Mount Washington — Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020

Fantastic day on Mount Washington! I started early, hitting the trail at 6 a.m., and summited at 8:30. Not surprisingly, that meant I had the trail to myself, including an hour spent at the top.

My timing couldn't have been better, because once I rose above the clouds, the views were endless in every direction. View of four (five?) volcanoes!

I continue to urge serious research before attempting this one for the first time. This was my second ascent, and that made it much easier and much less "eventful" than last time. I got the ravine bypass right this time. Well, mostly right: I was part way up the ravine when I realized I had missed the turnoff, but I just backtracked a bit and found it. The cairn was knocked over, so I rebuilt it (and added three or four others along the trail, in what I though were key spots). I previously thought you were supposed to swing left away from the ravine, but you really hug the (climber's) left wall of the ravine and basically just climb along the top of that, with the ravine close by on your right (although mostly unseen). This was much easier than last time and made it no more of a scramble than the rest of the trail, really. (The trail shown on Gaia GPS tracks quite well the whole way, including in this stretch, FYI.)

I noted the trail as being in "good condition," but by that I mean good condition for a primitive, rocky, rooty, scree-strewn and nerve-wracking steep scramble. 

Parts of this are not for the faint of heart. The summit block is particularly treacherous, but I was almost as concerned about the stretch just below the saddle, because it is often steep with only a thin layer of loose sand and small rock -- which is fine, except a brief slide could take you over the edge for a good long plunge in places. 

And about that summit block, there are very narrow catwalks with life-threatening drop-offs, and then a nearly knife-edge ridge on which to scramble back toward the peak. The saving grace is that there is often -- but not always! -- solid footing in this area. Take it SLOW.

It's funny, after getting back down off the summit block, I thought, "Yeah, maybe that's the last time I'll do this one." It wasn't 20 minutes later I was thinking about taking friends up in the future. 

I saw three or four small groups coming up after I was 1/3 of the way down and thereafter. Some had questions about the trail that made me concerned they maybe weren't prepared to find the safe(st) route. I tried to help as I could.

As an aside, I was the only person with a face covering, but (almost) everyone was conscientious about social distancing. 

Happy hiking!