Day 25, July 24, 5 miles

We had a bit of a dilemma today. It rained all night and everything we have is wet. Today we were planning to hike over Mt. Washington, which has the worst weather in America, and it is calling for rain and afternoon thunderstorms thru Monday. The only road anywhere around is at the top of Mt. Washington. There is a cog rail down from there and a shuttle van. They’re both very pricey. We decided, though, that we can’t sit in wet tents for 3 days, so we all agreed to head out early and summit Washington in the clouds and if it gets bad, we’ll take the cog or shuttle down and return when the weather clears. That’s what we did. We headed out, all wet and cold. It started raining again within 10 minutes of being on the trail. We had about 3-1/2 miles to get to the AMC run hut that had no availabilities or any work for stays. The dungeon was even full. They did, however, sell us some leftover bacon, potato soup for breakfast and it was so warm and delicious. We still couldn’t get warm though so we had to keep moving. We had 1.4 miles to go to summit. The weather was horrific. The temps were in the 30’s and the winds literally blew me down. They were blowing around 50 mph with gusts of 75 mph. The rain turned to sleet and pelted us all in the left side of the face. Thank goodness we were all peppy enough today to climb quickly. There were zero views. You would never know there were other mountains around. We were socked in. We literally walked right up to the summit without even being able to see the buildings until we were right in front of them. We all quickly agreed to shuttle down for the night to the Yellow Deli Hostel in Lancaster and watch the weather and then shuttle back up to hike down the northern side of Washington. So–here I am in Lancaster waiting to check the morning weather on Washington and then decide our next move. I’ve always thought Mt. Washington would be one of the hardest climbs, but I was wrong. It was a pretty easy ascent (comparatively speaking), even with the crazy weather.