Carl and I started up the Mount Washington trail this morning at 6:30. Our plan was to go up the Mt. WA main trail to the summit, then go down to the Great Wall and up to Change Peak, then back down to the cars via Great Wall/Great Wall Connector/Lower Mt. WA trail.
We did the Mt. WA and Change Peak summits (actually, just short of Change Peak summit) but near the junction of the Great Wall trail and the Olallie Bike Trail what did we spy up ahead but a large bear hanging out on the trail.
We quietly retreated and quickly decided the smart choice was to re-trace our route. This was kind of sad since the route we had planned would have been about 9.5 miles. Having to backtrack turned our hike into a 12.73 miler with just over 4K elevation gain. Yikes! But that beats the potential consequences of surprising a possibly surly bear.
I have added some color to the track below. The red circle is where we turned around and the green arrow shows the direction we back-tracked.
As for the lame photo, I forgot to bring my camera and only managed to snag one photo on my phone. That is a leak in a cliff which leads us to believe that sometime in the distant future, the cliff is going to collapse. We hope it isn’t for at least a few thousands years.
Anyway, in spite of everything (plus, I came scarily close to sliding off a cliff) it was a fun day and a great workout.
Track