A 2-Day Presidential Traverse Affair- Day 2: Southern Comfort

Before I get into Day 2, I should mention a mentality I have sort of always had about running and trail running and kind of about life. Big groups are not my cup of tea. It may be that I don’t have the dominating personality to really take part in large group discussion, or that I am just not comfortable putting myself and my opinions out there into the world to so large an audience at a time, but I tend to prefer smaller, more intimate hang outs. In fact, in groups where I find myself being loud and overwhelming, it is typically because I do not really care about the company I am with (which is not a good thing). I like to get to know people and to know that what they are saying, they are saying to ME and what I am saying is to THEM. This has been part of my personality for a long time. Beyond social groups,  I really value my time alone, going my own speed, doing things my way. A number of times in my life by a number of eclectic people I have been labeled a ‘lone wolf’ and I don’t think it’s inaccurate, nor do I think it is a bad thing. In fact, I nearly got a lone wolf tattoo a few years ago and still consider going for it. I don’t mind spending many hours by myself in the woods. I learn things about myself, I think through my own troubles, I handle my own situations, and I overcome my own fears. I also don’t mind doing that in smaller groups, I learn things about other people intimately that way. But in large groups, I lose my focus, I lose my reason for being there and doing what I want to do, and I become concerned with falling in step and doing things other people’s way instead of my own. That is another partial reason why I opted to go my own way for the weekend. ANYWAY–

After Day 1, my knees and my quads were in a poor state. I wasn’t sure how well I’d fare for Day 2 but wanted to get up and get going anyway. The important peaks for me on Day 2 were Eisenhower, Pierce, & Jackson. Depending on how I felt and if my friends caught up to me, I would add Webster as well. I would park at Crawford Notch with plans to both start and end there, so I could transport a group of my friends back.

At 5:30am Saturday morning, the alarm went off in our hotel. The other 3 in the room with me prepped for their 6:00am start of their traverse. I was lying half conscious on the bed waiting for them to leave so I could fall back asleep, and surely I did, with my own alarm set for 8am. I woke up around 8:20am having slept through my alarm! I got my pack together, same set up as the day before, and headed to my car to head south. The parking lot was about 40 minutes drive south of the hotel, which gave me time to eat and blast some pump up music—Thunder Road anyone?

Today I would take the Crawford Path trail up to Pierce, north to Eisenhower, and then back through Pierce to Jackson on the Webster-Jackson trail. If I added Webster, then I would take the Webster Cliff Trail to get back to my car. Solid plan, but after yesterday I wanted to check the map.

Starting on the Crawford Path, I headed up the mountain. The Crawford Path is the oldest continuously used and maintained trail in the United States. Developed in the early 1800’s, it was originally a horse trail to tackle the Presidentials, but has since changed into a single track hiker trail. Many paths and trails in the White Mountains are named after the pioneers who developed them, and the Crawford Path pays homage to Ethan Crawford and his wife Lucy. Lucy is famed in the region for writing the history of the Whites and documenting the early trail creators. It was a beautiful and runnable trail that I power hiked. After the first mile, my legs loosened up and started to feel good. I was running a lot more than I thought I would be, given how sore I was the night before. The Crawford Path was gentle grade up without much views until the top. I made it to Eisenhower and back to Pierce pretty uneventfully.

At Pierce, I stopped to eat and immediately a bird flew to a tree near my face.

 

A gray jay

I said “hello” to it and another hiker on the summit asked me if I knew what type of bird it was. Because I’m ignorant of all birds that are not giant raptors, he told me it was a gray jay (or a “camp robber” or “whiskey jack”) and it would eat snacks out of my hand. Like so:

The guy that I was talking to also said it would eat one off my head, so naturally I HAD to try and ended up with this amazing photograph:

While I admit that it is a pretty cool photo, I later did some research and there is debate about whether it is a good idea to feed the gray jays. The jays are smart birds (clearly since they can get people to feed them) and do not only steal food from humans but from all species from New England throughout Canada. While a peanut here or there from me won’t throw off the entire ecosystem, gray jay dependence on human food will deter them from stealing food off other species—such as engorged ticks from moose (thereby helping the moose population and preventing the spread of Lyme’s disease). So the moral of this story is to do as I say (and don’t feed them) and not as I do (achieve awesome bird photos). ** I will allow an exception if you feed the gray jay an engorged tick.

