To ken Mt Washington is to perceive, understand, and know Mt Washington and we’re the ones to call when ready to advance to that. That’s what a young fellow and his father did when the younger of the two wanted to conquer the New Hampshire’s tallest mountain. At 6288 feet it’s a lot of mountain, and even more so for our young hiker. Being that he was from Florida, he literally started his epic from sea level.
They read our online reviews and were drawn to our consistently positive ratings so the father reached out wanting us to lead his son to the top. The lad, he told us, was “very fit” and was looking for a “vigorous day.” This is a very realistic expectation so we were on board feeling he probably quite capable (and he was — they crushed it). He just needed some gear. The lad had a pack but we supplied a lot of what was in it and they rented a Ready Pack to ensure all was good.
There was only one small problem: Thanks to our policy regarding Youth Protection, we would need to put two guides on it. The dad was okay with this, understanding the policy’s importance, so we assigned Redline Guides Eric Hansen and Debra McCown. And the young man from Florida had two guides to show him the ropes. Before getting into the photos, here’s another perspective from Eric.
After meeting up at Base Camp to secure our guest’s rental gear, we shuttled to Pinkham Notch to begin our Mt Washington hike. We took Tuckerman Ravine Tr on the ascent, and a loop around Lion Head Tr back to Tuckerman on the descent. It was a very decent weather day, warm at the trailhead but much cooler and breezier at elevation. We enjoyed some ‘late season’ remaining snowpack in the ravine bowl, hiked up along a waterfall, and experienced all the varied terrain of the Rock Pile. Once above the ravine bowl, we hit the cloud floor and continued our ascent, in the mist and vapor, up the summit cone. Our guest, hailing from Florida, is a high school track and cross country runner, and we had a hunch he’d do just fine on this hike, especially given the lack of alligators. In fact, we believe he’s been one of the fastest people we personally have guided up the east side. Impressive given this was, reportedly, the most vertical elevation gain he’d taken on in a single day, perhaps by a factor of 100x! We hit the summit, got our pictures at the summit sign, then took a break at the visitor center. After a short while we decided we’d head back down. It was another new experience for our guest to make such a lengthy descent, yet any time we checked on his status, his verbal reply was ‘chilling,’ which we eventually figured out meant he was doing just fine. We really enjoyed hiking with our guest and giving him a big mountain experience. He knocked it out of the park! —Eric
