Mid-January 2025  we attempted to climb Mt Washington. We did not get to the top but it was an awesome experience anyway. 

For those who do not know it – Mt Washington is a relatively low mountain in the White Mountains range in New Hampshire (some 3h away from Boston).  Despite its low altitude, it is famous for some very mean weather, including some wind speed records and there are more rescues (and deaths) than you would expect from such a mountain. 

During summer it is a rather boring mountain, considering there is a road going to the very top, so you can drive there. In winter though, it becomes a great mountain for those who want to explore easy technical mountaineering without travelling far away and dealing with altitude and challenges and acclimatization time which come with it. 

Initially, I was thinking of doing this climb unguided, but reading reviews and because we had a child among us we decided to hire guides and also do the training session the day before the climb.

In the end, we settled on having it as an extended weekend adventure – arrive on Thursday by the end of the day;  Training Day on Friday;  Summit Attempt on Saturday and some additional activities and departure on Sunday.

The training session was frankly not the best – the first part of the day we went through the gear, mainly on a theoretical level… there was no practical stuff like how folks show us how you pack a backpack, get your ice axe on it etc.     In the second part of the day, we had a practical session to learn self-arrest and how to walk in crampons.  While I would expected us to drive up to the altitude where there was some snow and ice, we stayed low, there were only very small patches of snow which we used for training, which was not as interesting or effective as other training I participated in.  The most interesting part for me was learning how to use the rope for descent without the harness.

My biggest regret perhaps is we had this training day at all, as this is the day the weather actually was quite good and perhaps we would have done better just pushing for the mountain in the good weather and doing some additional skill polishing training the next day. 

On Saturday, the forecast was increasing winds by the midday and the afternoon so we started early, around 5 AM.  If it were me I would have started even earlier as love the crispy silent night and walking with headlamps… until you meet the sunrise and gorgeous views open up. 

The Winter trail for Mt Washington starts at AMC Pinkham Notch Visitor Center  – It was great to see free parking, no pass required and the “get ready” room for climbers open 24/7

The first part of the trail was easy walking – no crampons required.   After some hours, we came to the start of Lions Head trail put on crampons and got out ice axes.   I think we could do it 15-20min later, but perhaps for those of us doing crampons for the first time, it was good to start on easy terrain first.

When there comes the steep section. It is wooded, meaning if you fall you’re unlikely to go down very far, on the other hand, you have very little time to self-arrest, before the tree “arrests” you, which might be quite unpleasant.

Our guides had to set up a rope in one of the places, which was pretty steep. I did not use it, though some others in our group did.

While we were in the trees, there was not a lot of wind… just an occasional sound of the wind blowing, as we got above the tree line we started to feel the wind blowing, though it was relatively mild.    The trail very much flattened at that point and I do not really understand why Guides had us walking with ice axes – I think using crampons and poles would be preferred at that point. 

As we got higher up, getting closer to the Lion’s Head some of us were getting tired – Mountaineering is a very much endurance sport and you need to be sure you can keep the pace for many hours in a row.  We were considering splitting the group with some of us going down… but decided to get all together to Lion’s Head and decide.

After the Lion’s Head, the trail goes by the open ridge for a while… which was Really Windy.  Guides suggested we get out from the rocks to see how the wind feels…. And O boy it feels…  I was kicked down from my feet by wind gusts before deciding it was unsafe to continue.    This is the point we turned down.   The weather station on the top of the mountain reported wind gusts of up to 95 mph (150+ km/h) at that time.

To go down we went the summer route as avalanche danger was not bad, per our guides, and it was pretty cool – navigating through the deep snow on a relatively steep slow. 

As we got down below the tree line, nothing showed the windy hell up the mountain – it was Saturday and there were a lot of people hiking and skiing at the lower section of the mountain.

As we got back we discovered a significant storm was expected the next day afternoon which could close down Boston Airport and roads, so we all decided to depart early instead of doing a morning of winter activities.

Takeaways

Even though we did not make it to Mt Washington summit, I still think it is a good beginner mountain for experienced hikers looking to try their hand at mountaineering.     Now I’ve been through the main technical section of the train I also would be comfortable doing it on my own. 

I’m surely planning to get to Mt Washington Summit in Winter – perhaps I should look at the weather and do last last-minute quick weekend trip to climb it sometime. 

If you would like us to repeat the trip as a Geeks Go Peaks adventure too, let us know!

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