This mountain was climbed with Jacob and Lauren. While she hasn’t been a big climber, when she found out what Jacob and I were going to do with climbing all 4000 footers, she wasn’t going to let he brother be the only one to participate. This would be her first 4000 footer and hopefully not her last. I picked this one because it was listed as one of the easier climbs. It starts at a higher altitude just to the right of parking lot #1 of the Waterville Valley ski resort.
The first day we went to climb it, we got run off the mountain after about 10 minutes with rain, so we went into Waterville Valley, looked around the town center and tried to ice skate, though shorts and T-shirt didn’t allow for that to last very long….it was cold! We came back the next day and got started a little earlier 10 am.
48 minutes up the trail there was a cutout onto one of the ski areas trails. I think this was Periphery which I had skied since I was a kid. It was strange to see the trail without snow and gave a better idea of how steep and rocky the trails are without snow. With this view we could see the Tripyramids and Osceola in the background. A couple days earlier we had been on Osceola and could look over and see Tecumseh ski area.
Lauren did quite a bit of dragging her feet and complaining on the way up, but she must have gotten re-energized after reaching the top because she and Jacob practically ran down. I think she was trying to be the first to the car so she could dictate the ice cream!
It took us 1:48 to reach the top. There were 3 other groups up there which made it crowded on the small cutout area. We sat down and had some lunch and enjoyed the scenery for 20 minutes. It was a sunny day with a 10 mph wind, low 70s at the trail start. It took 1:40 to go back down the mountain, which was surprising because it seemed we were moving much faster. We would find that on all of our climbs the downward ascent feels faster, likely because it is easier, but takes all most as much time because you have to watch your step and slow yourself down.