Mount Washington
15 October 2019Somewhat spontaneously on the way from New Hampshire to Maine, we decided to drive to the top of Mount Washington, New Hampshire’s highest peak. At less than 2000 metres, Mount Washington doesn’t sound all that impressive. However, the weather conditions on the summit, in particular the high winds, can be very challenging.
You can drive your own car to the summit on a narrow two-lane toll road. With around 20 degrees C in the valley, it’s quite a shock reaching the “snow line” a couple of hundred metres from the summit. The stones, and what little vegetation there was, is suddenly covered in ice.
There’s a museum at the summit, which included some incredible videos and stories of the manned weather station there. The highest manually-measured windspeed on Earth was measured on Mount Washington, and the mountain is used for testing all sorts of climbing and hiking gear.
