January 25, 2025

Start/End: Carter-Moriah Trailhead, Bangor Road

Peaks: Moriah (4,049')

Elevation Gain: 3,430 ft

RT Mileage: 9.20 mi

Duration: 6 hours, 35 minutes

Snow/Ice Difficulty: Grade I

After seven weeks away from the mountains, I was back in the Whites for a winter ascent of Moriah on the 25th, which I had previously hiked a few days before the official start of winter when I was working on my 48. My friend generously lent me his Insta360 to film my hike with, and I couldn't wait to get out and use it.

Waking up at 2:40 AM, we left the house at 3:15 and arrived at the trailhead in Gorham a little over three hours later. The car thermometer read -17° F, so it took a little longer to suit up than usual. Still, we were able to start out on the trail around 15 minutes before sunrise, just as we had planned. The trail ascended gently out of Gorham for the first couple of miles, and with no leaves or snow on the deciduous vegitation of the lowlands the early morning light shone beautifully on the hills in the distance.

In preparation for the cold we had used hand warmers under our mittens from the beginning of the hike, but it was so cold that even our feet were freezing inside our boots, and we had to take a quick break to put hand warmers in our boots too. After 2.2 miles, we entered the coniferous forest and shortly thereafter summited Mount Surprise. Low clouds shrouded the Presidentials in the distance, so the view wasn't quite as nice as it can be on a clear day.

After Mount Surprise, the trail briefly dipped back into the deciduous forest before entering some extremely scenic spruce and fir glades for a little less than a half mile, which are shown extensively in my video linked above. At the top of the glades we reached, from my memory, the best viewpoint on the lower segment of the hike, although it wasn't quite as nice this time with lingering low clouds over the Presis.

After the glades, the trail continued ascending the remainder of the way to the summit through much denser coniferous forest. The landscape changes were nearly identical to the last time I hiked Moriah, with the snow on the trees increasing significantly above 3,000 ft. There was much deeper snowpack on the ground, however. We summited just after 11:00 AM, where I was pleased to find that the views had improved greatly as much of the low cloud coverage had dissipated.

It was quite windy on the summit and you can even hear it blowing in my videos on and near the summit. Considering that and the large group of hikers that summited just after us, we didn't linger long. The descent was super quick with the packed snow and we were back at the top of the glades in no time. The view here was much improved from the morning too, and I found it worth it to get out my camera for some final photos.

The descent of the glades was much more fun than the ascent had been as we were able to glissade down some parts, and I even got this on video. By this point, the temperature had warmed by over 35° compared to the early morning, and the rest of the descent was quite comfortable. We were back at the parking lot just after 1:20 PM, and winter 4,000er #8 was in the books.