Mt Jefferson under the weather man

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Today was Mt. Jefferson's turn in our illustrous quest of the "48 fourthousands footers" in the White Moutains range area. That is until the weather man came down on us an hour and a half shy of the summit #$%#@%@#%@#%$@$ First the rain came during breakfest at 6:30 am. I gathered it was done so in order to insure the track was slippery wet. In the mean time a veil of mist creeped from the below valley to meet with the above over stuffed clouds (too much at mother natures' table I gathered). Quite nice to observed as it rolled in and out out of the various valleys and gulfs making up the local landscape. It was a nice hike, terrain was wet but they had placed logs and reasonably sized rocks over those mini bogs. A nice view from various vintage points. A little obscured in the distance by the rolling mist but beautiful. Actually from one of those vintage points, somewhere below into those green peaks sticking out of the fog, we could hear a very loud water fall. Then came the wind, howling throught the trees and hitting us full force as we cleared the tree range into the stony path. Bah.. nothing unexpected here. Actually I begain laughing and increasing my paste in defyiance of it all. Shortly after, IT came.... hail !!! fuuuucccc hail smack in our face and packs with the old man laughing at us with wild galls of wind. At this point, any conversation of comunica of the vocal sort had to be done within a few meters due to the noise of the mixed hail & rain crashing agains't our coats and gear and shrinking visibility. We trugged on for an additional 45 min with heart but then with little to no visibility and ongoing hail bombarding us from straight from the moutain top we turned back about 25 min shy of the summit. : ( Actually doubled back once we reached the fork between the GulfSide Trail & the Summit for those of you familiar with the area. A very sad day indeed... But in retrospect, a validated tactiful retreat. "You have to respect the weather', or so the saying goes in theise parts when venturing up in those moutains.





Mt Jefferson via the Caps Trail.
Crew : Me and Dad
Started at 9:15 am
"Tactical Retreat"... at around 11:15 (Great Gulf Trail shy of Jefferson Summit)
Lunch snugled under a rockface sometime past noon for a few minutes (see above pic)
Back at the car at 2 pm

For more info on previsouly visited moutain tops and AMC Huts, not to mention a few more pics... visite my website under the "Outdoors" secton. (Password protected, simply ask for entry details)