April 18, 2025

Start/End: Appalachia Trailhead, Rt. 2

Peaks: Adams (5,774')

Elevation Gain: 4,585 ft

RT Mileage: 9.13 mi

Duration: 8 hours, 54 minutes

Rock Difficulty: Class 1

Snow/Ice Difficulty: Grade I

On the last day before mud season begins in the Whites with a deluge of rainfall this weekend, I went for an ascent of Adams and Madison. An early arrival of the storm system cut my day short and I had to skip Madison, but I was able to summit Adams. Since it was the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, I flew my American flag on the summit.

Waking up at 4:30 AM, we left the house at 5:05, and arrived at the trailhead at 7:50. It was a warm morning for the time of year, so we packed pretty light heading out on the Valley Way. It was a perfect bluebird morning with not a cloud in the sky, and both Adams and Madison were visible higher up through the trees. Adams looked fairly snowy, but Madison was almost completely bare. There was no snow at the TH as I expected, but the monorail began at 1,800 ft, around 800 feet lower than this time last year in the northern Presis. A sign that spring snow will be better this year than last? We'll see in May and June.

After stopping briefly to put our spikes on, we continued onwards as the monorail was quickly supplanted by widespread snowpack within a few hundred vertical feet. The warm morning afforded us the opportunity to hike on fairly fresh snowpack while birds chirped overhead in the hardwood forest. The chirping mostly subsided after we broke into the coniferous forest at around 2,800 ft.

As the day warmed further, the snowpack began to soften and stick to our spikes, and we had to stop increasingly often to whack the snow off our spikes with our poles. Above 4,000 ft, the monorail brushed right up against the trees on the right side of the trail, with the center of the trail actually angled horizontally. This would normally be fine but the snow sticking to our spikes limited traction on any significant incline, forcing us to hug the edge of the trail for several hundred vertical feet. Finally, around 11:30, a steep section broke us into the alpine zone and we reached Madison Hut shortly thereafter.

The sky was still bluebird when we reached the hut, but alas it was not to be for much longer. Quincy Adams, a subpeak of Adams on its northeast side, towered above the hut, but the main Adams massif was obscured from view. Interestingly, Quincy Adams was mostly bare just like Madison, while Adams itself was much snowier as we'd seen from the TH and as we'd soon see once again ascending the Airline Trail. First, though, came my favorite view of Madison from just a couple hundred feet above the hut on the Gulfside Trail.

At 5,100 ft, the Gulfside Trail met the Airline Trail on the north shoulder of Quincy Adams and the snow-covered Adams summit cone came into view. Unfortunately, there wasn't really a good angle of the summit cone to be had from this part of the Airline Trail, nothing like the views from lower down on the Durand Ridge, although I did go off-trail above the col between Adams and Quincy Adams to get the cover photo for this post.

By this point, high clouds from the approaching system had moved in, which was demoralizing. I had previously been rushing to beat the high clouds to the summit, but now that they were already there my pace slowed. There wasn't even any wind to get some adrenaline flowing. We summited Adams at 1:45 PM. Before anything else, I got out my American flag, clipped it to my hiking pole, and flew it for a few minutes in the southwesterly breeze we had been shielded from up to that point.

The summit had great views of the rest of the northern Presis, which were just as snowy as Adams was, and I spent some time photographing them.

By this point, I considered myself lucky to have even summited before low clouds and showers from the leading edge of the system moved in, as we could see them not far off to the west. A hiker headed to Gray Knob told us rain would start within an hour, and we beelined for the hut and the safety of treeline. Madison was out of the question, and we instead began descending the Valley Way. By this time the snowpack had warmed so much it no longer stuck to our spikes, which made the descent much more pleasant than the ascent had been. After taking our spikes off at 1,800 ft, it was just another 15 minutes to the parking lot, which we reached just after 5:00 PM. Rain started just minutes after we began the drive home.