Mount Lincoln

Mt Lincoln via Lincoln’s Throat
Matthew Gilbertson, Eric Gilbertson, Jon Hanselman
March 13-14, 2010
Author: Matthew

It’s healthy to be humbled by a mountain from time to time. It’s good for you to realize, sometimes, that no matter how experienced you are your success in reaching the summit and getting down safely can sometimes be marginal. As we climbed Lincoln’s Throat this past weekend Mr. Lincoln himself had some lessons to teach us about mountaineering.

Our objective was to get some more practice in mountaineering by climbing one of the hardest ways up Mt Lincoln, called Lincoln’s Throat. It involves driving to Franconia Notch, hiking a little ways up Bridle Path, then bushwhacking just after it enters the “Wilderness Protection Area.” You hike a mile or so over a creek and that puts you at the base of a steep snow gulley on the side of Mt Lincoln. Our goal was to practice roping up and placing protection like pickets and flukes like you would for a genuine big-mountain mountaineering expedition. We also wanted to teach Jon Hanselman some basics.

We happened to meet another group of MITOC’ers that morning at the trailhead: Pat Allen, Eric Munsing, and a friend. They were going to ski down. Luckily they were a little in front of us so we could follow their tracks to the base of the gulley. Once we reached the base of the climb we decided to practice some self-arresting because we might need it higher up.

The self-arresting was going well but we had a slight mishap. I started sliding from upside-down-headfirst and as I rolled onto my ice axe for the proper self arrest position the axe handle jabbed hard into the base of my ribs and knocked the wind out of me. At first I thought it was just the wind that got knocked out of me but after a couple of minutes I realized that I must have hit myself a little harder than I thought; it hurt to take a deep breath or to use my abs. But it didn’t hurt too bad so we decided to keep climbing.

(Aside: I never quite figured out what the problem was but I was hurting for the next five days. I went to MIT Medical on Monday morning and had to get an X-Ray, blood drawn, and a CT scan to see if I had hurt my spleen. Luckily they said everything was normal. I would have felt a little more gratified though if I at least had a nice purple bruise to show for all that pain and all those examinations.)

So we roped up at the bottom with Eric in the lead, Jon in the middle, and me cleaning at the end. It took some time to get efficient with all the complicated gear. Everyone had their role: Eric placed protection in the snow, Jon clipped around it, and I collected the gear. It took some time to get efficient but we eventually got the hang of it. After two pitches we finally got to the crux of the climb: a little ice bulge. Under normal circumstances a short little ten feet of ice climbing would be no big deal. But with gigantic 70+lb packs loaded with overnight gear every step up was a challenge. It felt like we were carrying another person on our backs. With that much weight on your back your center of mass is farther away from the ice and it’s even harder to cling on. And it’s even harder when you only have one technical axe and one normal axe.

Eric led up the ice and was extremely generous with the ice screws. I was pleased to see six nice ice screws placed two feet apart. Jon made it up all right and then it was my turn. It was a real struggle because I had this big uncooperative person strapped to my back who was trying to peel me off the ice. And I had someone else stabbing me in the abdomen whenever I tried to use my abs to bring myself closer to the ice. I think sometimes in extremely physically strenuous moments your mind switches into a sort of caveman mode and you start speaking a different language. You’re adrenaline’s pumping and all you can say is “RAAAA!” or “UGGHHH!” or growl. You clench your teeth and bare them in front of your enemy so he knows you mean business. After spending a couple of minutes in a primeval caveman-to-caveman “Battle Of The ice Bulge” I stepped triumphantly on top of him and let out a growl.

Eric continued to belay me up to the nice little anchor he had built. I was still throbbing with adrenaline and my patience was running out. Now that’s just about enough from you, Mr. Lincoln, I’ve had it. I thought you were going to behave but it looks like we’ve got to teach you a little lesson in respect. I was ready to slap Mr. Lincoln on the face, and the GPS confirmed that we only had 500ft to go before we could stand on his big bald head. You’re going down, Abe.

I just decided to keep going because I had quite a bit of pro that I had cleaned up from Eric’s lead. You would call it “swinging leads.” I placed a few pickets in then finally reached the protection of the trees by the time I ran out of pro and it was time to build an anchor. As I belayed Jon and Eric up old Abe decided that it was time to put me back in my place once again and teach me another lesson. I started seeing some little snow chunks go sliding by and realized that someone else was above us. Before I could yell anything I saw what I thought was a tree hurdling down at me. That thing was flying like a meteor. I just had time to turn out of the way when I heard a big THUUNK right next to me. I turned around to see a ski protruding from the snow like an Easter Island Moai only four feet away. I was shaken. One more rotation and that ski would have nailed me. Abe was reminding me again that I wasn’t in charge today.

