Mt Morgan (2227) & Mt Percival (2212)
Trail:Mt. Morgan, Crawford-Ridgeploe, Percival Trail
Date: Sunday 12/31/2001
Attending: Gabe, Simone, & John Chicoine
Miles: 2.1 up Morgan, .8 along Crawford-Ridgepole, 1.9 down Percival, .3 back to the parking lot.
Time: 4 hours total,
AMC huts, / shelters / camping site:
Weather: 25 degrees, sunny, dusting of snow, 10% ice on sumit domes
Happy New Year! Again, (Almost)
Another fun little hike on the Squam Range just outside of Holderness. This is the second time in 3 years we’ve hiked this section of the Whites with an almost total absence of snow on New Years day. We finally did this loop the way 90% of the hikers do it. Once again the Mt. Morgan parking lot was filled to overflowing while the Mt. Percival parking lot was empty. Mt. Morgan is an easy hike offering a most delightful “optional” challenge at the very summit. You can choose to reach the summit via a steep ladder climb over three ladder sections that you have switch onto as you climb up into a rock crevasse/tunnel with a small crawl through an opening that opens up to your first views of the hike. From there it’s just a few more ledges to another great view spot just a few hundred feet from the summit. Throw in some ice inside the crawl space and a thin crust of snow covering the ledges, and you’ve got a wicked fun time. All this fun can be avoided via a .2 mile hike around to the summit. We continued over the Crawford-Ridgepole trail .8 miles to Mt. Percival. The trail is nowhere as well traveled as the Mt. Morgan and Mt. Percival trails. Mt. Percival has a few hundred feet of rock scrambling to get off the top knob that needed lots of care to ascend because of the ice and snow.
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Mt Morgan (2227)
Mt Percival
(2212)
Trail:Mt. Morgan, Crawford-Ridgeploe, Percival Trail
Date: Sunday 1/01/2004
Attending: Shawn, Gary, Noah, Simone, & John
Miles: 2.1 up Morgan, .8 along Crawford-Ridgepole, 1.9 down Percival, .3 back to the parking lot.
Time: 4 hours total,
AMC huts, / shelters / camping site:
Weather: 25 degrees, partly cloudy, dusting of snow
What’s New Years Day without the annual pilgrimage Mt. Morgan.
(Just another rotten day in the flat lands.)
What better way to bring in the New Year than with good friends and family hiking the Squam Range just outside of Holderness. This is the third time in 4 years we’ve hiked this section of the Whites. This was another year with an almost total absence of snow on New Year’s day. We did the loop the way 90% of the hikers do it. by 9:30 AM the wind was blowing and the sun was nowhere to be seen. We were quite sure we had “under dressed” in just WindBlock shells and PolarTech vests. The only other hikers arrived at the same time we did and both of those groups were dressed for a polar caps expedition. As fate would have it, we were dressed just right!
Mt. Morgan is an easy hike offering a most delightful “optional” challenge at the very summit. You can choose to reach the summit via a steep ladder climb over three ladder sections that you have switch onto as you climb, up into a rock crevasse/tunnel with a small crawl through an opening that opens up to your first views of the hike. From there it’s just a few more ledges to another great view spot just a few hundred feet from the summit. Throw in some ice inside the crawl space and a thin crust of snow covering the ledges, and you’ve got a wicked fun time. All this fun can be avoided via a .2 mile hike around to the summit. (I know I said that on the first Mt. Morgan trip report.)
The Mt. Morgan trail was hard packed and icy but passable with bare boots and care. When we reached the point where you have to choose to reach the summit via the steep ladder climb or by the path loop, Shawn voiced, pointing to the ladders, “That’s for me” joined by Gary’s, “Me too!” Cool! The ladders were dry and safe with just a little ice in the crevasse crawl. The ledges on the other side of the tunnel were less icy than they had been in 2003, and the summit cliffs looked much more like they should on a cloudy summer day than on New Year’s day.
We continued over the Crawford-Ridgepole trail .8 miles to Mt. Percival. The trail is nowhere as well traveled as the Mt. Morgan and Mt. Percival trails. Mt. Percival has a few hundred feet of rock scrambling that needed lots of care to ascend because of the ice and snow.
