Thousands of people have completed the 48 4000-footers in New Hampshire. At a glance this may indicate that accomplishing this is somehow easy. But it’s not. For the thousands of people who have done it, there are millions who haven’t and many of those dare not even try. To successfully complete this list you have to have what it takes. You need time, the drive to awaken early and make it so, the means, the ability to access the mountains, the strength, and the courage as well. Doing it may take many days, weeks, months, or even years, and is indeed a commitment. We know this and are stoked when someone comes to us looking to get the support on many or a few. It gives us purpose. And when that happens we were often there at the end — the task complete. Such is the case for this hike up Mt Madison and Mt Adams. We were reached late in the process in this case. Our guest only having Jefferson, Owls Head, and Madison/Adams left. On these last two, there for the grand finish, was Redline Guide Eric Hansen. To detail this trip in particular Eric furnish the following summary and photos.
With a possibility of rain in the afternoon, we got an early start from Appalachia Trailhead, taking Valley Way up to Madison Spring Hut. We used the hut as a base camp of sorts, taking a break there to eat and drink, then making the out-and-back trek over to Mt Adams first by way of Gulfside and Airline Trails. The weather stayed nice for us for most of the hike, and we had blue skies with intermittent cloud cover. The summit of Adams itself was partly fogged in, but there was very little wind and the day was comfortable from a temperature standpoint. Most of the snow has melted out, and we encountered almost none on the trails themselves. After summiting Adams and returning to the hut, we ate lunch, then made the out-and-back to Mt Madison for our guest’s final 4000 footer — his finisher. It was nice to have done the heavier lifting first with Adams, since Madison seemed almost like a victory lap. Again with ideal air and ground conditions, we made excellent time to the Madison summit where our guest completed their goal. He was elated, and with his son present, it was a truly memorable and special moment. On the way down, it started sprinkling just a bit, but felt good in the warmer, lower elevations. It seemed like most of our trail chit-chat shifted to food and specifically dinner that night… probably explains why our guest, feeling strong (and hungry) decided we should trail run the last section of Valley Way! What a fantastic day, and a great father/son duo who I truly enjoyed meeting and hiking with. Massive congrats to our guest on crushing the NH48 in his mid 60s, over a span of merely a year! So inspiring. —Eric
