The Adventurous Life: #18 & #19 Madison & Adams solo

6:58 AM on Monday, January 2, 2017

Success! Bagged both peaks. Pretty gnarly ice up top. Perfect weather.

I was first one up Valley Way today, so had to break trail a bit near tent site. Madison was rock and ice, as expected, but clear with beautiful views. The connector to Airline was drifted over so I followed the track to Star Lake Trail and was 3/4 mile up Adams before I decided it was too sketchy and backtracked, broke trail to Airline, then went up Madison by the planned route, then down along the beautiful ridge above King Ravine. Very happy to get back to my car; it was a long, tiring hike with challenging climbs up the two summit cones.

Stats:

Peaks: Mt Madison, Mt Adams
Weather: 25F. 10mph. Some clouds. Pretty ideal.
Parked: Appalachia Lot on Rte 2 in Gorham
Trails: Valley Way, Gulfside Trail, Airline Tr
Time: 8h8m, 6:58am-3:06pm
Distance: 10.4mi
Track: GaiaGps

An overview of my Single Season Winter 48 with links to all the trip reports is here.

I've encountered a corridor of trees like this on several summit approaches. So cool.

If you click to zoom in, you can see the wind turbines, probably Granite Reliable Wind Farm in Coos County.

From near the top of Valley Way at 9:20, I think this is looking east towards Mt Madison. In any case, the sky is beautiful.

I'm pretty sure this is looking south-west at Mount Quincy Adams. It doesn't have a trail to the top, and even though its elevation is 5410', it isn't on the 4000-footer list because it doesn't have the necessary 200-foot prominence to be considered an independent mountain.
Mt. Adams has two major subsidiary peaks (Mount Quincy Adams named after John Adams' son, President John Quincy Adams, and Mount Sam Adams named after John Adams' cousin, Revolutionary leader Samuel Adams) and two minor sub-peaks (Abigail Adams named for John Adams' wife Abigail, and Adams 5).

On top of Madison.

From Madison, looking south-west, you see Mt Washington across the Great Gulf. Zoom in, and you can make out the auto road snaking its way up the ridge on the left of the photo. The bump to the left of Washington is Nelson Crag.

From the Gulfside Tr, after descending Mt Madison, I think this is Mt Adams with Mt Jefferson in the distance.

The trail is hard to follow even in summer. In winter, you just pick your over the rocks and ice and sometimes see a cairn to walk towards. Sometimes those "cairns" are just a bush covered in snow, then you have to search around to get back on track.

Looking back at Mt Madison, if I read the shadows correctly.

After tramping around on the wrong trails for awhile, I had to break trail from Madison Hut to Airline Trail. Initially, I followed a snowshoe track from the hut past Star Lake, then continued breaking trail on Star Lake Tr, which eventually got steep and sketchy. So I turned around and backtracked almost half-a-mile to the unbroken out connector to Airline. I felt much more secure on my planned route, especially when I could see people hiking down from Adams.

On top of Mt Adams, I ran into Nick, a fellow guest at the Notch Hostel last week. Nick offered to take my summit photo, so you can actually see more than just my head. We had to get a shot with Mt Washington in the background, even though the sun was also behind me.

This summit photo on Mt Adams has better lighting, and you can see Mt Madison which I was on two-and-a-half hours ago in the background. You can also see the shadows of Nick and the people he was hiking with.