Weekends always seem so short, maybe because they are not exciting enough.
I wanted to do this little excursion for a while, and the weather finally got slightly warmer so I decided to bring some friends into the White Mountains of New Hampshire to explore Mount Adams. The White Mountains are known for the most volatile and dangerous weather in America, but luckily for us, we had great weather with minimal wind.
On day one, we woke up very early to drive to New Hampshire and made it to the trail head around 11:30AM. We took the Airline Trail towards the summit. There were still a lot of ice and snow hanging at higher elevations, but we all had microspikes of course. When we got above treeline and hiked along the ridge of the King Ravine, we met some people going down and apparently, the top was an hour and a half away. We decided it would be safer to hike to the campsite on Valley Way and continue our ascent tomorrow instead. I'm glad we made that decision because it would've been hard to scramble through that field of unstable rocks at the top with our heavy backpacks.
We were able to start a fire with wet woods after numerous tries, and cooked dinner. We chatted around the fire, had long debates on moose among other random things. One of my friend even brought rum with him! We then slept in the uncomfortable cold, and I had dreams of animals outside my tent...heard some weird noises, but it was probably my friends snoring, haha.
The next day, we left most of our gear in the campsite to hike to the top. The view was amazing. The sky was clear and blue. Adams is the second highest peak in the North East, second to Mount Washington that we hiked last summer. However, Adams is mostly undeveloped and quiet. Hiking into the alpine zone of Adams was purely magical! It was definitely not an easy hike, especially with our heavy backpacks, but it was all worth it.
After the hike, we had dinner at a restaurant is a small village called Lyndonville, and I had my coconut birthday cake there and the restaurant staff sang happy birthday to me. My friends are so sweet. Most of them have never hiked/camped in the wild, and I'm so happy they came with me on this little crazy adventure!