Join us for a magnificent hike up Mt. Madison, one of the peaks in the Northern Presidentials in the White Mountains. Madison has plenty of above-treeline travel, with rough terrain and breathtaking views.

We're planning to run this as an "introduction to above-treeline hiking" trip. If you have prior experience hiking below treeline in the winter and you're looking for your first foray into above-treeline travel, this could be the perfect trip for you!

We'll be hiking up and down Valley Way. The hike is about 7.8 mi and 4,000' of elevation gain, with about a mile of above-treeline travel. This is a significant amount of elevation, so you should be in good physical shape.

(video from https://mitoc-trips.mit.edu/trips/1908/)

Prerequisites

We don't have strict/inflexible prerequisites, but as a guideline, you should:

• Have done at least 2 MITOC B-level (below treeline, in the White Mountains or similar) winter hikes (or equivalent), at least one in temperatures below 20°F.
• Be in good physical shape: you should have done a hike of >= 7 miles and >= 3000 ft of elevation gain in the last 6 months.

If you don't satisfy both prereqs above, you're still welcome to enter the lottery for this trip, but please email the leaders briefly summarizing your winter / 3-season hiking experience, so we can make sure that this trip is a good fit for you.

Clothing

Elaborating a bit on clothing: it can get very cold and windy in the Northern Presidentials, and this weekend is looking wet. You will need appropriate clothing, including being able to cover all exposed skin, having boots and gloves/mittens that are warm enough, and having water-proof upper and water-resistant (ideally water-proof) lower layers (like a rain coat / rain pants, or a shell jacket / shell pants). This is not the right trip to find out that your clothing isn't warm enough for hiking in cold, wet weather, so you should have some prior experience with your clothing setup in these conditions. We'll go over clothing in the pre-trip meeting, feel free to bring any clothing you have questions about, and if any of your clothing is sub-optimal, we'll try to figure out solutions. MITOC has a limited number of hardshell jackets and warm mittens available for rent.

Logistics

There will be a required pre-trip meeting on Thursday to review gear and logistics. We'll send details by email after the lottery runs. This trip will require light traction (microspikes, or better yet, Hillsounds) and ice axes.

A note on weather

This weekend is looking warm, and potentially wet. Forecast models are not yet agreeing on when and where the precipitation will fall. We will assess the weather before the pre-trip meeting Thursday and if driving or hiking conditions seem unsafe we may need to pivot to a different itinerary or cancel the trip.