Trip Report
The primary target for this trip was Mount Washington, NH. But, I
had this crazy idea in my mind to attempt several additional New
England states highpoints as well. Mount Mansfield would be the
first attempt. Along for the trip was my buddy Nabeel. This
would be Nabeel’s first trip like this, but there was no doubt in my
mind he was up for the task.
The trip started with a 10 pm arrival at the Hartford airport the night
before, along with a 3 hour drive; getting us to bed around 2 am in the
morning. Since we were only going to be getting about 3 hours
sleep, we decided to car camp.
We got up around 6 am and drove the remaining hour to the
trailhead. It took us about an hour to gear-up and get on our
way. We started up around 8 am. At the trailhead, we talked
with a guy who had just come down from his Mansfield hike. He had
gone about ¾ to the top. His recommendation was snow
shoes, but no need for crampons or an ice axe. It turns out this
was a good tip – for the first ¾ of the hike.
Our hike started with us walking up the road. This time of year,
the road is closed due to weather. So it is essentially a hiking
trail during the winter. About a ¼ mile up the road, we
took a left into the woods. I should mention at this point that
we did bring a pair of snowshoes. I was carrying them. But,
we only had the one pair, so I didn’t put them on right away. It
turns out that I carried them the whole way. We really didn’t
need them.
After we took a left off the road, the snow was a bit deeper.
But, as long as we stayed on the well traveled route, we didn’t post
hole much at all. Every once in a while one of us would step off
the trail a foot or so, and sink up to our waist. It was amusing
for the person who wasn't in the hole. We kept going strong
though, and only post holed a few times each. In addition to the
well traveled path, we were also able to follow the white blazes which
marked the Vermont Long Trail.
One other thing that our trailhead buddy mentioned was that he had
gotten off trail at some point, and found himself on the upper portion
of the ski area. So, as we hiked, we watched for any trail that
might misdirect us to the left. Ultimately, we found the area of
confusion. We muddled around a bit, backtracking several times,
until Nabeel finally found our route, about 10 feet lower than where we
were. Bringing Nabeel along was already starting to pay dividends.
Even though we found the correct trail, we did find ourselves hiking
out onto the upper slopes also. It was easy for us to get back on
track though, and we continued up the trail. At just under 2.5
hours we found ourselves at the Taft Lodge. The lodge was empty,
and the door was covered by a snow drift. We managed to get in
and we took a break. At this point we were happy since this meant
we were only about ½ mile from the summit. Ohhh, how
little did we know.
We took about a 10 minute break, ate and drank. Both of us were
shocked at how awfully cold our hands were as we put our gloves back
on. I guess the sweat in our gloves had frozen. That sucked.
We started out of the Lodge, and almost immediately had problems
finding our route. We saw a few white blazes around the lodge
area, but could find no continuation of the blazes in any
direction. Ultimately we just decided to head in the direction
that we knew would lead to the summit. This was the correct
decision, but it was a tough one. Almost immediately we started
post holing. At one point I even started to crawl on my hands and
knees. It looked foolish, but I found that keeping a larger
surface area – my hands and knees – kept me from post holing. I
would crawl for as much as 30-50 feet at a time. I was able to
make much faster progress in those sections where otherwise we would be
post holing. At times though we were able to walk, where there
was a harder layer of ice below the snow.
Not long after leaving the Lodge, we finally got a glimpse of our
ultimate target – the summit of Mansfield. We kept on referencing
the GPS that I was carrying and ultimately determined that we would
first need to gain the saddle between the “Adam’s Apple” and the summit
of Mansfield.
Our travels to that saddle were tough. Since the post holing was
harder for the leader, we switched off lead often. Our trip to
the saddle consisted of post holing, some crawling, and some steep
terrain. When the steep terrain combined with the post holing, we
were stopped dead in our tracks for a while. At one point we
found ourselves on about a 45 degree slope, with the tops of trees just
barely sticking out of the snow. The grade was too steep to
crawl, so we tried to walk. But, post holing made this
difficult. Eventually we managed our way up out of the deep
snow. This final section of steep deep snow was probably only 25
or so feet of travel, but I’m sure if anyone had seen us “working it”,
they would have been amused. This section alone probably took us
10 minutes.
Once we made it out of the deep snow, the rest of the way was hard
packed snow, rock and ice. We were probably only about 50 feet
below the summit at this point. But, our remaining travels would
not go easy. Pretty quickly Nabeel and I were wishing that we had
brought crampons. The travel was seriously exposed, with a 200
foot drop off to our left side, and ice under our feet pretty much the
rest of the way. We managed along slowly and safely, zig zagging
up and around obstacles, until we got to the summit flat.
Once we made the summit flat, we still needed to walk another 50 feet
to the true summit rock. This was challenging also as the wind –
which had been blocked during our climb – was now blowing in our face
at 50+ miles per hour. Man, was that wind cold. We debated
at whether to stop and get out more gear (goggles, balaclava, etc.),
but opted to instead just get it done quickly, and get back down below
the wind block.
We made the summit in almost exactly 4 hours from the trailhead.
We stopped for some very quick pictures and video. As I took off
my glove to manipulate the camera, my fingers got very cold
quickly. We only stayed on the summit for minutes, and then
carefully headed back down. We were able to get below the wind
pretty quickly. As we traveled back down, we quickly realized how
critical it was that we follow our previous path. There was a lot
of ice on the route. We had managed to work around most of the
ice on the decent, because it was easier to identify from below.
But, on the decent, it was more difficult to spot the ice, until you
were right on top of it, and that was not a good plan. So, we
focused on back tracking our previous path. That worked well for
us.
We made it back to the Taft Lodge in 30 minutes from the summit –
something that had taken us 90 minutes on the ascent. We
completely blew by the Taft Lodge, and just kept on walking down hill.
At this point I’ll mention that my boots were killing me. The
problem had started on the ascent, just after our visit to the
lodge. My shins were getting beat up by my wonderful plastic
boots. After my Rainier trip in May 2008, I had invested in a
pair of custom liners for my plastic boots. On Rainier I had
gotten a serious case of “shin bang” and I did not like that
experience. Well, my new liners had not completely eliminated
that shin bang problem.
On the decent, my shins were on fire. They were killing me.
Vial things were coming out of my mouth every time I hit my shin wrong,
and Nabeel was afraid to even talk to me – fearing that I would explode
in a ball of pure anger. Nabeel is a smart man. Although I
was cursing my liners on the decent, I think that I may have done a few
things wrong. Three things that I definitely did wrong with my
boots were: 1) I forgot to install a set of foot beds in my
boots. The liners were custom sized with foot beds
installed. Without them, my foot had too much room to move.
2) I was wearing a nice pair of medium weight hiking socks.
My feet were plenty warm, but the darn socks kept riding down.
And, stupid I just ignored it when the socks rode down, letting my bare
shins rub on my liners – tearing out leg hairs, and creating a wicked
friction burn. 3) I didn’t tight the cuff of my boot
completely. This allowed my foot and lower legs to move too much
in my boot. So, in summary, I think that 80% of my shin problems
on Mansfield were my own fault.
Nabeel and I continued down the main trail without any problems, other
than my shins killing me. We popped back out onto the road, and
made it back to the car. Our total trip time was right around 6
hours – a 2 hour decent.
This was a great start to our trip, and a great test for Nabeel.
He “passed” with more than flying colors. In fact, overall, this
might have been one of my toughest 6 hour climbs, and Nabeel was hardly
fazed by it at all. This would turn out to be our toughest day
the whole trip.
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