"Suck it, Day Light Savings"

AYFKMB? The weather was perfect for hiking. I'll let the pictures do the talking:

It's too clear out. I don't want to see Lake Winnipesaukee.

"Look at all the stuff I own!"

My phone can kiiiiiiiind of take ok panoramas

Anyway, I'm done with letting the pictures doing the talking. It's my turn now. I went hiking on Sunday with two adventure enthusiasts: Alex "X" Mandeville and Sterling (Stone-)Wall (Jackson). And despite the fact that it is early March in the White Mountains, a time when the weather is normally all "fuck you I do what I want. Here's 30 feet of snow." Instead, the weather was like "have fun guys lol." And have fun we did. We hiked Passaconaway and Whiteface, which, I'm not sure if you noticed in the pictures, have insane viewpoints. Saying that it took us 6.5 hours to hike is unfair because spent a significant amount of time prancing along the view areas saying "WTF I CAN SEE FOREVER" every 10 steps.

We started the day at fuck o'clock in the morning so we could drive up and start hiking at 7:30. In case you're ever thinking of driving Route 113a in New Hampshire, make sure that you hate your car, because that road is a bumpy, horrible mess and I'm pretty sure my car aged about 13 years with that drive. But anyway, we started the hike from the south of the mountains (definitely recommend this: it is a shorter hike with moar viewpoints). You start off traipsing through some backyards and then up to a trail we ended up calling "Wiggums Trail" even though I'm pretty sure it is not called that. This was the sign "suggested":

"Not recommended. Steep and loose."

So nearly a "that's what she said" joke. But when a sign says "not recommended" and then you go anyway, understand that you will most likely regret your decision. We saw that only one person before us had headed up this path, and judging by the 3 foot deep foot/leg holes we were following, it was going to be a "strenuous" portion of the hike. And we decided to go with microspikes instead of snowshoes, so... good luck! It turned out to be really fun with some decent views of the "bowl" between the mountains, albeit steep and snowy. It was really scrambly at parts, which is a tad difficult with my hand that is still exploded from a month ago. But after countless hours toiling up to the ridge, we made it up to some ridiculous view areas (see above). We spent some time derping around up there and then went up to summit Whiteface. There were some icy scrambles, which led to Sterling saying something to the effect of "if the guy who invented microspikes were here right now, I'd probably go down on him." Niiiiiiiiiice.

The actual "summit" has no view, but right before the summit is a... monstrous lookout. You could see Mt. Washington, Winnipesaukee, a shitload of other stuff; it was great. There were a few downs/ups/downs/ups, but we eventually made it to summit Passaconaway soon after. Another great view near the summit. We then raced down the mountain, ass-sledding half the time. The snow was starting to melt and it was 50 degrees out and there were dogs: so awesome. At the end of the hike there were these two ENORMOUS DOGS that came and played for a bit. One of their footprints was bear sized. No joke.