Mount Adams & Mount Madison, #39 and #40!

 Sunday, February 28, 2021

The weather for this entire weekend looked awful until late Saturday night.  Suddenly there seemed to be a low wind, good temp window to hike the northern presidentials.  Marlene and I firmed up the plans at 6:30 am and I never got ready so quickly!   I met her at the Appalachia parking lot at 9:05 and we were off around 9:20 or so.  The parking lot was icy and pretty full.  We took Airline up to Adams and we summited at 12:40.  Just a bit of wind on the peak but visibility was pretty good,although grey.  The windblown hardpack was difficult to stick my poles in, but the Kahtoola microspikes were fine. The dogs did well too.

We went down to Madison Spring hut and then up to Madison by about 1:40, where we ran into DEL and took more pics.  The wind was picking up. We were happy to get back down below tree line.  Did a bit of sledding down Valley Way.  At first it was too much sidehill to sled.  A branch grabbed my hat and it was a few feet down the sidehill. I stepped over to get it and sunk up to my waist.  I had a hard time getting back up to the trail and I could see many places along this trail where others had done the same thing.  At one point I hit a hard ice ball right on my tailbone and then sledding hurt too much from then on.  Ended up hiking most of the way down.  Arrived back at the trailhead at about 3:40. Less than 6.5 hours and we spent lots of time chatting with people, taking pics and having some food/drink.  We saw at least 4 people in separate groups that we had seen on Isolation 2 weeks ago.  Small world.  And it is always so much fun to talk to other hikers, let our dogs meet, etc.

Two more killer hikes to finish, hopefully before March 21:  The Carters and Wildats, and then the Bonds. And I think I will have to hike them alone.  That takes even more motivation for me.