Pemi Mountain Meandering: January 2019

As a wrote about this summer, some days the weather forecast is too good to miss going up into the mountains. When the sun is bright and the wind is low above treeline all us mountain goats are eager to climb. Those days are "Presi Days", the best times to ascend the tallest peaks in the Whites.

My son still had Mt. Madison and Adams to check off his list for the White Mountain 48. While his best friend has already been up them before, she was eager to go up in the snow. I was happy to have her mother come with us for safety sake. In fact this was the first time Nicholas and Ella had been above tree line in full winter conditions. After we had climbed Madison and were traversing to Mt. Adams Nicholas said "now I feel like we're really mountaineering!".

He told the truth. With the deep snow, the sky radiating through mountain haze, the steep approaches above tree line, we were really mountaineering. We were far from alone. The relative warmth and calm wind that day brought dozens of others up the northern Presidentials. The company only added to the feeling of being on a high Alpine slope. We had the chance on top of Mt. Adams to meet Sandy Price, one of the grand elders of White Mountain hiking. It was a magical day, one better chronicled in pictures than my poor words.