Mt Washington State Park: Monday, March 26th, 2012

It’s been a record breaking weather week on the summit of Mt Washington. Temperatures for the summit shattered six daily record highs with the warmest recorded by MWO of 54F on Wednesday, March 21st. That’s 15 degrees warmer than the record high for that day. In March temperatures should average well below freezing, with lots of icing, super hurricane-force winds and over 48″ of snow. Not true this year. The melting of the snowpack continues,
but rest assured the ravines and gullies are full of snow.

No need to rush out just yet for some last backcountry turns. There will be plenty of skiing in the higher elevations for many weeks so pick your days wisely. Temps are trending downward now to more late March-like weather and its re-freezing the snowpack. This past week we went from driving snow cats from the base to the summit to using trucks up to 4.5 mile. Normally this doesn’t occur until later in April. This week’s warm weather has created all kinds of interesting road conditions from washouts

to deep snow drifts

to glare ice.

Thanks to these cooler temperatures we going to try to drive a truck over the Cragway drift (with a little help from a snowcat if needed) today so we can stage a truck at the 6 mile parking lot to use as an upper mountain shuttle. Then we would just have use the snowcat to get over the short gravel sections of the auto road that holds the deepest snow drifts and mud. We don’t like to pound our expensive snowcat tracks over bare pavement which is why we’ll be making the effort to get a truck in position to use on upper 2 miles of auto road. As soon as we do so it will probably snow 2′ next week!

This week we also had the pleasure of enjoying an overnight visit from fellow Monadnock State Park Manger, Patrick Hummel. Patrick’s claim to fame on Mt Washington is for not only taking a whole series of breathtaking photographs like this sunrise shot

but also Patrick has stayed overnight inside the Yankee Communication building

and managed to sleep in the North End bedroom that many summit staff feel is inhabited by the ‘Presence’ or summit ghost. Patrick made it through the night unscathed and proved that this spirit is not too scary!

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About Mike Pelchat, Manager of Mt. Washington State Park