Halfway...Sort of...

It's a classic good news, bad news scenario here at Mt. Washington right now.

First the good news: the Road is cleared to halfway, and all the culverts below that point are flowing. Aided by warm, dry weather, the Road Crew has done a great job on the first 3.8 miles of road. We can even get vehicles without chains to that point. All good news.

Here's the bad news: it's snowing. As I type this, it's currently 17° at the summit. It's only 34° at the base. Winter is back, and that's not exactly conducive to getting the Road open.

What does it all mean? Well, we won't really know until the weather clears. We could get 6 inches of new snow or more above 4000 feet. We could have a number of culverts refreeze. We could have to clear large sections of the Road again. We could have a lot of icing. It's all a guessing game right now. Fingers crossed that it doesn't get too nasty.

All that being said, we are right about where we hope to be at this point in the Spring. It's rare that we aren't forced to take a couple steps back due to mountain weather, but it wouldn't be Mt. Washington if it was smooth sailing the whole way. Depending on how much snow we do get, the bulldozer will be moving up to Winter Cut Off and onto the 5 Mile on Monday. If the Crew doesn't need to tackle too many refrozen culverts, look for them to be right behind.

My plan is to head up the mountain late next week and get some pics and video of the Crew working on the 5 Mile. I could have gotten some shots of them working this week, but the Road would basically look just like it did last week...just a different section. And, those guys don't want me in the way! So, look for more pics late next week, but I'll have a culvert update on Monday or Tuesday.

- Ryan