They hiker I met on the Pierce summit was a volunteer for the weekend with the AMC. We chatted a bit; I asked him for his favorite trails in the Whites and what trails he thought were more runnable (which is giving me some ideas for next weekend). He also told me a little bit about the hotel history for the Mt. Washington summit. Apparently, historically there have been a number of hotels and plans for hotels on the summit, but nothing ends up lasting the harsh winters. There was even a plan for a hotel to be built around the real summit, meaning that in order to properly tag it, you had to enter the lobby of the hotel. Ridiculous! There are no current plans for a hotel or anything disrupting the summit. The Tip Top House up there now is an old lodging though… 

Anyway, after chatting for nearly 20 minutes, I headed towards Jackson. There is a long scramble down from Pierce to the hut that had 2 or 3 ladders and was slow going, but after the reaching the Hut and taking the Webster-Jackson trail, everything became VERY runnable. Lots of boards and easy ascents and descents until you get to the summit climb. My friends opted out of Jackson and Webster after being let down by Pierce—but I think they made a mistake. I loved the runs from Pierce to Jackson to Webster.

I’m sorry Mt. Jackson, your views are fo’ real…

On Webster, I had a great experience. First of all, the views are something you do not get on the Presidential mountains. You can look west at the Willey-Fields range, beyond to the Zealands, south to the Bonds! It was so breathtaking and really not something you get at the Presidential mountain summits. Also, there was a guy up there who I saw eyeing me up and I wasn’t sure why. At first I thought he was trying to read my shirt (which was a Rutgers Half Marathon shirt.. not something I think the Whites see very often) but after a few minutes he blurted out “You were running on Whiteface and Passaconway about a month ago, weren’t you?” which is totally true. He said he remembered my face and chatting with me on those trails. He said he tried to run down Passaconway after seeing me do it and after went out and bought trail running shoes after he got down. He has been running more after we spoke last month. Now I’m not a great trail runner by any standard (just ask my knees) and I’m far from an elite like Jan but that felt really awesome to hear.

Furthermore, while trying to get down from Webster, I encountered this older hippie-esque gentleman crushing beers with his daughter (maybe) who I kindly took a beer from in return of carrying down their recycling (aka a bag of finished beers). This felt like a fair trade to me—I was going down for 2.5 miles back to the car and they were continuing on the trail. Not a bad trade. Once I got to the bottom, I had a 3 hour chill out period before I saw the smiling exhausted faces of my friends! Spent time finishing my book and napping in the trunk of my car:

Elephant’s head view up there!

Overall, my weekend was fun. I did have my garmin GPS watch for this run, but since I’m a space cadet sometimes, I didn’t have it running the whole time and thus have poor data of my run. I know I did more than 4,000ft elevation gain that day and probably closer to 7,000 or 8,000 ft the day before. I would guess I did about 11 miles on Day 2, plus the 14.5 from Day 1 = 25.5 miles on the weekend. This is a heavy weekend for my legs and me and here I sit, 2 days later still sore. I’ve been foam rolling morning and before bed.

Summit marker

 

Waterfalls going down off Webster

the Cog train passing by me trying to nap in the car #rude

Overall things I learned from Day 2:

• Your legs don’t want to start but once they start they loosen up
• Talk to as many people as you want, they are interesting
• If you have the energy, go for the extra cliff—webster was beautiful!
• Having the garmin is nice, but only for the end data- don’t look at it!
• Don’t feed the gray jays

 

 

 

A 2-Day Presidential Traverse Affair- Day 1: Attacking the North

Sometimes the best motivation is stealing the motivation of others. That is why I am blessed to know so many trail minded people who take the initiative to plan weekends in the mountains, and even better—they plan weekends in the mountains that I need to climb.

This is the case for this past weekend. A group of Raritan Valley Round Runners from NJ (the trail extension of the group) planned to commit to a Madison to Pierce Presidential Traverse on Saturday August 23, 2014. Initially, I thought to join them the whole time but recently I’ve had shaky legs and have found myself bloody on the ground. So instead, in the spirit of secession and attacking the north, I would come up and run-hike the day before and the day of while also helping my friends by being a transport. This trip allowed me to knock off MADISON, ADAMS, JEFFERSON, clay, WASHINGTON, MONROE, EISENHOWER, PIERCE, JACKSON, and webster (lower case letters for a lower, non-4kfooter list mountains). So with that plan in mind, let me get to the peaks!

