October 13, 2024

Start/End: Wildcat Mountain parking lot

Peaks: Wildcat D (4,050'), Wildcat A (4,422')

Elevation Gain: 3,490 ft

RT Mileage: 9.30 mi

Duration: 6 hours, 39 minutes

Rock Difficulty: Class 1

After a weekend leaf peeping on the Sugarloafs and a weekend at home, I was back in the Whites for some peakbagging on Columbus Day weekend. With an impressive early-season snowstorm forecast for the upcoming week, I wanted to get the Wildcats out of the way for my sister's 48 before full winter conditions took hold.

Waking up at 4:00 AM, we left the house at 4:40, and arrived at the trailhead at 7:25, just after sunrise. The day started off with overcast but the sky was already clearing by the time we started out on the Wildcat ski trails at 7:45. Before it could though, we had already made it to a viewpoint which offered a rather nice base-to-summit frame of Washington, with remnant fall color lower down and patches of snow above treeline.

From the viewpoint, we continued following the gravel road up the Polecat ski trail, all the while the sky continued to clear from north to south. The ski trail ascent was steeper than I remember from the last time I hiked the Wildcats, but I'll take it over the standard rugged Whites trail any day. We broke into the coniferous forest fairly late, at around 3,400 ft. Another 600 vertical feet and we had summited Wildcat D by 9:50. The sky had fully cleared by this point, and it had turned into a beautiful morning.

After a quick break, we began making our way 1.7 miles on the Wildcat Ridge Trail to the summit of Wildcat A. The Wildcat Ridge Trail is rugged, first descending 300 vertical feet to the col between the two summits then a series of ups and downs over the unofficial summits of Wildcats C and B before the final ascent to Wildcat A. After an hour and a half of slow going, we summited Wildcat A just after 11:40.

As we were packing up to leave the summit, I fumbled my lens cap and it fell into Carter Notch off the summit. I could see it below but I decided it wasn't worth it to try and retrieve it, and we began making our way back to Wildcat D instead. The descent of the Wildcat Ridge Trail was just as bad as the ascent had been, and we were glad when we made it back just before 1:30 PM. Overcast had returned by this time, but the summits remained in the clear. We had skipped the summit tower on Wildcat D during the ascent, but this time we decided to check it out.

Wildcat D was a little more crowded than it had been in the morning now that ski lifts were running for foliage viewing, though not nearly as crowded as I'd imagine Cannon or Bretton Woods would have been today. The ski trail descent from Wildcat D was fast, taking just an hour, but a little tough on the knees. We made it back down to the parking lot just after 2:40, just as the first rain and snow showers with the incoming system began.