Turkey Day Hike

So after spending this Thanksgiving down in Methuen at my Uncle Al and Aunt Betty's we went for a 2 night backpack in the White's near the Pemi.  My Father and his friend Strad have had a tradition of hiking every year after Thanksgiving.  I have spent many years hiking Monadnock or some other small peak after the holiday.  This year my wife and I decided to step it up a notch and go out for the weekend.

We were going to do the Mt. Hancock trail but the parking lot was not plowed and there was about 4 inches of slush and we ( I mean me) got the car stuck trying to get into the lot.  I should have just swallowed my pride and forgot the fact that I used to go and get into bad roads with 4 wheel drive for a living.  Maybe it was because all the foresters would have laughed at me if I turned around instead of trying to gun it into the snowbank to get through.  I am not sure. 

I ended up having to kick the snow out under the tires and make steph drive while I pushed the front end back.  We ended up at the Lincoln Woods Parking lot and just on a whim we started hiking in with really no plan.  As we were hiking we decided on Mt Flume since steph had not done it and it was the shorter of three options.  We camped out about 2 miles in on the Osseo trail in some slightly dense beech stands which definitely had a good mast year.  I was seeing empty pods all over the place and no nuts....

Day two we hiked up Mt Flume and it was almost 45 degrees. We took a self portrait on top. I was surprised how mild the temps were. As we were hiking up it occurred to us that this would actually be the last peak on the great circle trail run that I am thinking of. I snapped a picture of steph nearing the summit.

 

On Sunday we hiked out in the morning and when we were driving back home I could see a red jacket/blob of someone climbing Whitney Gilman Ridge.  I love that climb but there is no way that I would put myself there in late November.  This year I took some guy that I had never met before with almost no climbing experience up it and I can remember freezing in the wind on a 60 degree day as he struggled trying to pull a fixed piece of gear out for ten minutes trying to take apart his belay.  I figured he would have guessed that a rusty stemmed cam was not mine but he was a little new to it all I think.  I cannot imagine being up there without a lot of experience under my belt in the winter. Even though it was 50 degrees it had to be cold for that guy in the red jacket. As we were driving home Steph suggested that we round out the weekend and get limber by going to a bikram yoga class so we did that on sunday evening. It was nice to do that after sleeping on partly slushy snow and roots where our tent was for two nights.