4,256 feet down (up rather), 95,744 to go!

Before I begin the adventure telling, here is the view from our deck at the winter chateau... It's pretty rough... 

As I stated on Friday, Nate and I rented a winter place in North Conway with a few friends. Since there is not enough snow to do any skiing, we decided to hike Mount Washington and summit it because 1) I've never summited it and 2) because the weather is just going to get worse and 3) we made a goal to climb 100,000 feet this winter and we better get started. The forecast was saying it was going to be an exceptionally beautiful day so off we went.

It took us about 2.5 hours to get up to hojos which is about 1/2 up the top. 

Here is Nater hiking up the trail:   

Here is the infamous Tuckerman Ravine bowl: 

So in good old Nate and Jenny fashion, once we got to the base of the bowl, Nate was like, 'let's go this way'. We didn't go up Lion's Head Trail or continue going up any other marked trail. We literally went straight up the face of the mountain. Nate wanted to stay away from falling icicles and any other snow debris so we went to the right side of the bowl and went over boulders, through a waterfall, and then we started bushwhacking through some snow-filled pines: 

and while Nate was waiting for me, he was able to snap off this picture: 

After we got through that mess, I was pretty tired but a little thankful for the adventure because I was pretty spent and going through a boring trail would've been... boring. I was so worried about staying safe that I didn't necessarily notice how hard it was or how long it was taking. I just went up. Once we got through the yucky part, we had just a little bit more to get to the trail. Here's me working my way to the trail: 

Once we got to the trail, it was all uphill from there. After about 15 sets of 20 more steps, Nate pointed out one of the towers and was like, 'we are almost there'. I continued with my 20 more steps and was able to reach the summit. Here are the dogs making their way up the auto road to the observatory deck: 

Mount Washington used to have the record for the highest recorded wind speed. Some other mountain broke it but we definitely experienced the high winds and was able to see some pretty cool results of the high winds: 

The lodge was open, and the really nice man said it would be ok if the dogs could come in too. They needed to behave and hang out in the corner. Nate and I were able to change our socks and pants (bushwhacking through snow-filled trees causes one to get really wet) and we were able to warm up a bit. Oakley was a super dog in the lodge and showed off how thankful she was to be inside. Scout, on the other hand, wanted to be everyone's friend so anytime someone came near, he would start whining. We didn't want to annoy the world and wanted to get to the bottom before dark so we hurried up and headed out. 

Nate said it would be ok if we took the "safer" way down and we took the Lion's head trail down. Here's Nate heading down and Wildcat in the background. It's already snow filled and it looks like it is close to being skiable!! 

One last view of the bowl... 

Oh, I forgot to mention that Nate forgot the Garmin so we don't have the exact change in elevation but we started at the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center which has an elevation of 2,032 feet and we reached the summit at 6,288 feet so gained 4,256 feet while climbing Mount Washington. Thus, we have 95,744 feet to go!! Total uphill trip took 4.5 hours and the way down took 2 hours... AND I forgot the best story of the day. As we were coming down the Tuckerman Ravine trail, we heard some people coming up behind us. In our competitive nature, Nate was like, "We are not getting passed". I agreed with him and we tried to move down the mountain as fast as we could. The voices were gaining on us and all of a sudden, Nate was gone. He didn't run all the way to the bottom, but he might as well have. We only had about 10 minutes left of the way down so when he came back to meet me, I didn't tackle him, but whatever boyfriend points he earned on the way up, he lost them coming down!! :)

And out of the 10 shots we tried to take at the top, this is the only one where it looks like Nate was smiling. He claims his lips were frozen... and he was staring into the sun... both might be true!