Pea Soup

With today being the only weather window in a upcoming forecast, I decided it was finally time to check out Mt Washington.  I hooked up with Dalton, and after a last minute call based on the weather, we headed to the wild west side.

When I arrived in the parking lot at 9, it was 33° and drizzling, with some really low hanging clouds.  Not exactly inspiring conditions, to say the least.  By the time Dalton had showed up, the drizzle had stopped and it had gotten a bit warmer, however, the clouds were still holding steady.  With the forecast called for clearing skies in the later morning and not wanting to ski steep, bullet-proof ravines, we decided to wait out the weather, hoping the clouds would clear soon.

After about 3 hours and some interesting adventures involving jumper cables, Dalton had the great idea of checking out the Mt Washington Observatory’s summit cams.  What we saw astounded us – it was completely blue on the summit, with clouds just lingering on the west side.  With that news, we geared up and headed up, on the assumption that it was now only a matter of time until the clouds would clear.

The clouds were in and out as we started on our way up.  You can almost see the upper parts of the mountain just trying to peek through the clouds.

We even got a little bit of sunshine at the beginning of the climb!

Unfortunately, that only seemed to be temporary.  We continued upward and soon enough, we were reaching the ominous cloud layer.

And heading up into it.

By the time we made it to Jacob’s Ladder, we were in the thick of it, and the clouds showed no signs of clearing.  None at all.

So we decided to take a break. Dalton checked out the weather situation on top of the mountain, and like we suspected, it wasn’t looking good – the west side was completely socked in, even up to the summit.

Looking into the Ammo.

And up Jacob’s Ladder.  The fog was thick.

At this point, we decided the best call was to simply head back downhill from here.

Bo was super stoked to get skiing!

He can be a mellow too… Although not for any longer than 4 seconds.

Dalton beginning the descent into the grey-room, with Bo in hot pursuit.

Yup, kind of like skiing in pea soup.

Although this isn’t what I had expected out of my first trip to Mt Washington, it was still an enjoyable ski down the ~2500ft that we’d earned.

I guess you can’t always hit it right, but given how many times this year we’ve managed to hit it right, I’m not complaining.  Today was still a great outing, and now I really can’t wait to get back up to Mt Washington.  Hopefully the weather cooperates sometime soon, although I have a feeling that the snow will be hanging around a while this year.