Mt. Washington

Route:  Lion's Head Trail up and down

Date:  Saturday, February 4th, 2012

Group:  Hiked directly with tMail & Dogman, and more generally all the other guys of the annual Bad Boy event.  (The Puppet Master was unable to attend this year, and it was Old Skool's 2nd year in a row.)

Weather:  0° with winds gusting up into the 60's or so.  Actually, the winds were kind of out of the NW and the summit caused some weird wind shifts that basically protected us most of the day.  I doubt I experienced anything stronger than a steady 30mph for a short time.

Trail Conditions:  Very little snow, no snowshoes needed anywhere, crampons all day.  The trail is well packed out and somebody had placed bamboo poles w/ pink tape on the trail on the eastern snow fields.  The rocky sections of both the crossing from Lion's Head along the Alpine Garden and the ascent of the summit cone were well filled in and for one of the only times in a dozen-ish ascents, didn't feel like I was just banging on rocks.  Even the summit itself has almost no visible rocks although obviously you can tell by the shapes of the ice/snow/crust/rime that it's rocky.

Some hikers used microspikes, but were a bit unstable in the snowfields.