For Friday, my plan was to catch a shuttle from Appalachia to the Ammonoosuc Ravine trailhead, and then hit everything from Monroe to Madison and end at my car. The AMC provided shuttle left the parking lot at 8:15am, which meant that I left my house in Boston at 5am. Because the weather is extremely unpredictable at Mt. Washington, I wore shorts, T-Shirt, brought gloves and a long sleeve, and had my pack with my rain coat like so:

 

The shuttle went first all the way to the Highland Center @ Crawford Notch first, where another runner boarded. He and I talked for a while and he told me he was attempting a Presidential Traverse, I told him how that was the plan for some of my friends for Saturday. Upon hearing him say he was aiming to complete it in 4 hours and 30 minutes, I just stared at him, asked him how many times he’s done this, and if he was aware of the FKT (fastest known time). He smiled and introduced himself as Jan Wellford (his blog here), previous record holder of the Presi FKT (prior to Ben Nephew taking it from him by a minute last summer). I, of course, started swooning because he wasn’t short and weird looking (no offense other ultra runners) but was handsome and charismatic. He gave me some advice for first ultras and the area and I wished him luck and told him I’d see him up there as I jumped off the shuttle to start my journey.

Jan’s goal was another bit of motivation that I stole. After talking with a pro, I thought about who I was, what I was capable of, and my attitude. I love the mountains and hiking—I admire those who can run it. I felt inspired and ready to go. I looked down to turn on my GPS watch when I saw this:

I knew I charged it the night before, too… oh well!

 Okay. No problem. So this would be a blind hike. No worries! I had my phone for keeping track of time, money and my ID for emergencies, and a map in case I got lost. See? Attitude is great already! I was about to attempt the great TFKT (Tess’s fastest known time… although I suppose there could be some Tess out there who already set it! Curses!)

The Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail (ART) was a simple climb up to the Lake of the Clouds Hut. I didn’t get a ton of great views at all this entire day thanks to serious cloud cover, but I didn’t mind. From Lake of the Clouds Hut, I headed up to Monroe and back down. Monroe offered a foggy shell as seen here:

Mt. Monroe

And here is the lake on the way up to Mt. Washington:

Lake of the Clouds

Proof of Mt. Washington:

He made love like an eagle falling out of the sky, killed his sensei in a dual and he never said why.

And from Washington over to Mt. Clay I wasted a ton of time lost on the trail. I ended up taking the Gulf Slide Trail instead of the Gulfside Trail (silly me) and noticed fairly quickly that I should not be descending down a rockslide into the Gulf Wilderness. But of course I am not the sharpest, so partially down the slide, I had a gut feeling that this is wrong. Instead of just going back up and checking the map, I saw a sign ~100 feet lower and thought it would be more informative to get to that sign instead. Well after an EXTREMELY technical and dangerous descent, the sign offered no relief as all it said was “NO CAMPING”. Ugh. So I went back up ~500ft, and an hr later I was on the right trail. Hindsight of course made me realize that I was stupid to even think the slide was right, but whatever—live and learn!

I hate you, Great Gulf Wilderness!

So now I’m on the right trail over to Mt. Clay. Mt. Clay is easy peasy and on the way down I see coming at me, full speed, wide smile, and hiking poles raised—Jan! I gave him a ‘woo’ and a thumbs up and that gave me fresh legs and a reminder of his energy and frankly his courage for sprinting over those technical rocks. With that in mind, I made my way up Jefferson, up Adams, and over to Madison. After Madison, I struggled to get down. The Watson Path to the Brookside Trail to the Valley Way is slow-going and extremely technical. My knees and my quads were hurting and I was getting hungry (gels and granola bars are only so good). I still had plenty of water but maybe I should’ve been drinking more, who knows.

Eventually, I stumbled out of the woods and was never happier to have strawberries and a sandwich waiting for me in the car. Overall, a productive day. ~14.5 miles start to end (guessing on the parts where I wandered lost). I started at 9:45am and hit my car around 5:30pm. A full days work, and absolutely worth it.

Cog railroad tracks

To Mt. Clay, or maybe Jefferson? Rocks and clouds.

