Fair weather hiking is the norm for many people, and is all that they know, but in the case of guides, search and rescue volunteers, and other mountain professionals, the conditions can be anything but fair. But as you’ll read in the summary below — written by Redline Guide Debra McCown — occasionally pushing on can offer some unexpected rewards as they learned taking on Mt Monroe.
Today’s original plan was to hike Mt Monroe and Mt Washington, but the weather was stormy all the way up, and when we arrived at the hut, even though we’d made good time breaking trail, it was apparent that the high winds and poor visibility would slow us down above treeline. There was only going to be time for one summit, so I gave my guest a choice: Try for Washington, knowing that intensifying weather might turn us around before we reached the top, or go for the smaller and closer summit of Monroe. Having never experienced these kind of weather conditions before, he chose Monroe.
As it turned out, Monroe came with its own challenge: The upper part of the trail, which goes up the northeast side of the peak, had a ton of wind-loaded snow that I was super uncomfortable with from a safety standpoint. So, we turned around to try a different way. We wound up going to the summit by a more westerly approach, sticking to firm and textured snow as we went up from the northwest. The only downside: It put us in the full force of a whipping northwest wind.
But we battled the wind to the top, and the mountain rewarded us: Not only did the sun come out as we began the ascent, but while we were on the summit the clouds cleared, giving us a great view of both Mt Washington and the valley below. We then descended in late afternoon sunshine that was an amazing contrast to what we’d experienced earlier and a perfect end to the day. —Debra
