Mount Washington — Friday, Jan. 17, 2025

The portapotty is open, though marked with graffiti. Only one other car was in the parking lot when I arrived at 7:30, but there were 9 when we returned around 12:40. 

Based on a trip report from a week ago, the three of us had a pretty good idea about what we'd face regarding snow conditions. There is a surprising lack of snow for this time of year. Snowshoes would be total overkill. What there is can get a bit icy in spots. The recent 1/2 inch of snow made going up fine, but on the way down, we wore traction devices. I didn't need poles for the stream crossing just past the Great Wall junction, but once it got a little icy beyond the "turnstile" I got out a pole.

We hung out with 3-5 gray jays on the north summit before backtracking to the south summit, enjoying the solitude for half an hour. We were too early to get much of a view. The advantage to going so early is having a half day to do other things and having the mountain to ourselves before others came up.

Driving at 6:30 a.m. on a Friday meant zero downtown traffic issues. Discover Pass is required. We saw 6 bird species on the day: robin, juncos, chickadee, varied thrush, golden-crowned kinglets, and several gray jays interested in rustling bags and which dive-bombed my friend. The weather was perfect, in the upper 30's, and on the way down we had blue skies.

Our trip was roughly 8.2 miles and 3200' gain-ish. I didn't set an AllTrails track as I don't find it accurate. Our round trip was 4:23 moving time with 30 minutes enjoying the summits. All told we saw 11 people and 3-4 dogs.

We had great conversation, nice weather, and it was lovely to get out on a trail I haven't done in over a year!