Climate can change rapidly at any time on Mount Washington as we listened to stories of hikers like ourselves getting caught and perishing in freak snowstorms, even in warmer months of the year. In August 2011, we found beautiful weather and a nice day for a hike. While I consider this one of the hardest physical achievements I have ever tackled, on par with a marathon, we were being passed occasionally on the way up by local residents running up the mountain and we had several teenagers and pre-teens with us who handled the hike with only a little difficulty at the end. Thank god there is a train up the mountain, which gave us a ride down. I had never been more pleased to see a train, even one as rickety as the Cog Railway. That would have been a killer hike to walk back down.
Not every stretch was this steep, but this is how I remembered it:
