Tenting in the Northern Presis - Above Treeline Overnight

Leaders
Karina Smolyar (B coC), Osman Ahsen (C)
Program
Winter School
Type
Hiking
Terrain level
C
Trip date
Saturday, January 18th, 2020
Difficulty rating
Advanced
Prerequisites
Prior above treeline winter hiking experience. Prior use of crampons. Good physical fitness.

We will be traveling to the northern Presidentials on Saturday and Sunday for a snowy, wintery overnight. Some may even call this mountaineering!

Day 1: 4.5 mi (7.2 km), 4,000 ft gain (1,200 m) Day 2: up to 8.6 mi (13.9 km), 2,400 ft gain (730 m) and 6,000 ft of loss (1,800 m)

We will start early up Mount Madison on Saturday by Valley Way. We will plan to summit Mount Madison and aim to set up camp to sleep above treeline between Mount Madison and Mount Adams. On Sunday, we will head towards Mount Adams and Mount Jefferson if time and conditions permit.

This trip will be a challenge. We will be traveling through difficult terrain, cooking using boiled snow, and bundling up to keep warm through a cold night above treeline. We will be carrying crampons, ice axe, snowshoes, microspikes, overnight gear and anticipate our packs to weigh up to 40 lbs (18 kg). For this reason, prior experience with above treeline travel, crampon usage, and good physical fitness are a must.

We will hold a pretrip meeting on Thursday at 6pm at the MITOC office to go over trip logistics, as well as practice operating winter stoves and setting up Mountaineering tents.

Signup

Algorithm
first-come, first-serve
Maximum participants
4
Signups opened at
Jan. 15, 2020, noon
Signups closed at
Jan. 16, 2020, 11:59 p.m.
Notes
  1. Describe your prior above treeline winter hiking experience
  2. Have you camped in winter before? If not, have you camped before?
  3. Ideas for dinner to cook (with boiled water...)?
Signups for this trip are closed.