Mt. Stratton
Submitted by Pat
Stats
Mountain: Mt. Stratton (3,940)
Date: December 8, 2007
Time: 4 hours and 30 minutes
Weather: Cloudy, snow, windy, 20s
Miles: 7.6
Elevation Gain: 1,701
Trails: Appalachian/Long Trail out and back
Holy Shit Factor: Sweet winter wonderland
What luxury to wake up at 5:45 am instead of 3:45 am and drive to the south side of Stratton Mountain instead of somewhere in the White Mountains. Not that I’m complaining, because I love hiking in the Whites, but the extra snooze time feels great. Nancy, Dejah and I hop in the car and head to Stratton via Routes 9 and 100. The idea is to bag Stratton with the possibility of expanding the 7.6 miles out and back into an 11 mile loop over to Stratton Pond and back. Everything depends on snow depths, whether the trail is packed out, and our stamina. When we arrive, Stratton is engulfed in clouds and ice crystal snow showers. It’s beautiful. My kind of winter hiking day. Dejah is raring to go but it takes us humans a while to get boots and gaiters and gloves and packs ready.
We set off up the Appalachian Trail-Long Trail at 8:45 am in bare boots. Well, that doesn’t last long. After maybe 50 feet Nancy turns around and says, “We gotta put on the snowshoes, don’t we?” I nod, knowing this is going to be a full on snowshoe day, our first of the season. So it’s with a lot of grunting and groaning that we bend over to strap on our MSR snowshoes. That routine of putting on snowshoes is conveniently forgotten this summer and the suddenness of this season’s snow catches us a little off guard. How do we work this? But it all comes back to us. We start up a gradual but steady uphill climb. After maybe 15 minutes I feel my hip flexors start to talk to me. They’re saying, “Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing, wearing those oversized plastic clown shoes, huh?” They are not happy with me. I’m amazed — just that extra weight and the width that causes me to change how I walk is enough to get those flexor’s panties in a twist. Sweet!
Nancy and I take turns breaking trail. One other snowshoer came through before the most recent snow, but basically we’re breaking trail in about 16″ of snow. Not as bad as the 34″ we were breaking through when we tried to climb Waumbek last February (after our first big snow), but enough to break a sweat and we happily share the lead every so often. The trail is beautiful — all the trees coated in rime ice and snow, everything frosted to perfection. For all the stress, hiking in the winter (or in conditions like these) is incredibly beautiful. I don’t take a moment for granted. We reach a trail junction and find that another hiker has recently passed through, making the last mile or so much easier. We actually meet up with him as he is coming down from the summit. He says that climbing the lookout tower is pretty sketchy, but we are almost there.
We arrive on the summit at 11:45 am. The wind is howling a symphony in and around the lookout tower. An eerie song. The entire tower is coated in rime ice and we decide we can’t see anything anyway and Dejah (the dog) would insist on coming up too and it just isn’t safe. We take a summit shot, congratulate each other on #68 of the NE 100 Highest, and start down so Nancy can get out of the wind and change into dry clothes. That’s always an unpleasant ordeal – stripping down to skin to put on dry layers. Brrr — but she’s a brave one, that Nancy, and I help a little by dealing with the wet stuff and prepping the dry stuff. After a few minutes of discomfort she is sighing with relief as her down sweater starts doing its job. Ahhhh, there is hope!
The hike back down is a lesson in relearning how to walk downhill in snowshoes that have crampons on them. If you step in the snow, the snowshoes glide down gently. If you step on a rock or something immobile, you stop and if you are unfortunate like Nancy was a couple of times, you do a face plant. I use my poles or I would have been planted right beside her. She doesn’t use poles unless she absolutely has to – they hurt her right shoulder that was dislocated as the result of a car accident years ago and didn’t really heal properly. The best part is watching her try to get up – my efforts at helping only seem to make things worse, so instead I stand back and take a movie of her efforts.
We hit the parking lot at 2:15 pm, plenty of time to get home at a decent, safe and sanitary hour. Great hike — although I expected to see skiers and snowboarders and hear the sounds of lifts and snow guns, but all we heard on the summit was the wind screaming through the tower struts. No warming hut, no hot chocolate, not even an Italian restaurant. After the water crossing adventures we encountered in November, this hike was a nice warm up for our bid to start hiking the 48 4,000 Footers in NH in winter.