Mt. Adams

Duh, mountains selfie

 

Some take away points from Day 1:

• 5 more peaks
• No GPS is quite refreshing, although slower going
• Was able to run quite a bit and I didn’t fall(!!!!)
• Foggy Summits = like running on the moon
• Unable to see more than 20 yards ahead maybe kept me focused
• Don’t get lost, think about the trails
• Didn’t need the raincoat but I was glad to know I had it

You can always smell a thru-hiker…

I am currently signed up and training for a road marathon. The race– the Philadelphia Marathon– isn’t until the end of November, but because I’m not a seasoned marathoner (only ran one so far), I need to train pretty hard to consistently reach that distance without either fatiguing, dehydrating, or dying of boredom.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because some days I’d rather spend in the mountains running, but instead I am pounding away on the roads. Sunday was one of those days. I had just moved my life from NJ to Brighton with the help of Aleksi, Sean, and Becca. It was an exhausting weekend and the piles of things in my room (that are still there) were giving me anxiety. I looked at my training calendar and that week’s “long” run was only 9 miles. I went out Sunday evening and ran about 10 miles around the reservoir and then down by the Charles. It felt good to get out and move, but I hadn’t run prior for 4 days so I was certainly a bit sore.

In my sore state, I decided to take it easy on the following day, when I decided to go to the Whites with my Monday off. It was August 4, 2014 (yesterday) and I chose a nice 9.5 mile lollipop loop around Mt. Flume and up to Mt. Liberty and then back down. While reading about this trail, many guides claimed its difficulty to be between “Very Easy to Extremely Difficult” and while that sounds strange–it is a spot on description of what I hit! I would start at a parking lot nearly immediately on top of Rt. 93 in Lincoln, NH. It was right after the Flume Visitor’s Lodge– a hugely popular little tourist stop that I stopped to pee in. The trailhead is about 2 minutes passed it, where there are signs for the AT.

The trail you start on is the White House Trail, for almost a mile. Then you hit the the Liberty Springs Trail, which is part of the AT. After running on this for about a half mile, it splits. To the right is the Flume Slide Trail, to the left remains the Liberty Spring Trail. I went right here, about 3.5 miles to go until the summit. For about 2.3 miles on this trail, it winds nicely through the woods. Very runnable and only a small incline. I hit a large number of stream crossing and no other hikers/runners/vagrants/etc.

After 2.3 miles you hit the slide. The slide is this amazing near vertical climb that takes you from zero to hero (aka the top) in less than a mile. It was completely unrunnable, dangerous, and wet rock. I was bouldering for much of the way and I learned a nice lesson– wear your new shoes! My grips on my old WT 110s are essentially useless on these rock faces and it could cost me. I slipped a few times but luckily I have decent bouldering and footwork experience to make up for my improper footwear. On the slide, I managed to pass a number of hikers struggling with the ascent. It was tricky, slow going, but the quickest way to the top.

Once on the top of the slide, the trail is nice and easy final climb to the summit, which rewarded me with a beautiful expansive view and a gorgeous rock ridge. I met a few peak baggers and 2 thru-hikers up top where we shared a quick bite. They were section hiking 5 weeks at a time and only had 3 more days on this trip. I wished them good luck on the hike and on the weather (which is supposed to be awful in the next day or so) and then headed away.

View from Mt. Flume, near summit.

The ridge to the top of Mt. Flume.

From the summit, you could see across the Franconia Ridge to Mt. Liberty, Lafayette, and Garfield! I kept thinking to myself at this point “Man, I wish I hadn’t run at all yesterday so I could go another 7 miles to them both” But alas, I don’t want to get injured and I have to balance road training with mountain bagging.

From Mt. Flume, I ran a little over a mile across to the summit of Mt. Liberty. I really enjoyed the 360 views from both of these peaks.

Panorama!

Lafayette and beyond

Very beautiful

From the Mt. Liberty summit, I continued briefly along the Franconia Ridge until I hit the Liberty Spring Trail again. Then I ran down that for a few miles. This trail is very runnable, it is mostly rock stairs but no huge leaps. I ran down for a while but did not go very fast. I am still afraid of falling at the moment and my legs/knees were already sore.

On the way down, I started getting massive wiffs of terrible smells. I was alarmed and wondered if something was decaying or if I was so sweaty that I was self-disgusted. The answer came to me as I approached a smelly, smelly campground. It was an olfactory felony. I came across about 40 thru-hikers taking a rest, oily and bearded and tired and hungry and smelly. They laughed at me and my tiny pack and I gave them a smile and a cheer and then ran away as quickly as I could so I could breathe again!

The run down was mostly uneventful. It rained. I got tired. The trail met up with the White House trail and I was back at my car before I knew it. Overall, a good day to hike/run on tired legs. That is how you get stronger, I’m told.

You can see where the steep part up was!

Peaks 3 and 4 are in the books and I’m motivated to go get more! Hopefully at least a few more before winter. Cheers!