Wednesday, July 23

Wednesday
Another day of perfect weather! Cool, overcast, occasional rain. And I think my legs may feel, dare I say it, good. The question arises, is it reasonable to expect to hike 2-4 hours every day, at an average grade of almost 1000 feet per mile? It really doesn't include a whole lot of actual running, but my heart rate stays high and the legs work hard. I mean, this shit is really exhausting!

I did a bunch of research online today, looking for descriptions of the various routes up Mount Madison (5367 feet, starting from about 1300 feet). First of all, I was mistaken; last spring I went up Short Line, not Air Line, because I remember passing by Mossy Falls. Which means I've taken Short Line, Air Line and Howkers Ridge trails up to about 4000 to 4800 feet. The unanimous online consensus from trail folk is that Valley Way is the easiest way up. Valley Way goes straight to Madison Hut (4800') in about 3.8 miles, and from there it's about 0.4 miles to the peak. Optionally, you can split off Valley Way after about 2.4 miles (3350') and take Watson's Path directly to the summit of Madison in about 1.5 miles. Hmmm. That's a 2050' climb over 2.4 miles (850'/mile, 16% grade) followed by 2000' climb over 1.5 miles (1330'/mile, only a 25% grade - the Mt Washington auto road has an average grade of 11.6%). Piece of cake.

I can't let myself get tempted to do really stupid things (because I'll do them every time), so I wait until late afternoon to hit the trails. I start at about 5:30 sharp, giving me no more than three hours of light. I'm planning on two hours so I can call it an easy day. Valley Way is a great trail, especially if you plan to run, but I didn't stretch today, so I fast hike it, reaching the Watson cutoff at about 62 minutes, about 26 minutes/mile. I take Watson for a very easy 8 minutes for 70 minutes out, up to about 3450' then head back. I take it real easy and careful on the top section down, anxious not to bust my ass, but the bottom two miles is almost entirely runnable, so I runned it. In fact I felt pretty good and totally enjoyed running it. As soon as I reached the car, the deluge began - good timing. For me at least, not so much for the three people I passed about a mile back, who probably still have 30 minutes left on trail. 50 minutes back for a total time on trail of 2 hours. That makes two days in a row without hurting myself. A new record!! (beating yesterday's record of one day in a row)

So I'm thinking it should be possible to summit Madison in about 2 hours, and to get back within 4. The question is, do I do it as a morning workout and get home before noon, or wait 'til 4 and try to get back before dark? Or is there a stupider option I've missed?