Mount Washington was a bit of a letdown. The biggest mountain in New England, and people had to put a tourist trap on top. It must have been  spectacular before some busybodies went and built a hotel, cut a road and laid tracks up the side.

We must have needed the rest, though. Afterward, we found the energy to jog all the way down to the Lake of the Clouds AMC hut. Washington’s summit also marked a big change in trail traffic. During our six hours of hiking the northern range, I don’t think we came upon more than 10 other people, many of them grizzled AT through-hikers.

The top of Mount Washington was about as crowded as a shopping mall on a Friday night before Christmas, and a steady stream of day hikers slogged up the Crawford Path. We got some funny looks, running past them as though we had a plane to catch.

Monroe and Franklin don’t amount to much, compared with the northern peaks. They’re more like bumps on a ridge, and we hardly noticed them. Eisenhower is a big, bald dome with a fairly steep climb, so it stands out in memory and topography. There was a large group of people on the top, standing around chatting and taking in the scenery. Michelle and I stopped just long enough to fish out the disposable camera and snap a photo. Click.

“OK,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

And so we did, noting that some of the more leisurely folks were laughing at our hurried pace. They had a point, but we had a long way to go.

The next point that stands out in my memory is the climb down from Mount Pierce to Mizpah Springs along the Webster Cliff Trail, which drops (or gains, the other way) 500 feet in less than a mile. I felt as though I was clambering down a cliff, and I pitied the backpackers heading the other way. They were in for a profoundly Presidential mile.

The End (will be up 2/24)