Conditions on Lions Head?

[MechAeroE]

I am considering hiking Washington via Lions Head tomorrow, but am not too confident that the conditions will be that great after all of this warmer weather. My main concern is the steeper section just below the tree-line cut-off where having a solid snow pack helped me climb it last time.

Any update on the conditions would be appreciated.

[iceclimber]

I was up on Thursday and decended to Pinkham Notch VC on Friday. Thursday was perfect, but the trail is deteriorating fast with this warm weather. Very Slushy on the lower TR trail. I can not speak for lions head,but I imagine that it is still ok, but it will either be icy when temp drops back down, or very slushy.

[smithtim]

It should be fine, maybe a few rocky icy parts but once you get up to treeline I'd expect a decent snowpack.... might be a bit slushy in the afternoon if you went Monday but with predicted high temps in the valley on Tuesday of mid twenties with very light west wind I'd say that would not be so much of a problem then

Of course always monitor
http://www.mountwashingtonavalanchecenter.org/
along with the other various sources and when in doubt...... the mountain will be there Tomorrow!

[MechAeroE]

I hiked it today planning on using the winter route, but the advisory board listed the summer route as open and the winter route as closed. I confirmed this with one of the workers inside Pinkham.

The Tuckerman Ravine Trail was well packed down but had patches of ice, so make sure you equip something to provide extra traction. Microspikes worked great.

The summer route picked up some fresh powder from the flurries this week but had a solid base layer to keep full coverage and prevent postholing.

Once above treeline the trail was easy to follow up to the Lions Head rock formation and the subsequent flat section.

The summit cone section didn't really have a packed down trail to follow for the first half or so. There was a decent amount of postholing up until the trail turned more into a mixture of ice and rock.

So overall the conditions were much better than I had expected. But again, this was using the summer route.

[iceclimber]

Congrats.


The summer route, by that are you meaning the Lions Head summer route. The winter Lions Head route avoids some avalanche zones lower down. The summer route of Tuckerman's Ravine trail would go up through the ravine. You followed the tuckerman's trail all the way to the tucks junction where Lions head meets up? Wow, the condition's really did get drastically warmer if that is the case. I was a bit confused about the whole summer/winter route thing myself a few weeks ago until it was cleared up in this thread. AT this time, the winter route of lions head has yet to be opened this winter.
Believe it or not, a lot of people get confused here. When I was on the mountain, I can't tell you the number of people who thought the summer route meant the Ravine trail and the winter route was the whole lions head route. They were not considering the detour on the lower lions head trail as being what was meant between summer and winter routes.

Scroll down till you see the maps. It is on the 3rd page.

http://www.mountwashington.org/forum...l-update/page3

[smithtim]

hey wlecome to the 6288 winter club and CONGRADS on your summit

Did you get a good weather day / low wind above treeline, or was it brutal like usual? Also, is tucks still looking this bad (pic taken 12/17 which was before the blizzard)

[MechAeroE]

I don't remember a section with that much ice coverage (on tucks), but I still would definitely recommend microspikes or something similar.

[smithtim]

that;s good as snowpak must be filling it a bit at lower elevations much easier on the ranger ( and their yellow lab rescue dog) if they can get enough snowpak to run the snow mobile upto hermit instead of hike in every AM

[iceclimber]

On the lower tucks when I was up on the 29th through the 31st, you could tell where there were very icy patches underneath. With the weekend's heat wave, I am sure alot of that melted. This was more midway up between tucks and Huntington's trail split.