This isnt a recent hike, but being a new member on the forum I thought it would be cool to share my first hang with everyone. It wasnt too long ago, 4th of July weekend in the Whites. Here is how it went...
The original plans called for parking at the Imp Trailhead and road hiking it to the Webster Scout trail up to Madison and following the spine of the Presidentials, down to Pinkham Notch Visitor Center, across the Wildcats, Carters, and ending back at the car. The long term forecasts were looking good about a week out, but then Arthur formed and everything went to hell. I wasn't canceling this trip, so at 5pm Thursday after work I got into the car and made the drive up from Central NJ. Traffic wasn't too bad, but got into storms in Mass all the way to New Hampshire which made it slow going. Decided to park at Pinkham Notch Visitor Center when I arrived about 2am and would figure out if I needed to alter my plans in the morning.
After a few hours of in the car sleep I woke up and pulled up a Summit Forecast on my phone. As expected, not good. Rain more or less all day with the summits in the clouds. Figured my first hike up to the Presidentials isn't going to be too enjoyable if I couldn't see anything so decided to start across the highway on the Lost Pond Trail and go up the Wildcats and Carters. Conditions were obviously wet, with light rain most of the day. A 27lb overnight pack wasn't helping with the climbs and I definitely had to watch my footing on the slippery rocks. The Wildcat Ridge Trail was awesome. Some steep scrambles requiring hands and feet, not like anything Ive hiked before. The clouds occasionally lifted high enough to catch a view views, but the most part this day was about the terrain not the views. Continued on through the Carters. Decided to skip Mt Height because I would be able to see anything anyway, maybe next time. Thought about hiking the Imp Campsite for the night, but that would have meant backtracking in the morning to get back to Imp Trailhead. Decided to keep pushing on down the North Carter Tr to the north section of the Imp Trail and stealth camped for the night there in my hammock.
The next day the rain ended in the morning, and the winds picked up. And I mean they realty picked up. The summit forecast was calling for gusts up to 100mph. I decided to play it safe and not chance a problem on my first overnight solo hike in conditions like that. My plans pretty much immediately changed from going up the Webster Scout Trail to the Great Gulf Trail to the junction of Sphinx Trail. I planned to stealth camp there for the night and if conditions looked better in the morning climb up to the ridge, over to Washington, and back down to the car. The Wilderness Area trails were great. Very rugged and primitive, just as I hoped for. Got to Sphinx and the wind was still whipping. I couldn't get an updated weather report, but I didn't think it looked good for tomorrow. I made some dinner and started thinking. If I camped for the night and didn't want to hike out where I was exposed to the wind Id have to backtrack to Madison Gulf Trail, from what I could tell anyway looking at my map. I wouldn't arrive back to car until late morning and Id probably be in the thick of holiday traffic the entire way home. Right then and there I decided since I wasn't going up the ridge I might as well just backtrack now and hike back to the car and get an early start on the drive home the next day. This was about 7:45pm, so I knew this would mean a decent amount of night hiking...another first for me.
The night hike was for the most part uneventful and faster than expected. The only eventful thing that happened was I came around a corner and saw what I thought where two reflectors nailed to a tree. There were about 7-8 foot high Im guessing, so it made sense...until they moved. It was a moose, and it startled the sh1t out of me!! I was only about 40' from it after coming around the corner and it was parked in the middle of trail just looking at me and showed little interest in moving. After yelling at it a bit it finally decided to wander off. I wanted to see a moose during this trip (first time for that too, see the pattern here) but not necessarily that close, but it worked out and I can cross that one off the list of things that happened to me. Made it back to car around 11:30pm, crashed for the night, and started my drive home around 5:15am.
Total distance came out to 28.5 miles with 9750 ft of elevation gained. This hike was such a great experience for me and I can absolutely say Im hooked and cant wait to come back. Thanks for letting me share.
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