Willey Range and Mount Avalon

Date: June 26, 2009
Trails: Avalon trail --> A-Z trail --> Willey Range trail --> Mount Field --> Willey Range trail --> Mount Willey

This past weekend marked #2 and #3 on the 4,000 footer list with Mount Field and Mount Willey. The Willey Range is a string of mountains in Crawford Notch, which includes three 4000 footers - Mount Tom to the north, Mount Field in the middle, and Mount Willey to the south. Since I had already done Mount Tom, we had planned to do Mount Field and Mount Willey as a combination hike to knock off the rest of the Willey range.

We left Friday morning early and made our way up to Crawford Notch for this hike. The hike started from the Crawford Depot trailhead off route 302, the same one as Mount Avalon and Mount Tom, both of which I had done a couple years ago. The plan was to definitely do Mount Field and Mount Willey, and possibly do Mount Tom and / or Mount Avalon if we were feeling up to it.

We started out on the Avalon Trail, which was nice and flat for about the first mile or so. The trail runs along a scenic river, and eventually crosses over the river before getting a little bit steeper. When I did this trail previously, crossing the river was a bit of an obstacle - however, this time, despite all the rain we'd had in the days before, the stream was running fairly shallow and we were able to cross with little to no effort. After about 1.5 miles, the trail splits - the Avalon Trail goes to the left, while the A-Z trail goes to the right towards Mount Tom. The faster way to get to Mount Field is by going left, but we decided to go right as it appeared to be the easier path. We learned later that both ways were equally challenging.

This trail took us across another river, then quickly up a steep slope. At this point, the sky started to get dark, and we were expecting rain any minute. We had packed the right clothing to keep us warm and dry, but were hoping the rain would hold off. We kept forward for another few miles, at a fairly steep pace the whole way, and got to the base of Mount Tom. In the interest of time, and since I had already done it, we decided to skip the .5 mile trail to Mount Tom and meet up with the Willey Range trail, which connects the three mountains. The Willey Range trail started off smooth, and the clouds began to clear, so we were in good shape heading towards Mount Field.

At this point, we had been hiking for about two and a half hours, and had yet to stop for lunch, so were starting to feel famished. We decided to push on for the last stretch to Mount Field and eat lunch at the summit. The climb up to Field began to get steeper and steeper, and before long, we reached a sign that indicated that we were 100 yards from the summit of Field. We pushed on, scrambled up a fairly steep set of rocks, and found ourselves looking over Crawford Notch and the Presidential mountain range from the summit of Field. We had completed our first 4000 footer of the day, and Karen's first ever. We sat at the summit, took some photos, and ate a well deserved lunch.

After our lunch break, we were feeling refreshed, and were ready to tackle the trek to Mount Willey. We descended the south side of Mount Field, which went down fairly quickly. In the back of our minds, we knew we'd have to go back up this stretch later on - but we kept heading through and eventually reached a valley between the two peaks. As we walked along this valley, the skies started to get dark again, and we again hoped that the rain would miss us. At one point during our ascent of Mount Willey, we almost turned back in the interest of time - but we had come this far, so there was no turning back. After a steep climb up another set of rocks, we reached the tree lined summit of Willey. The proper summit was overgrown and had almost no view of the valleys below, however, just beyond the summit was a wide ridge which provided a great view of Crawford Notch below. Aside from a slight drizzle on the top of Willey, the rain held off and we were able to stay nice and dry.

We debated descending the south side of Willey to take a shuttle back to the parking area at Crawford Notch, but since it was still reasonably early, we decided to go back the way we came. There was not a lot of space or whole lot to look at on the summit of Willey, so we spent only a few minutes there, took pictures, and started back for the car. As we were on our way back, the clouds broke up and we were treated to sunshine for the rest of the hike. Unfortunately, just has we had predicted, the hike back up to Field was a bit of a task, and by the time we made it back to the top, we were ready for another rest.

After a quick rest and some time to get organized, we began the descent down the Avalon trail. The trail down was very steep, and we could feel it in our knees that we had just done a long hike. We took our time with the descent, and after what seemed like an endless stretch, we reached the base of Mount Avalon. The peak was 100 yards away, and though we were tired and ready to get back to the car, we were so close we couldn't pass up the quick ascent. We got to the top, and were treated to an awesome view of the Notch, as well as a view behind us of Field and Willey (shown in the picture - Willey on the left, Field on the right). It put our whole trip into perspective - we saw how far we had gone, and realized that we'd covered a lot of land over the course of the day. Despite the extra push it required to get to the top of Avalon, we decided it was totally worth it.

After a quick break on top of Mount Avalon, we kept on our trip back down to the car. The stretch from the base of Avalon back to level ground again seemed to never end. By the end, we were feeling it big time in our knees. Once we finally got back to level ground, we had just another mile stretch back to the car - and although we were back walking on flat terrain, the parking lot could not come soon enough. We got back to the car as the sun was setting, very tired but happy with what we'd accomplished.