THE PRESIDENTIAL TRAVERSE

The hardest part of hiking the Presidential Traverse in New Hampshire is not the hiking, it's defining what the Presidential Traverse actually is. If you're an Appalachian Trail hiker, the Presidential Traverse means backpacking along the ridge trail, traversing the ridge line without summitting any peaks. To a day hiker, it means bagging the 5 major summits on the ridge: Mt Madison, Mt Adams, Mt Jefferson, Mt Washington, Mt Eisenhower, and Mt Pierce, potentially all in one day. To others, it means summitting all 12 named bumps along the ridge, and finally, it might mean bagging the 8 listed summits over 4000' to be credited towards the Northeast 111 (115) list. Whatever your definition, this traverse is worth doing. My husband and I decided to do the 36km route over two days on August 17/18th, 2013.

Pre-hike: We tent-camped at Dolly Copp Campground near the small town of Gorham, NH. The popular campground has basic sites with shared washrooms and sinks and can be pre-booked in advance through 'reserve america'. Be warned there are no showers at this campground. We packed day packs for the hike with a small sleeping bag and change of clothes for the hut. 

Day 1 - Valley Way Appalachia (1306 ft) to Lake of the Clouds Hut: We parked our car at a popular trailhead called Valley Way Appalachia. We hiked up 4000' up the beautiful Valley Way Trail up to the main ridge. Just before we got there we saw the sign below. The winds on this ridge had the highest recorded winds in the world at one point at 372km/hr. Serious terrain.

We continued up to the Madison Hut and turned left and summited our first peak Mt Madison at 5367ft. We descended down from the summit to the hut and checked out the facilities. We were also able to fill up our water bottles here as well. Continuing back on the trail we noticed that from the summit of Madison over Mt Adams to the Edmands Col was mainly a big pile of uneven large suitcase size boulders that is essentially the trail. I had not read about these boulders anywhere in advance and didn't realize how long the boulder fields go on for and how annoying walking over boulders would be. Despite being a rock climber and a experienced hiker, the torquing of your feet in all directions over these boulders is something not to underestimate. Make sure your ankles are ready and your footwear is solid. Once you hit Jefferson, the boulders disappear for the most part and the ridge trail flattens out. Summits are reached by veering off the main ridge trail, hitting the summit, and heading back down to the ridge trail on the far side. This pattern would repeat itself for almost the entire trail.

View over to Jefferson and Washington from Adams in a sea of boulders

Heading over to Jefferson the views become spectacular. Summitting Jefferson at 5712 ft you are reminded that there is a drivable road and cog railway to the top of Mt Washington. What's the issue? Hoards of tourists are everywhere, many of them "hiking" on the ridge trail in this area-this is NOT the traverse to do to get away from people. Still, walking the beautiful trail between Jefferson, over Mt.Clay, and to Washington is gorgeous. Summitting Washington at 6288ft is interesting with the buildings, cars and people but by now we had our eyes set on descending to the Lake of the Clouds Hut, owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club. This hut has a capacity of 90, and it was overcapacity the night we stayed. There is no camping allowed on the traverse above the treeline, so AT thru-hikers sleep on the dining room floors of the huts. We had to reserve our bunk spot in advance online (link here). As we got there just before dinner, we had last picks of the bunks (see the triple stacked bunks in photo below: I had the knee-high bottom bunk). Our stay at the hut was incredible as the staff are very entertaining throughout meals dressing in costumes and putting on theatrical acts. They are also very helpful if you need trail any trail advice. The food was plentiful and nutritious. At $90/night/pp it better be! I do recommend ear plugs!

Day 2 - Lake of the Clouds Hut to AMC Highland Centre: Breakfast at the hut is at 8am so our timeline today would be tight to get to the Highland Centre by 4pm to get our shuttle back to our car. We ate and left quickly and within 20 minutes ascended our first summit of the day: Mt Monroe at 5372ft. From this point on, our hiking would be trending downwards: Mt Franklin at 5001ft, the Mt Eisenhower at 4474 ft, and the Mt Pierce at 4310 ft, and finally Mt Jackson at 4052 ft. The trail dips up and down and more and more exit trails appear-especially near the popular Mizpah Spring Hut. This is when I started to realize that people descend off the trail at different points and claim they have done the traverse. Then I realized that everyone has their own definition including a hiker we had met on the shuttle, completing 4 peaks in under 12hours of hiking/running. We continued on to Mt Jackson, one of Northeast 111, that I wanted to summit. We then cut off on the Webster-Jackson Trail, after summitting 10 of the peaks on the traverse.

On the summit of Mt Jackson, our 10th peak.

We hiked along the road a short distance and walked into the Appalachian Mountain Club Highland Centre and checked in with reception for our shuttle reservation. We waited in the waiting room for the shuttle, used the washrooms, and bought a cold drink. The shuttle service was great and we we back at our car in no time. We returned to Dolly Copp for another evening and had a shower at Pinkham Notch Centre and a dinner in Gorham. The hike totals: 36km and 10,000ft of ascent in 16 hours of hiking over 2 days.