Best Viewed in Landscape Orientation
In the morning, there was frost and ice on our sleeping bags and on the inside of the tent
This photo was taken on the second longest hike of my life. Matt and I did the triple Mount Bond summit hike. This involves going up Bondcliff, Mount Bond, and West Bond. When we hiked this trail, our plan was to complete the summits and then go back the way we came so that we would be off the summit before the sun went down. This meant that we would be going up ~4,600 feet and hiking 16 miles in one day! For reference, that's only 500' less feet than hiking up from the bottom of the Grand Canyon! To make the hike even more challenging, the temperature was right around freezing the entire time that we were above the tree line, and there were sustained winds of 40+ mph. In the saddle between Bonbdcliff and Mount Bond, there was a ridge where the wind was coming up from the forest below at speeds that must have been nearing 70-80 miles per hour!
After having hiked the 16 miles, Matt and I quickly set up camp about two miles down from the summit of Bondcliff. We cooked dinner in the dark and were quickly asleep in our tent. It was good that we were in a small two-person backpacking tent, because the temperature quickly dropped. By the time that we woke up in the morning, it was well below freezing. We each had spent the night tightly zipped into our mummy sleeping bags. In the morning, there was frost and ice on our sleeping bags and on the inside of the tent.
Mount Bond is located in the southern portion of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. The elevation at the peak is 4,698 feet. Bondcliff and West Bond are considered subsidiary peaks, and all three are included in the list of 4,000+ foot mountains in New Hampshire.
Mount Bond is named after George Phillips Bond. He was an American astronomer that studied at Harvard University. He succeeded his father as an astronomer at the Harvard Observatory. His claim to fame was taking the first photo of a star!
Mount Bond is 4,698 feet!
Did You Know?
- A cairn is a stack of rocks that is used as a memorial or to show the direction of a trail.
- Cairns are common in the White Mountains to designate trails above the tree line. They are especially helpful in the winter when there can be multiple feet of snow atop the mountains.
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