I’d already climbed Mounts Jackson and Webster on my AT hike, but Switchfoot needed Jackson for his NH48 so I was down for a repeat. Laura and Switchfoot and I met Dan at the Highland Center in Crawford Notch, then walked over to the Webster-Jackson Trail and got started. It was sunny but only about 7°. The trail was packed down so we all started in spikes and many of the people coming the other direction were in spikes as well, only a few snowshoes.
It was a beautiful walk up to the trail junction, where we went left on the Jackson Branch and started climbing more steeply after that. When we started to get close to treeline, I stopped and added layers back on, in addition to getting out my largest mittens.
The summit of Mount Jackson at 4052′ was very windy and very cold. We sort of had a view before reaching the summit, but I honestly have no idea if there was a view from the summit because we took one photo and ran away.
From Jackson, we hopped on the Webster Cliff Trail (also the Appalachian Trail) to head over to Mount Webster. The snow was drifting deeper there and we had to navigate a few groups of blowdowns, presumably from the Halloween wind storm. We could still see where the packed down path was in most places though.
There were more blue skies once we got to Mount Webster’s summit at 3910′ but it was still very cold and very windy so we didn’t stay long.
We went .1 mile back to the last junction and then down the Webster Branch back to the Webster-Jackson Trail. The Webster Branch wasn’t quite as packed down as the Jackson Branch, but still way better than the part of the Webster Cliff Trail we’d been on.
Despite the late start, we walked out with plenty of daylight left. 6.5 miles.
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