The Full New England Experience

Saturday was Bruce's birthday and we decided to do a hike up Mt. Washington to celebrate.  We got a map and some advice from the local outdoor store we decided to hike up Ammonoosuc Ravine to the Appalachian Trail Hut at Lake of the Clouds and the Crawford Trail.
The trail is beautiful and easy at first, but then becomes very steep with rock "steps"  and some scrambling up over rocks.  The trail rises 2500 ft in 3.1 miles to The Lake of the Clouds hut. This hut is much larger than any in Colorado, it sleeps 90 people and is beautifully set below Mt. Washington.

The final section of the trail is much like a 14'er but with out the difficulty of being at 14,000ft..  The top of Mt. Washington is only 6,289 ft.

 Mt. Washington has an auto road to the top as well as a cog railway and restaurant so it is a busy place. The hut is about a mile away and the only way to get supplies in is to pack them in from the top.

 Made it to the top in good weather, unusual for Mt. Washington but soon clouds began to come in.

 This is the observation tower at the top.

 The cog railroad on its way down.

Everyone at the top was trying to decide who was taking the picture so I snuck in.

 On the way down the weather started to come in fast.  We hurried as much as we could to get below tree line before the rain.  We made it, barely but it rained and hailed hard for a while.  As we commiserated with some other hikers they commented on how we were getting the Full New England Experience!

Wet.