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Following
the route they had described, I soon encountered the second group
of climbers, who concurred with the first two guys. It wasn't
too much further, they said. Of course, they all had snowshoes,
and I didn't. If I thought I had been postholing earlier, I was
in for a surprise. "Hell, that ain't no postholing. This
here's postholing!" Every other step was a plunge into a
powdery abyss, generally up to my waist. Many times I struggled
to keep myself from sinking even deeper into the deceiving drifts.
To
extricate myself, I swung my more-or-less freer leg onto what
I hoped was slightly more solid ground, spread my arms out, and
pushed, pulled, and rolled my way onto the surface again. It was
slow exhausting work. Sometimes I crawled on all fours for a short
distance to spread my weight around. Then cautiously standing
up again, I'd hope for the best, only to plummet in to my waist
a couple of steps later. It was impossible to tell which patches
of snow ahead of me would hold my weight, and which wouldn't.
At least I wouldn't have any trouble following all my postholes
back again, I thought.
Finally,
the postholing began to occur less frequently, and after a few
more careful steps, I was standing at the base of the rocky peak,
hanging on to my poles and thin branches of a stunted spruce.
Breathing a sigh of relief, and to help catch my breath after
the strenuous struggle through posthole hell, I gladly ventured
out onto the icy rock, warily testing my traction with each step.
The wind howled steadily from the northwest, threatening to send
me back down to the posthole gods below. But my carefulness paid
off, and after a short time I was standing on top. I had made
it!
Glancing
quickly around, I saw that the views to the world below were great.
The air was still clear, but ugly-looking gray clouds had rolled
in, and the sun was no longer shining brightly in a blue sky.
The world below was all white. Behind me, in the direction the
wind was blowing from, a frozen
Mt Washington jutted even higher into the gale. I estimated
that the wind speed was a fairly steady 50 mph, and since the
temperature was still almost 10 degrees below zero, the windchill
had to be at least 80 below.
It
was difficult to face into the wind for any length of time, so
I never got a picture of Mt Washington, which I later regretted,
but I was able to take a shot of the summit trail signs, which
were covered with windswept rime ice. |
An
extremely close up self-portrait on the summit. I had hoped to
get a shot of Mt Washington in the background, but I didn’t realize
that the camera was zoomed in this much. Note my iced-up hair,
moustache, and eyelids. My balaclava was as hard as rock. The
air temperature was about 8 below zero with a 50 mph wind, which
made the windchill around 80 below. My face got cold quickly. |
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