Total Distance: 7.2 miles
Vertical Gain: 2800'
Starting the 48’s fairly late in the season. What a morning to begin. Temps were around 38° when we left the Crawford Notch Visitor Center at around 8:00am. Needed an extra layer to start on our upper half, and hats came out within 10 minutes. The first leg on the Avalon trail up to the fork w/ the A-Z trail was pleasant, with some nice cascades showing themselves as we crossed Crawford Brook about 6 or so times on the way up.
Once we turned onto the A-Z trail, we went down a steep little gully to the brook again, then proceeded to climb rather steeply toward the col between Tom and Field. About halfway to the col, we finally started to get hit by the sun, which really helped to warm us at times. Finally we topped out , and as soon as it flattens out, the Mt. Tom spur comes in on the right. So off we go toward Mt. Tom, where we met a guy coming down. Talked for a bit, ends up he just started the NH 48’s in Sept. He was doing Mt. Willey also in his loop, but we didn’t have the time today.
Hit the top around 10am, where 2 view paths split. We thought this was the top, so took a couple of pics here, as the guy had said there was no sign. Even though it was clear above us, there were some light flurries coming down. Very Cool! We then took the right path East, and were able to look right down the Notch, with the cliffs and slides glowing in the morning sun.
We then went back and took the left path West, and we were glad we did. The summit cairn appeared at the end of this path, or so we think.
Confident we had hit all potential high spots, we made our way back down the Mt. Tom spur to the A-Z trail, where we turned right for 100 yards to where the Willey Range trail came in on the left. From the top of Tom, Mt. Field looked like quite a distance with some white coloring to the trees up high, but we covered the 1.5 miles in about 45 minutes.
Mt. Field is just past the junction with the Avalon trail, and as we went up the last 100 yards or so, it felt like winter. A cold wind was blowing, some more of those flurries were coming down, only these were sticking a bit to the ground.
Took our summit pics just before 11am, then ski-daddled down to get out of the wind.
Now, we had hit a little ice on the rocks and mud so far, but heading down the Avalon trail from Mt. Field turned out to be a very dicey affair, indeed. It felt like we had to slow to a crawl to negotiate what turned out to be very steep, slick , shiny rock. So what could we do but take our time, knowing that we had done our first 2 of 48 peaks. We were getting hungry, but thought we could make Mt. Avalon (3442’) on the way down. But in the end, hunger won out, and we stopped to eat at a nice little stop with a view of the ledges on Avalon. With the boost of energy in us, we headed down with increasing temps and a beautiful day behind and ahead of us. Made the parking lot around 12:45 with roughly 2800’ of vertical gain all told.
A couple of notes: 1. Mt. Washington was shrouded in clouds ’til noon, and as they lifted , Big George showed himself off in all his glory with a white sheen that was awe inspiring. 2. As the temps went hot/cold and back and forth, it was a reminder to be prepared for anything up in the mountains. We had much more than we needed, but am glad we had what we needed.
