Glacier Du Bossons

I had been in Chamonix for a few days, and my Airbnb had a great little deck that overlooked Mont Blanc. On the near side of the mountain there was a massive glacier (pictures from a distance never do it justice, but it was impressive to see)

I found a stack of maps on the bookshelf at the apartment and decided to figure out a way up. It turned out to be a short drive to a private road, a hike through a mixed neighborhood/ski resort area, and then to a trailhead.

It was frustrating. Everything was closed. First the parking lot (I found a spot on the side of the road), then the trail (I translated the sign as best I could to understand that I could go partially up, but not all the way due to snow), I ducked the rope and went for it.


There's a mountain hut near the glacier and yet another chained off area with a sign I could kind-of read indicating that I shouldn't go further. There were people working on the hut and I managed to talk my way past them and get permission to go a little further.


I only had to climb up a few hundred yards past the hut before I got a great view of the glacier. It was impressive and surprisingly loud. It was pushing 70 degrees out, so the snow melt had created a river underneath the glacier. It was a pretty relaxing place to lie down for a while.


I took a grass road past some rural homes on the way down with some unreal views looking back toward Le Brevent.

Le Brevent (Planpraz - 2,000m)

I had kicked around a number of different ideas including some traditional summer routes on the subpeaks of Mount Blanc. One of them required taking a cable car to the trailhead. At the base, I spoke some broken French to a guide to assess the feasibility of my plan. This wasn't working, so I showed her on the map. In very clear English she said "forget about it" and then did a pretty clear hand gesture indicating avalanches. I went to a mountain climbing guide HQ to propose some other routes and they confirmed this problem. 

 As a result, I ended up heading to the opposite side of the valley toward the summit of Le Brevent. The top section was also closed for "unstable trail conditions", but I could get up to a subpeak called Planpraz. The trail was beautiful and started on some winding footpaths in the valley before climbing up a mix of glades ski trails, access paths, and some switchbacks up steeper ski trails. 

At the summit there was a little cafe (mostly accessed via cable car) serving coffee, sandwiches and beer. Great contrast to white mountain hiking. 

Wildcat D (4,070') (again) and Wildcat E (4,046')

This was my second trip up Wildcat D (both times hiking up and skiing down). The temperature on my car thermostat read -9 shortly before starting. As a result, my phone didn't make it out of my pocket often for pictures.

There was no visible parking/trailhead in the snow for the Wildcat Ridge Trail, so we parked at Pinkham Notch and geared up there before heading to the Lost Pond trail for 0.9 miles before linking up with the Wildcat Ridge Trail. 

The trail was packed and frozen, but it was clear that no one had been on it for a few days. We did not use snowshoes, and never felt like we needed them. Microspikes the whole way up. The Wildcat Ridge Trail to the Wildcat D summit is only 2.2 miles long, but carries 3,500 feet of elevation gain. As a result, it is quite steep. Most of the pitches could be handled with careful walking. There were probably 4-5 which involved a little more creativity using trees for hand holds or "anchoring" in with trekking poles. 

Full crampons and an ice axe would have made it easier, but I'd say it was passable with spikes and a little bit of caution this time. I could see it freezing in such a way that would really make crampons and ice axes essential. 

We made it to the top in a little over 3 hours which felt pretty slow. Part of the slow pace was a result of staring at pitches and figuring out the best way up. Transitioning from hiking boots to ski boots was terrible. Boots were frozen and rigid. It took the better part of half an hour to change gear. The ski ride down was a total of about 5 minutes down the polecat trail. 

Casualties: Steve's helmet blew off the mountain while we were putting our boots on. 

Pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/RwbWOVCAmHrUOFCq2

Mount Flume (4,328')

For a little background on this one, this mountain has become my nemesis. I’ve been within a mile and a few hundred vertical feet of the summit twice and had to turn around. The first time was back in 2011 when I was first returning to hiking after back surgery. I got to the Liberty summit on a cold and windy November afternoon. In my less-than-ideal physical condition, I determined that I probably wasn’t capable of getting myself out of trouble if I got lost or injured, so I bailed. The second time was during a heavy snow storm with my brother. We snowshoed exhaustingly to Liberty. The ridge-line trail was very difficult to follow and the snow was very deep. We bailed. That one was an easy decision.

