This past weekend’s adventure 12-17-17, brought me to the White Mountains once again. This time I would be hiking Whiteface mountain and Passonconaway mountain. I decided to get an early start, waking up at 1am to get an early start and finalize my pack. I drove over to the trail head and arrived at 3:30am. While I was driving my car’s outside temperature read 10 degrees and continued to drop to -5 when I arrived at the trail head. I stepped out of my car and looked up at the still night, clear sky. I could see everystar in the sky without a cloud in the sky. I donned my gear and started up the road to the trail head due to the fact that this trail passed through private property, and it is important to be respectful of that.
I started my way up Dicey’s mill trail all the way up to the summit of Passconaway. While I was hiking up I was surrounded by pitch black all around me and the stars from the sky shining down on me. A ways in I startled a large animal, I was not able to figure out what it was. As the sun started to rise I was greeted by the red aura that came from the sunrise. As I approached the summit the temperature was still a comfortable 5 degrees. The first vista provided a wonderful of the mountains towards the northwest. I took a quick break and chowed down on some trail snacks. I began my way back down to the trail junction of Dicey’s mill trail and Rollins Trail. The trail looked like it had received very little use since the past snow fall as it was lightly broken, perhaps by 2 hikers. I continued walking through the snow covered forest treading carefully as the snow pack was hard on top and soft underneath.
I continued to make my way to the ridge stopping by to enjoy the view of the ridge line /> I would soon have to trek across. The trek to the summit of whitface as definitely a difficult one with my pack weight being heavy in preparation for my 3 day trip coming up during new years.
The ridge line hike to Whiteface was very peaceful, the sun was shining through all the trees and the birds were musical. When I arrived to the summit of Whiteface, I was greeted by a clear cloudless blue sky, there was no wind and the sun was shining down on the snow covered summit. I had a quick lunch consisting of cliff bars and what was left of my hot chocolate and coffee. After my short lunch I took off my snow shoes and descended down back to the road via the Blueberry ledges trail. The trail greeted me with ledges that I had to climb down which made for a fun challenge, gazing upon the clear skies in the background. With each ledge I descended, a new view was given to me. I got down to the trail head around 3pm still with a clear blue sky.
I hope you enjoyed my first adventure blog post.
Stay Tuned for the next blog posting to be posted soon.
