CONDITIONS:
If you're wanting to bike along the Olallie gravel trail, be aware there is a landslide just beyond (west of) the turn-off to Mt. Washington that has closed the trail and made it impossible to ride or hike through. No such problems with Mt. Washington trail itself, though, although there are a few spots where erosion is causing the trail to narrow.
It's been a good year since I've done Mt. Washington and wow, the changes. The parking lot is more rutted than I remembered, so caution is advised. The portapotty was stocked with TP and in fairly good condition although the trash can was getting full. No trash on the route.
Both routes to Mt. Washington and down the Great Wall (we did a loop) have plenty of blowdowns but for the most part they're pretty easy to navigate around. We had to break trail from the WA Turnstile (JUST PAST THE LAKE) toward Mt. Chance but someone had broken trail up to some pretty bad blowdowns along the Great Wall - now it's passable the whole way up. The stream is easy to cross.
Snow and ice are abundant from mile 1.4 and beyond with an inch or so at 1.4 and more like 2 feet up at the summit; 7 of the 8 of us were greatful for microspikes for the majority of the trip. Snowshoes would only have helped for the leg to Mt. Chance, but not worth carrying for Mt. Washington. We only saw 2 other people all day, but someone had been up recently to break (most of the) trail. Winds were abundantly strong at the summit, so we kept our break short (15 minutes) where people fueled up with hot beverage and hand warmers in the "tree shelter" where there is a geocache before turning back.
TRIP REPORT:
Expect snow for another couple of weeks.
I love Mt. Washington, even prefering it to Mt. Si, especially this time of year when snow covers most of the rocks beyond the stream crossing. I introduced my group to the Great Wall loop coming down, a wonderful option when crowds start conditioning on Mt. Washington.
8 of us from the Mountaineers started from the trailhead just before 7 AM and returned to the cars by 12:30. Given our Chance loop add-on and trail breaking, total mileage was closer to 9.6 and 2.1 mph moving time, 3250' elevation gain. 2:15 going up, with a round-about way coming down including a bit of routefinding to find the path down from the "Chance leg" since nobody had broken trail there yet. Based on my estimates of 15 minutes to "changing rock" and 30 to "peeing rock" (we hit 13 and 26 respectively) we were going faster than I usually do for this "winter conditioner" (2:30 to the summit is my typical up).
We estimated maybe 2 feet of snow at the summit, all accumulated in the past month according to one of our hikers who was up there in January. A trip report from a week ago said there was far less snow so... Definitely be prepared for snow.
Birds were hard to hear with the high winds (we had 8 species on the day, mostly Pacific wrens, robins, chickadees and kinglets), but I saw a barred owl swoop in front of me at Exit 19 on the drive up, which I took as a good omen, and a red-tailed hawk on the drive back.
We had a fairly compatible two-paced group; I placed myself in the middle to keep everyone within shouting distance, so overall it worked out great. Special thanks to those who helped share trail breaking duties.
The weather cooperated with no flurries, and even the wind wasn't too bad except at the summit - southerly winds were fierce at the top, but the mountain created a buffer between it and us for most of the trip. Some spectacular icicle formations along Great Wall where big drips higher up decorated a few trees down below. Beautiful!
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