4:20 am - I leave Pinkham, and head up the Tuckerman Ravine trail, following a packed ski track.

5:27 am - I put on snowshoes (the first of what is to be numerous times) at the point where Lion's Head trail leaves the Huntington fire road. In the 30+ times I have climbed this trail in winter, I don't ever remember actually using snowshoes, but this time the snow is deep enough that I am able to use them through the steep scrambles and the all the way to treeline.

At the seasonal junction of the summer and winter trails, the trail is mostly bare rock, with ice and snow patches. I go with bare boots here, but not for very long.

Over the first hump, but below the Lion's Head proper, I begin to run into substantial ridges of dense snow which lay perpendicular to the trail - snow that had been spared by the scouring winds which had removed the bulk of the snow on the ridge. Although some of the the snowbanks are passable barebooted, most simply aren't doable without snowshoes. I bypass the biggest specimen, an 8' vertical wall of snow.

Some medium sized four footed creature had been on this trail recently - a clear track complete with toenail marks marches the opposite way on the trail.

In the same snow that I was sinking to my chest, it leaves a dainty impression not a half inch deep. Hmm.

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