Mt. Washington via Great Wall (and Steve) 4/26/2015

Steve
Steve at the summit

Many thanks to Steve who was able to re-route me and get me to the Mt. Washington summit.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

My plan today was to hike Mt. Washington again but this time via a route that Derek and I had noticed, the Great Wall trail:

Great Wall
This way to the Great Wall

The trail is awesome with views, on average, much better that the main trail.  For example:

Great view
Typical sublime view

A couple of sections of the trail are closely bordered by what I would categorize as, well, as great walls:

Great Wall
Part of the actual Great Wall

I was following footprints.  There was so much snow, and I did not know the way, so the “trail” for me was footprints from someone a few days previously who had blazed the way:

Footprints
My map

Ultimately the footprints just stopped and doubled-back.  Uh oh!  But I pushed on (and on and on) and finally got to a rocky outcrop just below a summit.  It was a summit but not the one I was looking for.  That’s when I turned around and decided to back-track to the main trail and go up to the summit from there.

But, luckily for me, I ran into Steve, who showed me the correct route.  This is a marvelous trail, and it gets ultra-steep right at the end.  But well worth it for the views on the top:

Mt. Ranier
Mt. Rainier from Mt. Washington summit

And:

Great Wall view
Great Wall view

And:

View
Mt. WA view

I was hoping to do this route and get back to the car in 5 hours, because I am only going to have 5 hours to hike on Wednesday.  I think this route is a bit long for 5 hours but – this hike is great via both trails, we could do the main trail up and down (perhaps that jog to the right at the pond for a switch) in 5 hours no sweat.

Looking forward to Wednesday and thanks again to Steve!  Without Steve I would have failed in my mission of getting to the summit via Great Wall