| Hiking Trail Conditions Report |
 | Peaks |
Mt. Washington (attempt), NH |
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 | Trails: |
Tuckerman Ravine Trail, Huntington Ravine Fire Road, Lion Head Winter Route |
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 | Date of Hike: |
Saturday, February 17, 2024 |
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 | Parking/Access Road Notes: |
Plenty of parking at Pinkham Notch. It's a little bit icy. |
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 | Surface Conditions: |
Snow - Packed Powder/Loose Granular, Snow - Unpacked Powder, Snow - Drifts |
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 | Recommended Equipment: |
Snowshoes, Light Traction, Traction, Ice Axe |
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 | Water Crossing Notes: |
None. |
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 | Trail Maintenance Notes: |
The upper 0.3 mi of Lion Head Trail was hard to follow - there are not enough cairns to go from one to the next; maybe some of them were buried in snow. |
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 | Dog-Related Notes: |
The winter route section of Lion Head Trail involves very steep scrambling; it's hard to imagine a dog doing this. |
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 | Bugs: |
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 | Lost and Found: |
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 | Comments: |
Bare boots or microspikes suffice for Tuckerman Ravine and Huntington Ravine Fire Rd., and the first 0.1 mi of the Lion Head Trail winter route - these trails have only a few inches of loose snow on top of hard-packed snow; one could also use snowshoes here, but they aren't needed.
The Lion Head Trail winter route requires crampons and ice axe to be done safely; in fact, our group also made use of a cordelette at the trickiest scramble, set up by an experienced leader in our group who was wearing mountaineering boots (many other groups were managing it without a cordelette, but that one spot seemed a little risky). There was a MAJOR bottleneck at that tricky scramble, a long queue of hikers, which meant that we had to wait about an extra hour in each direction to get through that spot.
Above Lion Head, the snow started getting deeper. Above the intersection with Alpine Garden Trail, the loose snow was about 2 feet deep in many places, and the upper part of Lion Head Trail became difficult to follow - even when we had a few hundred feet of visibility, we could not always see the next cairn - maybe some cairns were buried in snow drifts. We did not quite summit - we turned around partway up the final stretch of Tuckerman Ravine Trail at 1pm because the weather was rapidly worsening (rapidly increasing wind, increasing rate of snow, increasing blowing snow and freezing fog, decreasing visibility), and because we were worried about the possibility that the wind-loaded snow on upper part of Lion Head Trail was becoming increasingly prone to avalanche. Some other groups succeeded in reaching the summit earlier in the day. |
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 | Name: |
mathbp |
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 | E-Mail: |
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| Date Submitted: |
2024-02-17 |
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 | Link: |
 https:// |
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Disclaimer: Reports are not verified - conditions may vary. Use at own risk. Always be prepared when hiking. Observe all signs. Trail conditions reports are not substitutes for weather reports or common sense. |
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