This time was going to be different. I decided to abandon the traditional route via Liberty, because this was going to be another solo winter climb and I didn’t want to deal with the exposed ridge-line again. Turning around for a third time on that ridge would’ve been hard to do. This time I approached from the Lincoln Woods side, which starts as a gradual climb from the Pemi wilderness and only gets steep for the top 1/3^rd.

I got an on-time start a few minutes before 9 AM. Since I was solo, and its winter, I carried a full pack including a sleeping bag, and a Jetboil stove (for melting snow for water if needed). The trail was very hard-packed so I started with spikes, but carried my snowshoes on my back as well. My pack was much heavier than would be desired for the planned 11.2 mile climb, but at least I was prepared.

With the hard-packed trail conditions I was able to make great time, I was chugging down miles and awaiting my left turn from the Lincoln Woods trail onto the Osseo trail. Overlooking the Pemigewasset river to my left, I began thinking that the bridge to cross it and get me over to Osseo was going to have to be quite substantial. The water was running really high and the river is already wide at that section. I stopped to check my map and realized my error. There was no bridge. I fucked up. I’ve been in this section of the mountains several times before, and each time, it hadn’t mattered whether I headed out on the East or West sides of the river. The two trails junction a few more miles in, so it was a non-factor for previous hikes. It was a factor for this one. The fact that I had started out so fast only made things worse and took me further away from the starting point.

I checked the clock and saw I had been going for about 35 minutes and had already covered nearly 2 miles. I bushwhacked down to the river to see if there were any safe places to rock-hop across to the west side. There weren’t, so I began backtracking all the way to the trailhead. By the time I got back to the starting point, I’d already burned 3.5 to 4 miles worth of energy/water, wasted over an hour of daylight, and had the starts to a pretty fierce blister. Not how I wanted to begin the day.

Redoing the math, if I hit the “book time” targets, I’d still be done by a few minutes after 5:00. It’d be dark, but the last several miles were relatively flat and I had a headlamp. It’d be fine. So I started back up again, on the west side of the Pemi this time. The trail starts out nice and open and then briefly dives into a pine forest for some fun switchbacks. It opens up again for a few miles leading up to a series of ladders about 75% of the way up. The ladders cover a series of very steep pitches near the ridge-line, and with the decent amount of snow already down, they were completely covered in hard pack snow to the point that you wouldn’t even know they were there unless you were looking for them. As a result, this section was a very slow and careful climb. The footing is still decent because it wasn’t frozen solid. If it really freezes, I’m not sure this section would be safely passable without an ice axe and crampons.  

After the ladders its a few more steeper pitches before it flattens out on a ridge for several hundred yards leading to the final steeper ascent to the summit. Up to this point, I really felt like I was dragging ass. I had hoped to make the summit in under 3 hours, and I had barely made it to the ladders in that time frame (adjusting for my late starting time, I’d actually been hiking for over 4 hours). I was stopping to rest on my poles every hundred feet or so. I didn’t mind finishing in the dark, but I definitely needed to be done the steep parts by then. I later decided it was the extra pack weight slowing me down.

Near the summit, before the final climb, there’s a trail junction with flume slide. I grabbed some extra clothes and Spot GPS tracker and ditched my pack there so I could do the last bit super light. It felt great. The summit was beautiful and worth the wait. I had made it in about 3.5 hours which put me loosely on track for book time (surprising, because again, I felt SO slow uphill).

There were a couple other hikers I had been trading places with on the way up. One of them seemed pretty sluggish near the top and was taking a lot of breaks (no judgment, it was a bitch). While I was on the summit enjoying the view, I saw that they had looked at the final climb (only a hundred yards away) and turned around to head back down. I know not everyone is bagging peaks, but I can’t fathom getting that close only to turn back. I hope everything was alright.

The couple minutes of wind-chill on the summit were enough to drain my phone battery from 65% to 0%. It was only a bummer because I’d been listening to and really enjoying Outside Magazine podcasts on the way up. It also took out my only camera for the way down.

I made it down in barely 2 hours beating the book time by well over an hour (ignoring my ~4 mile detour).  Despite the frustration it was still a really good hike. I’d like to come back to Flume (perhaps via flume slide) in the summer time.

Five to go.

Pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/M6QMvH5u0mOgVE9G3

Mount Galehead (4,024)

 Steve and I met at the Gale River trailhead around 8:30. On arrival, the thermometer in my car read 16 degrees and there were a few inches of fresh snow on the ground.

