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Tuesday June 19, I hiked my 4th, 5th and 6th 4,000 footers. We also hiked Avalon, which is on the 52 With a View list.
The Plan
Our plan for the day is outlined in Hike in Progress: Mt. Willey, Mt. Field, Mt. Tom and Mt. Avalon. To summarize, we planned to hike Willey, Field, Tom and Avalon (in that order) after setting up a car shuttle between the Willey House and Crawford Depot.
The Outcome
Rick and I met up in Crawford Notch, setup the shuttle and got started close to our planned start time. Based on some tips from members of the Hike the 4000 footers of NH! and NH 52 With A View Facebook groups, we decided to start at the Willey House and hike towards Crawford Depot. Upon seeing the ladders, we were convinced that we had made the right decision. If there’s a choice between descending or ascending a steep trail, I’ve always preferred the latter, especially if the steep descent would come at the end of a hike. Here’s a look at the ladders:
Just below the summit of Mt. Willey, we visited the lookout that offered some of the best views of the day. The wind was blowing hard and clouds quickly moved through the valley below. After a quick summit photo, we hiked to Mt. Field, which had no view worth noting.
Descending Mt. Field, we took a right onto Mt. Avalon Trail instead of continuing on Willey Range Trail. We realized this less than a quarter mile down the trail, but decided to continue on to Avalon. In the end, these two mistakes would add 1.6 miles and 600 feet of climbing … more on this later. Continuing to Avalon, I was surprised/dismayed at how much elevation we were losing, knowing that we’d need to re-climb it to get to the top of Tom. While Avalon was an add-on to the trip Rick had originally planned, it ended up having the best view and we took an extended break at the summit.
Starting our trip to the summit of Mt. Tom, I was very happy with the hike so far and my legs felt strong. But less than 300′ into the 1300’+ of climbing we had to Tom, I started cramping and struggled for the rest of the climb. We eventually made it to Mt. Tom Spur, where we stashed our packs and headed to the summit. While dropping my pack was a huge help, I was still fighting cramps the entire way.
Near the summit of Mt. Tom, we both had our first experience with grey jays. We spent a few minutes taking photos and video, then spent a few minutes looking for the actual summit – on both Avalon and Tom we had thought we were on the summit, but after checking my GPS, we realized that we needed to keep looking.
After finding the actual summit and starting our descent towards Crawford Depot, I really started thinking about the extra mileage and climbing that were added to this hike by not turning around. Had we turned around or not made the mistake to begin with, the hike would have been more enjoyable. While I am not complaining about spending more time on the trail, I believe the extra climbing was largely responsible for the horrible delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) I dealt with for several days. I moved into our new (to us) house a few days after the hike and the DOMS made me question the decision to hike so close to my move date.
The descent was uneventful and we were thankful that we had started at the Willey House and had added Mt. Avalon to the route; descending the ladders with exhausted legs would have been horrible and Avalon offered the best views by far. Based on AMC’s White Mountain Guide Online and my prior hikes in WMNF, I expected the hike to take 6 hours or less. Due to lack of conditioning and the change in our route, the hike took just over 8 hours.
Having done most of my hiking in California, I am still surprised at steepness and narrowness of some NH trails; if the trails in CA were 4 lane freeways across the open desert, NH trails would be rocky single tracks in hills of Los Angeles. Trails that are of similar condition in CA would typically be considered class 2 or unmaintained/use trails. In my experience, maintained CA trails rarely ascend at a rate greater than 800 ft per mile, but this seems to be fairly common in NH. I’ve also noticed that it is not uncommon for a CA hiker to cover 15 to 20 miles on a dayhike. In NH, a dayhike of comparable difficulty seems to be in the 8 to 12 mile range. Below is a comparison of the my Willey, Field, Avalon and Tom hike compared to two Southern California hikes. The CA hikes (Register Ridge on Mt. Baldy and Skyline Trail on San Jacinto) are on trails that fall into the unmaintained-class 2-use trail category and aren’t typically hiked by beginners. As you can see, the trail profiles are similar to our Willey hike, which might be considered a beginner hike in NH.
Geek Stats
Mt. Willey, Mt. Field, Mt. Tom and Mt. Avalon via Flume Trail, Willey Range Trail and Avalon Trail (one way) || Distance: 9.85 miles || Duration: ~8 hrs (including ~1 hour of breaks) || Gain/Loss: +5144′, -4545′ || Max Elevation: 4,255′ || Difficulty: Strenuous
Photos
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Gear
- Deuter Airlite 28 – with the large number of packs I’ve been testing and types of hikes I’ve been doing, my Airlite has been sitting in storage for a long time, but this was the perfect opportunity to use it! While I did push the capacity of the pack (I attached a MiniNet so that I could easily carry my rain gear and extra water on the outside of my pack), it performed well.
- Trew BeWild – While it did not rain, the jacket worked well as a wind breaker.
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