September 30 - Hiking conditions

[Brad]

The radar map looks clear all over New England and the Ravines image looks great. What a wonderful day to be hiking. I hope some of you do get a chance to get out there.

The Ravines Camera image at 7:00 AM today:

[Brad]

The Ravines camera images get uploaded to http://public.fotki.com/MWO/current/ravine/ throughout the day. So, you can go to this album and see how the conditions changed. This should be a set of really nice images today.

[MarkO]

Looks like it could be slippery above 5000'

[Brad]

Looks like it could be slippery above 5000'

Summit temperature right now is 27 degrees and a wind chill of 12. Probably very slippery.

Just checked the Ravines camera image and it is clear - oh, so nice.

[MarkO]

It was brutal on the summits today. We hiked the Crawford from Mizpah Springs and it took quite a bit of time. Clinton wasn't that bad, but the wind became really nasty on Ike and even worse on Franklin and Monroe. Was mostly light rain showers with a little sleet mixed in, but as soon as we hit the summit cone (about the last 1/2 mile up the Crawford), it turned to all frozen goign from sleet to mostly snow near the top.
To be honest, this was a very difficult hike in winds that gusted above hurricane force on the summit. I'm certain we experienced winds in the 60's.
When we got to the top, we rerouted our decent and had someone pick us up at the base of the autoroad.
We are experienced hikers and this was a little more than we bargained for.

BE CAREFUL!!! I heard a hiker was nearly killed in similar conditions last week.

[Brad]

Mark,

Happy to hear you got down safe. For reference here is the summit wind chart for the 24 hour period ending at 3:00 PM yesterday when you were hiking. Peak gust was 77 mph.