had scuttled our original plan, to hit the Tripyramid/Whiteface/Passaconaway loop after Waumbek, so instead we opted for the Kinsmans with the option to include Cannon. Even the Fishin' Jimmy Trail was a treacherous combination of freshly ripped seams of fast moving water and substantial ice falls that had to be tip-toed around. |
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The lighting was flat and nasty and the trees were snowless, making for a rather lackluster day for photography. Trailwise, the upper part of the Kinsmans were in much better shape, although we occasionally would poke through if we wandered from the centerline of the trail more than a foot or so.
On the return from the Kinsmans, Cath was not feeling that well so she and Jeff decided to bail down the Fishin' Jimmy, encouraging me to continue on to Cannon. On the Kinsman Ridge Trail headed over the Cannon Balls, I found a sunken trail of crampon-postholes in a basically unbroken footway, so I went with snowshoes until the junction with the Lonesome Lake Trail, where it was pretty well packed all the way to the summit of Cannon. I said hi to Robohiker at the tower, who didn't really have much to say on this wind-blasted and chilly night, so I bundled up and headed down the ski slopes at just after 6:30 pm. Comically, this would be the first time today I would be using my crampons, as the slopes were covered with sheets of ice from the rapid temperature drop today. Not being familiar with the layout of the ski runs, it took me a little while to get back to my car from the bottom of the run I stumbled out on. I caught up with Jeff and Cath by phone that night, and we charted what we hoped to be the final marathon push to the end!
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