By 1:00PM the Mt. Morgan parking lot was filled to overflowing. The Mt. Percival parking lot wasn’t plowed for parking, but the state did make an extra wide sweep at the entrance to accommodate a few cars.
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Mt Morgan
(2227)
Mt Percival
(2212)
Trail:Mt. Morgan, Crawford-Ridgeploe, Percival Trail
Date: Sunday 12/05/2004
Attending: Shawn, Noah, Simone, & John
Miles: 2.1 up Morgan, .8 along Crawford-Ridgepole, 1.9 down Percival, .3 back to the parking lot.
Time: 5 hours total,AMC huts, / shelters / camping site:
Weather: 20 degrees, cloudy, wind and snow flurries
If this is Mt. Morgan, then it must be New Years day
(Not this time my friend!)
This is the 4’th time in 4 years we’ve hiked this section of the Whites. One of these days we’re going to have to hike this trail in the fall just to see the views of the Squam lakes region in full colors.) Once again there was very little snow on these hills. The 2004/2005 winter has had very low snow fall season. The Farmer’s Almanac predicted a heavy snow fall winter; It may still happen, but we haven’t seen any accumulated snow fall (even on Mt Washington)yet!
We like to hike Mt. Morgan first because of the “optional” challenge at the very summit. You can choose a steep ladder climb at the summit. (No way would we choose to do this stretch in winter/icy conditions going down. (Not that climbing down the ledges on the summit of Percival is much easier.)) This was Noah’s first time on this summit, (he tried to make it on 01/04 but he ran out of steam.) this was his first experience over the three ladder sections. At one point you have switch ladders sideways onto a ladder that runs parallel to one that you’re on then you have to hand scramble on your knees over icy rock face up into a rock crevasse/tunnel with a small crawl through an opening that opens up to more ice covered rock ledges. It was a bit daunting (as it always is.) But the spectacular views over the Squam lakes always elicits the same response as someone pops his head out of the cave, “Oh Wow.” This is your first unobstructed views on the hike. At that point you begin to realize you just climbed and crawled through something you don’t want to go back down, to have a few more moments of scrambling up something you’re not sure you want to climb up. But it’s just a few short snow and ice covered ledges to another great view spot just a few hundred feet from the summit. All this fun can be avoided (but who would want to unless you had to), via a .2 mile hike around to the summit.
The .8 miles to Mt. Percival via the Crawford-Ridgepole trail was covered with a fresh 1″ deep snow dusting and a few icy spots but passable with bare boots and care. (Bummer! we just bought crampons last weekend and it would have been cool to give them a try.) We weren’t in any hurry so we took a nice long snack break on the summit of Mt. Morgan. Just as we were about to pack up and head down off Morgan, we noticed two ladies, (about Simone’s and my age) coming up the trail from the Mt. Morgan caves direction. They had followed us up Percival and had seen us scrambling up the ladders as they continued via the by-pass loop on Mt. Percival. (The caves are a very challenging rout of the Mt. Morgan trail that is best avoided in winter.) It appears they knew of a loop on Mt. Moragn to avoid the caves, but couldn’t find it, so they attempted to go down through the caves. Big time no go! Lots of ice and crawling through tight spaces with no good footing. They had wisely decided to abort the attempt and to backtrack all the way to Mt. Percival. We offered to show them the alternate path down, but we knew there was a fair amount of tricky work to get down off the ledges for all of us. The ladies were more than happy to follow us down.
This loop has a new feature to it since we last hiked it on New Year’s day. There is a connecting trail from the Mt. Morgan Trail to the Mt. Percival trail down at the very bottom of the trail. This saves a lot of time, and keeps the heavy pedestrian traffic off the narrow and winding highway between the two trailhead parking lots. This is such a heavily hiked loop that this cutoff is an absolute must. There was a down side to this hike and that was the sight of all the logging that is going on all over the lower section of these trails. The forest is a mess of muddy skidder roads and the woods are really getting cleared out.