Backpacking the Mt. Washington Wilderness

"Did I look miserable?"
"Yeah."
"Good! I want something to show my kids some day."

A couple of weeks ago, my brother, dad and I did a bit of backpacking in the Mt. Washington Wilderness. We had been planning a trip in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness for weeks when we heard that a storm would be blowing in on our first night. Because we were planning to have a late start and 40 mile an hour gusts, at 1am, on the side of Mt. Jefferson didn't sound fun (or really even all that safe), we decided to start a day later, hopefully miss the storm coming through and do a shorter, 2-day trip through the Mt. Washington Wilderness.


Looking out over the lava beds

So, we start out at McKenzie pass, with the rail falling sideways, and go trekking through the lava beds. As if to mock us, while we were getting soaked, it wasn't raining at all just a couple miles to the east. About a mile in, the trail was sheltered enough for me to snap three or four pictures before the lens was covered with rain drops. This would be the last section of trail with any kind of visibility we would see for a long while. We continued our climb through the lava beds and the higher we got the harder the wind blew and the harder rain fell and the more the visibility dropped. When we hit the tree line, and the welcome shelter from the wind and rain, we had walked right past Belknap Crater (6,872 feet) and Little Belknap Crater (6,305 feet) and simply didn't see either one of them. We plugged on for several more miles before deciding to wait out the rain in the tent.

We soon discovered that the tent leaked.

After waking up wet and putting on wet boots and wet...well you get the idea (if not, see the picture at the top of the article for a visual reference), we continued around the base of Mt. Washington.


Into the Mist, On the base of Mt. Washington

Day two started off great. That is to say, the rain wasn't coming down sideways and their wasn't as much of it. The base of Mt. Washington sure was pretty in the fog, although we never did see the mountain.


Zach, Resting at the Lake

As we continued, the weather got better and it turned into a nice day to be out for a hike. After realizing that we were a bit ahead of our scheduled pickup, we took it slow and easy for the last few miles, stopping for a bit to enjoy places like the little lake pictured above.

In the end it was a good trip. Very wet. But, I enjoyed it, I like the pictures I took and I would totally do it again next time.