Mount Washington Day 1 of 2013
Yep, today Olivia and Errol brought Olivia’s friend Lilly to Mount Washington. Audrey was going to go but was asked on a 3-night camping trip at a campground in Groton, so clearly she went there.
We did the whole bit, prepped the day before, I got up at 4:15 AM to take a shower. Woke the girls up (Olivia and Lilly) at about 5, I packed the food as I made a thermos of coffee. (Honestly a whole thermos of my hightest is too much. That’s 3 whole pints, plus the one I made when I got up, combine that with the dehydrating effect of Mount Washington’s rarified air AND the 40 MPH wind…) Last thing I did once the car was all packed was to dress Errol and dump him in the car. I meant to leave at 5:45 AM and we got on the road just after 6 (I think). Even with a ten minute stop at the Danville store we made it by 7:45. Cliff, N1RCQ, had last year’s T-shirt for me, bright yellow.
The car did just fine for it’s first trip. 1st gear most of the way. It was 40˚ and 40MPH wind when we got there! Wow. I went up another driveway because the cog was closer and I took my camera over there right away and set it up. I managed to get a full frame shot of the steam engine going up and down. I left the camera running for almost 40 minutes to tend to my radio duties and that ran the camera battery down, so I didn’t have enough charge in it to record the drive down.
It was too cold for the kids to be outside, but at about 10, the wind dropped to a mere 20 MPH and the girls went out and played in the back 40 for nearly an hour. We had to wait extra long for the Road GM to clear up-bound traffic… But we went up to the top. We all went inside out of the wind, yay. Errol had to poop, so the girls went in the regular bathroom and I took Errol to the Obs bathroom. We perused the state’s gift shop and then went down to the Obs shop. I got a t-shirt (for $10) and a nice compass (made in Finland). We took the Obs tour, Errol was cold and Olivia’s friend Lilly was hesitant to go up the ladders in the Obs tower. But she went up eventually, and then after I helped Errol down she asked me to do the same for her. On the way down she said to Olivia, that she’s not as afraid of heights as she had been.
I tried to raise someone out on the roof of the summit building on the home repeater, but no one came back to me. I tried several other repeaters, no one on Mansfield, no one on the Cannon Mountain 220, no one on Mt. Ellen, no one on K1US… I finally got someone on the Mt Equinox machine. That was about 150 miles on 5 watts with my 9db gain long whip. Elevation is everything.
We started down and stopped almost immediately, Errol had fallen asleep already and I needed to stay with him. I gave Olivia my radio and tuned the car radio to the same freq in case they had a problem. They went up to the top of the nearest pile on the Ball Crag Trail. hey had a great time. The new Volvo didn’t have such a big cloud of oil smoke after engine braking all the way down as the last Volvo I had. We went to the Cannoli store on the way back. And then dropped Lilly off at home.