Sunday, January 14
Summits: Tom, Willey, Field
Start/Finish: Crawford Notch
Miles: 9.88
Elevation gain/loss: 4272′
After a later night, I let myself sleep until 6:15am. I grabbed breakfast and then got ready for my hike. I headed out by 7:30am from the trailhead in Crawford Notch, as it lightly snowed. The snow mostly stopped within an hour or two, which was a relief. I followed tracks up the trail, soon passing the few people in front of me. The trail was softly packed from Saturday all the way to the summit of Mt Tom, though there was a layer of 2-3″ fresh snow on top. Unfortunately, the trail up to Field was not discernibly broken; I broke trail through knee-deep light snow up to the trail intersection and beyond that to the summit. The grade is moderate and the snow light, so it wasn’t nearly as bad as last night on Carrigain. I even got some partial views of blue sky, surrounded by dark storm clouds! I sighed to myself at the unbroken trail, and continued past Field to head over to Willey.
The trail had been broken since last weekend, since when I wandered off trail, I sank to my waist but on trail, I was only shin- to knee-deep. But there was no discernible trail, and I had to reference my GPS a few times in the saddle to find the trail. I kept going slow and steady, and made it to the Willey summit by 11:20am. I went to the overlook for some partial views of Mt Washington and Webster Cliff, and then headed back. I was almost back to Field before I ran into Elizabeth (2nd time in two weekends) and her friend following my footprints. I was glad to have more tracks to follow as I headed down towards Avalon. On the way, I descended past at least 8 other hikers, including 2 barebooters who were postholing to their waists and destroying the trail. I dealt with their destruction all the way to the Avalon spur, where the trail became much more firmly packed. I then made great time back to the parking lot, though one of the snow bridges had been wrecked by barebooters. I decided to head home, since my legs were exhausted, I had no more dry shell pants, and snow squalls were incoming.
