The snow fell slowly, as if suspended in air. Eventually, the tiny flakes touched down and collected on my clothing as I hunched over and pulled tight the laces of my orange plastic mountaineering boots.
I started to shiver in morning air chilled to 25 degrees Fahrenheit. But that was OK. We’d be moving soon.
It was the first day of March, and my husband Pete and I had been relieved to find the Stony Brook trailhead parking lot—on Route 16 in Gorham, N.H.—plowed. Overnight, nearly 18 inches of powder, just moist enough to make a good snowball, had fallen in a wind-whipped frenzy atop an already impressive base. As I strapped my snowshoes to my pack, I wondered how long our luck would hold before I’d have to add their weight to my feet.
We were headed to the Imp Shelter, 4.3 miles up on the Carter-Moriah Range in the White Mountains. Most of the journey would be on the Stony Brook Trail, a moderate climb that begins gradually on an old woods road, crisscrossing a brook before gathering steam a mile below the ridge. Stony Brook’s terminus intersects the Carter-Moriah Trail, which we’d take to reach the shelter’s spur trail less than a mile to the south.
It was my fourth winter backpacking trip, having graduated from day trips to overnights the previous winter. I was no veteran of winter hiking, though; I had added the snowy season to my tramping repertoire only three winters earlier. But in the course of those seasons, I came to love—even crave—winter hiking, more so than the cross-country skiing and three-season hiking I had spent the better part of 20 years doing.
I confess that I was already enamored with winter, having spent many long, cold ones growing up north of the Whites. I went sledding and cross-country skiing—the wood stove at home was never too far away—but I didn’t hike in the winter. Like many three-season hikers, I imagined that every mile would be permeated with bone-numbing cold.
I was wrong. While cold is certainly a factor that can’t be ignored, I learned that it could be managed easily. If I wore the right layers, packed the right equipment, ate enough, drank enough, and stuck to routes and weather conditions I was prepared for, then I could stay plenty warm while I explored terrain that was both new and exciting in its layers of white.
Explore the backcountry this winter. Photo by Pete Ingraham.
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