The trail to Galehead is mostly a comfortable and gradual climb with a few minor water crossings and a short steeper ascent to the AT junction. Being so cold, it was pretty easy to regulate temperature with layers and keep from overheating. Only really got cold during the few times we stopped for food or to unfreeze the tubes to our camel packs (these were a mistake... it was too cold to keep the tubes from freezing every 5 minutes). 

There were no big views until reaching the Galehead hut (.5 from the summit) which was boarded up for the season. The hut sits in a clearing and provided shelter from the wind, so it was actually pretty warm standing on the porch of the hut. We barebooted from the trailhead to the hut.

From there, we added spikes and made the quick ascent to the viewless summit. Kept the spikes on most of the way down for added security, but probably would have been fine without. They made it easier. 

We were back to the car by 2:30ish. Steve headed back to Portland, but I stopped at the Woodstock Inn for some chili and beer. 

42 down, 6 to go. 

Pictures here: Galehead

Mount Zealand (4,260'), Mount Guyot (4,580'), Mount Bond (4,698'), Bondcliff (4,265'), Mount Bond again (4,698'), West Bond (4,540'), Guyot site, Mount Guyot again (4,580'), South Twin (4,902'), North Twin (4,761')

Steve and I met at the Mount Washington Hotel bar on Friday night for some dinner and to watch playoff baseball (not many local options had both). We crashed at the seven dwarfs motel to get an early start on Saturday. We had heard Guyot campsite could be crowded and wanted to be early enough to claim a spot.

Dropped a car at the Haystack trailhead and continued over to Zealand road. The hike to zeacliff was pleasant in cool fall weather with some really impressive views in peak leaf season. The view from zeacliff was excellent and certainly the best we had of the weekend (one of the best of I've seen in the Whites).  The clouds rolled in as we approached the Zealand summit and were with us for the rest of the trip. We knocked off Zealand and continued on to Guyot (not official 4K list).

We descended to the Guyot campsite and were among the first people to arrive. Grabbed a tent platform and dropped our gear to head out and hike the Bonds. On our way to the Bonds, we saw 20+ different people headed toward the Guyot tentsite. We were glad to have found a spot early.

The Bonds were uneventful, and wet. It's clear the views here would be incredible in better conditions but we couldn't see anything beyond 50 feet.

The Guyot site was packed when we got back (est. 50 people?) We shared a tent platform with a nice dude doing the Pemi loop, but it's close quarters there. Can't even imagine on a summer weekend with good weather. Given the good water source (there's a spring in the middle of the site), and the great location, I can understand the popularity.

We hiked out on Sunday over the two twins. We had contemplated getting Galehead too, but the weather was rough and neither of us had much interest to do it in the rain and fog. On the way down the weather turned and we finished up under blue skies.

Six more off the list.

Pictures here:Photos

Mount Whiteface (4,020') and Mount Passaconaway (4,043')

Arrived at the Ferncroft trailhead right around 9:00 on Saturday. Parking lot was already nearly full on the unseasonably warm day. I was able to pack light with no rain or cool temperatures forecast.

(dirt road to the trailhead)

I ascended via the Blueberry Ledge trail. The early parts of the trail had many intermittent steep sections laced in with nice flat walks to catch your breath. Nearer the summit of Whiteface, it opened up into strictly steep sections with some great southern views. I had read not to do this trail in winter. After seeing some of the rock faces and scrambles, I concur with that recommendation. Nothing technical or difficult for dry warm weather though.

(scramble)

I spent just a little time on the Whiteface summit and kept moving for Passaconaway. The trail between the two peaks was quite pleasant and mostly downhill. Arriving at the loop trail for the summit of Passaconaway, the trail gets very steep again. This was a rough and rugged trail with lots of large rocks and narrow sections. The summit itself has no views, but for an extra 0.3, you can get an awesome overlook facing north toward the Kanc. It was a worthwhile detour. 

Slow going on the way down the Walden trail, and not much to see. I took the shortcut around Wonalancet because it was getting late and I had run out of water (dumb). 

Got back to the car around 5:00 and drove ~1 hr to the Waterville campground for the night. Good trip all around and 2 more off the list. 13 to go.

Pictures here (mix of SLR and phone): Photos