Date: 2018-08-13
From: Lake of the Clouds Hut

To: Madison Spring Hut
Miles today: 7.1

We awoke to a beautiful, clear day. Spider went outside and took a picture of Mt. Washington...not a cloud around it. The 7am weather report by the Croo said it was 52 degrees, 9 mph winds and visibility was 40 miles. We couldn't ask for a better day to visit the top of Mt. Washington! We ate breakfast, then packed up and hit the trail at 8am, and what did we find? The top of Mt. Washington was shrouded in clouds. Darn! We started our 1200 ft climb immediately. The last 600 ft of the climb was in a dense cloud where we hiked from one cairn to the next. We hardly knew we were at the top until we almost ran into a building.A building? So it's time for a little bit about Mt. Washington and why getting over the top has been a focus of our hike since Day 1. Mt. Washington is the highest mountain in New Hampshire. More importantly it is known to have the worst weather in the US. It lies in an area of convergence of cold air dropping from Canada and moist air coming up from the Atlantic Ocean. The effects are dramatic. Winds have reached over 200 mph. It can and has snowed every month of the year. Standing out as much as it does, it can create it's own weather. And, like we saw today, the weather can change quickly. Earlier this year, thru-hikers had to wait in town for 6 days as a storm raged on Mt. Washington making it impassable. So our concern from Day 1 was whether Mother Nature was going to let us get over the top of Mt. Washington on schedule.We arrived at the top at 9:30am. It was completely socked in, but the winds were calm. That is our picture of the day. We had to share the top with about 200 other people because it is also a tourist attraction and has been since the mid-1800s. There is a road up to the top from the north and a cog train to the top from the south. We left the top at 10am and continued our cairn-by-cairn hike down the other side of Mt. Washington. The trail was mostly rocks varying from the size of a breadbox to the size of a coffee table and continued that way the rest of the day. So we had to concentrate on every step, making progress slow.We soon crossed over the cog train tracks, then paralleled them for a distance. It was wierd hearing the train chugging very nearby, but not able to see it for all the fog. In the middle of the day we actually saw the sun and had some views, but that gave way to a light rain by 1:30pm. That made the rocky trail even more treacherous and slowed us down even more. We were beginning to wonder if we would reach the next hut in time for the 6pm dinner. Fortunately the rain only lasted for about 30 minutes and the rocks dried fairly quickly, with a 20mph wind blowing. The rain returned again at 4:30pm with a little more intensity but, once again only lasted for about 30 minutes.We finally arrived at the Madison Spring Hut at 5:30pm. We had just enough time to clean up before dinner was served. We met some great thru-hikers and had a good time talking about hiking all over the world.Today we passed over or around Mt. Clay, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Adam's and best of all Mt. Washington. Wahoo!To bed at 8pm. The forecast is for rain tomorrow. Yuk!