I left home at 6 AM for the hour and a half drive to the trail head. When I got to the turn, off route 3 onto the dirt road leading to the parking lot, the gate was closed! Gale River road is a loop, I tried the south entrance because it was a much shorter distance to the trail I wanted. I should have looked at the map at this point because I drove a further three miles South on Rt. 3 before I realized the other end of the road was actually in the other direction. I turned around and drove the five miles to the right road and wonder of wonders, that end was not gated. I then drove the four miles of dirt road to the parking lot. When I got there were only two other vehicles. As I geared up another car pulled in. It was 28 degrees when I started hiking at 8:00.
The Garfield Trail follows the old road that was used to reach the former fire tower on Garfield and has moderate grades all the way. I made good time on the first part and in a half hour I was at the first crossing of Gale River. The flow was low and I got across with dry feet. There are several crossings in a short distance here and I negotiated all without incident. I was passed by another solo hiker shortly after that. It is 4.8 miles to the only trail intersection which is .2 miles from the summit. Combined with the fact that there are only a couple of limited viewpoints along the way and that makes this trail boring in a not unpleasant sort of way.
I encountered patchy snow at around 2,500 feet and mostly snow covered trail at 3,500.
Not far now!. The last bit is steep and today, slippery. I carefully picked my way up the ice covered rocks and decided that I’d put on the micro-spikes before I came down. For the uninitiated, microspikes are a slip-on traction device to wear on icy trails when full-on crampons are overkill. They are lighter on your feet and easier to walk with than crampons as well. I was at the summit a few minutes later, around 11:20.
I have seldom been in the mountains on such a day as this. The views were awesome.
Killington, Camels Hump and Mansfield were all well within view muted by only a slight haze. The day before Mount Washington weather Observatory reported being able to see Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks 125 miles away.
The Pemigewasset Wilderness lay spread out before me. Photos by mere mortals like me certainly do not do justice to what I observed. The other folks there were soaking up the sun and views as well.
I spent an hour on top, chatting with other hikers and our numbers grew every few minutes. As I was preparing to go down, I counted twenty people. It’s nice to be on a mountain with so many others who share my love of climbing and the outdoors.
Micro-spikes made descending the first steep pitch a breeze, I kept them on for the first mile or so. I covered the 5 miles to the parking lot in just over 2 hours. I saw another dozen or so people on their way up. There were some muddy sections on the lower part of the trail and I slipped a couple of times, once falling and jamming my wrist a bit. Can’t wait to see how that feels in the morning.
