Mount Washington NH

Last week James Goyet, Mike Tamayo went up to New Hampshire to climb Mount Washington. Probley on of the most difficult climbs due to the weather changes that can occur. After flying into Manchester, NH with no problems. We got our rental car and drove up to North Conway. Pretty killer town with 3 ski resorts almost on top of each other. We must have spent 3 hours in Eastern Mountain Sports just checking everything out. Well with an early rise on Wed we got in the car and dove about 25 mins to the mountain. On the way there it was pretty nice outside with temps in the low 30s and little wind. We got all dressed and signed in and hit the trail up to the summit. The snow was pretty packed down for the most part on the first trail. With in about 15 mins we had to stop and start shedding layers. I was down to a dry fit tee shirt and opened the zippers on the legs of my pants to let some cool air in so I would not overheat. We made it up to Lions Head trail head in about 45 mins. Pretty good time. That is when we put our crampons on and long sleeves back on since we were not going to be moving as fast up Lions Head trail. It was my first time using crampons so it took a little getting use to them. Some parts of the trail were almost vertical. It was crazy to use the ice ax's and crampons to climb up the trail. Now were are getting above the tree line. The winds started picking up and gusting pretty good. We trekked up to this big rock pile and used it for a wind block. Ate a little and readjusted our boots and crampons. At this time we could see a front coming in but we could still see the summit. So we started up to the summit. While trekking up the side of the mountain we were almost being blown over with 70mph+ gust winds and temps down -10. The winds were steady about 60+. So the summit we were. Not bad we made it up in 3 hours. 4miles with 4000 feet elevation change. Then it was gore tex pants and jackets put on. James showed us how to glaciade (slide down on your butt) down the mountain. So we started sliding down. Parts of the mountain that took us like 25 mins to climb only took like 20 seconds to slide down. So we did that when we could. It got pretty crazy when we were doing that in the tree areas. I got a little nervous then. A awesome trip if you like hiking this is a mountain to climb.