Luckily through all that I kept my hand on the brake and belayed Eric and Jon safely to the anchor. It was a short little walk to the ridge and the summit of Abe’s bald head. The wind was calm but as soon as we took one step across the ridge we were blasted by the wrath of Abe coming out of the Pemi Wilderness. There was a storm brewing down south in Boston. Our plan was to camp right on the ridge. We hiked a little ways and found a nice spot on the leeward side of a big rock outcropping. Curiously the wind was barely even noticeable in our little sheltered spot. We figure that we would get a good sleep as long as the wind didn’t shift…

I tried to dig a snow cave but three prospecting sites didn’t even turn up a gold flake. The snow was too shallow on the ridge. Oh well, we had the 3-person Trango so we set that up instead. Luckily we had some awesome tent anchors thanks to the pivots and flukes. Eric even put a little nut in the cliff to hold out one of the lines. The time was only 5pm and we had already set up the tent and dug a nice little kitchen area furnished with a dinner table and benches. In all the winter camping we’ve done we’ve learned how much of a hassle it is to melt snow, and how unexciting it is to huddle around the little stove for hours on end while it slowly converts snow into water. To shave off some stove burn time we’ve discovered the benefits of couscous. You just add boiling water and it soaks it up like a glorious little sponge. You don’t need to even keep it heated. It’s one of the world’s few true miracle foods.

As we ate we watched some gnarly clouds form to the north on Mt Lafayette. There was a storm a-comin’ to Franconia Ridge and that was just the beginning. But for now we could see the Presidentials and down into the valley quite easily and didn’t think much of it. We even hoped we might be able to see some stars that night….

We slept nice and warm, and luckily Abe’s breath behaved overnight and didn’t switch directions. We took down the tent without a problem in the morning and were ready to head down by 9am. We didn’t even feel much of a breeze from our campsite. We decided to take a little peek to the other side of the ridge to see if the wind was still there. Imagine for a second that you’re standing behind Niagara Falls, admiring the nice big curtain of water in front of you. You’re relatively dry and happy as a clam. Now imagine that you run and jump out into that nice big curtain of water and have the contents of Lake Erie pouring down upon you. That’s about how it felt to step onto that ridge. It felt like we were suddenly stepping into a hurricane. We could hardly stand up. We could only see about 100 feet. We retreated into the shelter of the campsite rock outcropping.

Which way should we go? We wanted the most rapid route down with all this wind. But we were square in the middle of the ridge so Falling Waters and Bridle Path would be the same length. We had a slight urge to see what was going in on top of Lafayette so we started out in that direction. We staggered about a fourth of a mile like a drunken sailor into the eye of the hurricane. The steady wind was difficult enough to walk in, but what made it harder were the gusts or sudden drops in wind. We still had our gigantic packs on like sails and had to lean into the wind. Whenever the wind dropped or picked up it was like a horizontal gravity vector had been instantaneously turned on and we were thrown violently to the side.

We sat down to consider our options. As I sat on the level snow the wind was so strong that I was actually being scooted sideways. Heck, I couldn’t even sit in this wind, let along stand. Luckily for us the temperature was in the upper 20’s so windchill wasn’t that big of a deal. That was the weird thing, it wasn’t that we were being held back because the trail was too steep or strenuous, or that it was too cold, or we were too tired. The thing that kept us from making progress was purely wind. You don’t often encounter that.

We thought about going just below the ridge underneath Lafayette but there were too many cliffs. Same with the ridge south of Mt Lincoln. We definitely didn’t want to climb any higher to the 5300ft summit of Mt Lafayette because we guessed the winds would be even stronger. We decided to turn around and go over Mt Lincoln to Falling Waters Trail. Imagine trying to walk across a flooded river filled with boulders. Just behind each boulder there’s a slight area of calmness but on either side the water is raging. This day Franconia Ridge had been submerged into one gigantic raging river of wind.

The wind battered us around and made verbal communication impossible. It was time to get into another argument with Mr. Lincoln’s inhospitality. I roared in frustration at the top of my lungs to Abe, but he didn’t hear me. I couldn’t even hear myself roar for that matter, the wind was so strong. It was like your voice was being torn from your lips and absolutely vanishing into thin air. One thing’s for sure, you don’t get a chance to yell that loud too many other places without someone hearing it. We later checked the Mt Washington observations and the sustained windspeed on Mt Washington at that time was 74mph with gusts of 89mph. I expect we had the same.

It was a unique, if undesirable, position to be in. If we had come from the valley that day and been blasted by wind we would have simply turned around. Simple as that. But now we were in the middle of the ridge and actually had to hike along it to get back down. We didn’t seem many other options. Jon and I each had trekking poles and all Eric had was an ice axe. We staggered, fell, hopped, jumped, and bounced along the ridge until we at last made it to the intersection at Little Haystack.

“All right,” I yelled, “let’s get the heck out of here.” We didn’t spend an unnecessary second up there. We plunged into the trees and dropped out of the wind. We had finally reached the other side of the raging stream as it was time to dry our feet off before the last hike out. Since the Falling Waters Trail is so popular we expected to see some other people come up soon. As the lead hiker I began rehearsing what I would convey to the first hikers we saw. Would I tell them it was “absolutely crazy” or just “no big deal” above treeline? The latter seemed a little more classy to us. I was savoring the opportunity to deliver my report to the first naïve hikers we would see.

But they never came. The lower we got the warmer it was and soon the blowing snow changed to ugly rain. We were hiking through slush and the trees were happy to donate their wetness to us as we brushed by them. By the time we reached the bottom we were pretty much soaked. We staggered into the parking lot and touched the car. We did it.

It’s pretty nice that you can get such a smorgasbord of activities all within 2.5 hours of Boston. We got to practice mountaineering, go snowshoeing, ice climbing, camp above treeline, traverse through a white tornado, and swim through a puddle of slush and rain. Good old Abe had taught us a few lessons in respect this past weekend. He had let us climb up his throat but had shown us just how angry he could get.

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