Discussion: top of Kearsarge

You can't drive to the top of Kearsarge from either the Winslow side or the Rollins side. The Rollins road does get you closer--but it's still a hike of maybe 800m, 100m vertical. From the Winslow side, more like 1.5km, 340m. (I didn't check the hiking guidebook, just eyeballed from OpenTopoMap.)

I was about to launch into one of my long verbose tales, this one about betting many ice creams with a work colleague on whether a runner (me) or a bicyclist (him) could get up the Rollins road fastest. But I'm pretty sure I already clogged up your log with that story a couple of years ago. The bottom line was, I had to buy a *lot* of ice cream.

Shame on my memory - I've been to both, mistook one for the other. I wanted Rollins
to drive as high as possible. When we drove thru downtown Warner & sign said 'go right' to Rollins on Kearsage Mt. Rd. I realized what I'd done. We'd purchased day tickets for Winslow so went with it. Rollins saved for later.

Jan., 31 '15 a group of us (led by a Bow resident familiar with route) walked from the Winslow gate to the trail head to summit on snowshoes in time for a cold, windy sunset and eventual full moon. You got me thinking of the past!

"Tom Danielson owns the men's record of 49:24."

"The course record of 56:41 was set in 2004 by renowned mountain runner Jonathan Wyatt."

Copy & paste for Mt. Washington records. I guess I'd have picked bike over running.

Maybe up-to-date.

Nice night trip up Kearsarge, not so far in the past. (Think what you've been through in those few years since!) Makes me think of our New Years '79-'80 hike to Hale, Bonds, Twins, which I believe we also reprised on these pages not all that long ago. In particular, that hike began with a sunset bushwhack up Hale. There was little snow that winter (I think the record least amount of snow for the 100-150 years that records had been kept in Concord to that point). I remember a bunch of winter 4000ers and winter 100-highest-ers excitedly grabbing peaks in the relatively benign conditions. Me, I love snowshoeing, even (or especially) in deep powder as long as your group includes several strong snowshoers to form a "peloton" taking turns breaking trail. Funny to be talking about snow and cold as we hit the warmest weather of the year so far.

40 years ago is a serious chunk of personal time. I have a pc I sent home June 21st, 1975 from Banff, 45 tomorrow.