Happy to venture out beyond my neighborhood for the first time in what feels like an eternity, I headed to Mt. Washington hoping not to find crowds. I arrived around 7:30 a.m. to find about a dozen cars (another trip report from the same time lists 5 cars, but I would estimate it was at least twice that.) By the time I left around 3:00 p.m. cars were lined out along the road.
The mountain felt crowded, and it was in many cases difficult to pass others with 6 feet between us. People definitely gave way to uphill hikers, but keeping the minimum distance was admittedly tough. I saw only 1 other hiker wearing a mask, although I would estimate that maybe half of the parties I saw did have buffs or bandanas covering their mouths and noses, so some people are making an effort. While of course there's no way to tell for sure, my assumption was that quite a few of the groups out hiking together don't live together, and they definitely weren't keeping 6 feet apart from each other on top of that. I'm not out there to police social distancing guidelines; just reporting what I saw so that you can make your own call on whether this is the hike for you.
There were some downed trees but nothing too onerous. On the descent, I did slide a few times because the snow was getting packed and icy from all the foot traffic. I was glad to have poles but others seemed to manage without them. I had microspikes but didn't use them (although probably should have on the descent.) Lots of spring flowers in bloom out there, too.
Overall, it's wonderful that some state lands are now open to us again. Here's hoping this continues. I think the fact that we're all going stir crazy led a lot of folks to make a break for the mountains, so I suspect we should anticipate crowding as a result.
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