Mt. Pierce (4310)

Trail: Crawford Path
Date: April 7 2002

Attending: Shawn White, Gabe, Simone, & John Chicoine

Miles: 5-mile Round trip Time: 2.75hrs up, 4.5hrs. total

AMC huts, / shelters / camping site:

Weather: Mid 30’s at base, 20’ish on summit 30-40Mph wind, mostly cloudy,

This was another new peak for Shawn, and we had a beautiful day for it! Again, our first 4K of 2002! Note! Try not to schedule a hike on Daylight savings morning. We started at 9:30AM from the 1’ST parking lot on Mt. Clinton Road. There was a foot of snow at the trailhead. We took the Crawford Path to the top of Mt Pierce. The Crawford path to Pierce is a very easy path, usually well traveled as it had been in recent days prior to this hike. Fortunately there had been recent snows to give us acceptable footing on a hard packed snow trail. Crampons would have been very useful for the hike especially for the descent. The section of the Crawford path that bears left at the Mizpah cutoff was less traveled but still a solid footpath. The Summit of Pierce was crusted over with rime-ice. The trail had been blown clear with only a 2-inch ice crust.

We had PopTarts for lunch while we enjoyed the summit for about 20 minutes. It was windy, but if we stayed low, it wasn’t that bad. Coming off the dome, facing into the full brunt of the wind was a different situation. In just a few minutes we experienced cold noses, and fingers. The short stay on the summit chilled our drinks into slushies’. As soon as we got into the trees it was nice enough to take the wind-blocks off. From a few random postholes on the trail, (other peoples, not ours) we could see that the snow was at least 3 feet deep in places. We brought our snowshoes, but we never needed them. Simone used hers on the descent off the summit for extra footing on the hard crust, but the trail was such a hard formed foot path that the snow shoes weren’t functional.

Well, we’ve still never seen this trail in the summer, and although I suspect it must be very nice, I think we plan to save this trail as one of our regular winter hikes. Although,,, if I had bring a complete new-be up a 4K, (a sneakers and T-shirt kind of person) this would be one of my top 5 picks.

Links to all the pierce hikes:

  1. Pierce 1 – (2014, Carrie, Winter)
  2. Pierce 2 – (2013, Ben, Winter)
  3. Pierce 3 – (2010, Tyler, Winter)
  4. Pierce 4 – (2000, Gabe, Winter)
  5. Pierce 5 – (2002, Shawn, Gabe, Winter)
  6. Pierce 6 – (2004, Gary, Shawn, Gabe, Winter)
  7. Pierce 7 – (2004, Dale, Chris, Fletcher, Gabe, Spring)
  8. Pierce 8 – (2005, Shawn, Gabe, Winter)
  9. Pierce 9 – (First summit, 1999, Winter)