Bondcliff – Dec

Friday, December 1

Start/Finish: Lincoln Woods TH

Miles: 17.79

Elevation gain/loss: 3314′

After getting COVID for the first time a week before this hike, I had testing negative and wanted to get back to working on my grid with a hike into Zealand hut via ZBonds. It would have been a very full afternoon and evening in any case, but the weather was very poor. As I hiked in along Lincoln Woods, there was a bit of ice and snow present. As I climbed higher, snow depth increased, it began raining in earnest, and my heart rate skyrocketed.

The last 1.5 miles to the summit of Bondcliff, the precipitation turned to sleet and snow, the wind picked up, and the snow deepened. My footprints were the only sign of hikers on the way to the Bonds since the snow had fallen more than a week ago. I struggled to get to the summit of Bondcliff, dragging myself through heavy, wet thigh-deep snow with snow blowing in my face. It was dark and I was navigating by headlamp – the visibility was awful and I was soaked to the skin from the earlier rain.

I made the summit, postholing up to my knees, and looked around, trying to find the trail. I couldn’t – and pulling out my phone to access the GPS map was cumbersome and required me to remove one of my gloves. I tried to find the trail for a few minutes and then made the difficult but necessary decision that I needed to turn around and modify my plans. I turned around and headed back into the trees and descended towards Lincoln Woods. As expected, it took a long time and even moving quickly, the soaking 34-degree rain made for very challenging conditions – I could feel the edge of hypothermia creeping up on me as I power hiked the flat 4+ miles out to my car. I knew I’d made the right choice, even if it was a hard one. The mountains will always be there, but Bondcliff has more exposure than most NH48 and wandering around near the edge of a cliff while freezing cold and soaking wet would have been a bad idea.

All in all, it was a very long hike to just get Bondcliff, but I rolled with it and knew I had time to make up the difference for my December grid.