Lafayette

Today I hiked Lafayette, which is a pretty big mountain, 5249 feet tall, the 12th tallest of the mountains in NH! It's a popular one because it's not too far from Boston, it took me 2 hours to get there. Kind of a long drive, but still do-able in a day, with a long hike in the middle. To make the drive less boring I got the CD for Hamilton (yeah, I know, listening to Broadway musicals. But whatever. It was good!) and of course Lafayette was a friend of Hamilton so it worked out well as a theme kind of deal.

It was really nice out today, and I almost didn't pack an extra jacket and my gaiters, but then I just threw them in for the heck of it. As soon as I got into Franconia Notch, though, there was a low hanging cloud over everything. I was a little nervous, cause that's where I was hiking. I was glad I had my gaiters! You can see the clouds below us in the picture.

The hike was long and a lot of up hill, not surprisingly. There were an unfortunate number of ice falls on the trail, which I really disliked on the way down.  I was going so slow and I tried to get everyone to pass me, but they just refused. One woman on the hike is an ER nurse, and she actually walked me across the first really scary part. Then I decided I had to stop being such a wimp. But, I was really tired by that point, and so it make me pretty anxious.

Other than that, it was an awesome hike! Really pretty in the woods, there was snow on the ground and trees, and some crystals in the air that were catching the light. There's an AMC hut on the way up, and we stopped there for lunch. I totally want to stay there in the summer! The top was really nice, good view and great to sit and eat more :)

Total hike distance, according to the signs, was 2.7 miles to the hut and another 1.1 miles to the top. Total 7.6 miles, 3500 feet elevation gain - which doesn't seem like that much when you just write it there, but when you are hiking up hill for 3+ hours with snow and ice on the trail, really seems like a lot!  I'm beat!!

(on the trail)