Return trip to Mount Eisenhower 4760’
and Mount Pierce 4312’ 6/13/02

8.2 Miles 3000’ Elevation gain

Kevin, Judy and Emma

Jude is stagnating at 40 on her 4000 footers list as we try to catch Emma up so we can hopefully get both Jude and Emma through this by autumn. That’s our plan and we’re sticking to it. Emma has 35 at this point. These are two great mountains to climb and I for one am glad to be going back, I think Jude would rather be climbing mountains still on her list, but perseveres for Emma. It is one thing to ask your wife to climb all 48, it is another to ask her to repeat many of them for the dog, but Jude had no problem doing this, or if she did she kept it to herself. Her goals were in sight so if we planned it right maybe they could even finish on the same mountain. Having planted that thought in her head I think it made it easier to get her through the repeats. As I was saying this is a great climb. On our first climb we took two cars, leaving one at the Edmands Path trailhead on the Mount Clinton Road. We then ascended Pierce by the Crawford Path, taking the short jaunt to the summit from the trail then returning to the Crawford Path to climb Mount Eisenhower and descending by the Edmands Path. Unfortunately, we were alone so the two car thing was out. This time we climbed the same way, summiting Pierce then continuing on to Eisenhower, but then we retraced our steps back to Pierce. From here we continued over Pierce to the AMC’s Mizpah Hut, then descending the Mizpah Cutoff back to the Crawford Path and out. The reason for doing this was to add the Mizpah Hut to our list of high mountain huts visited. This made all of them for me. Jude and Emma still needed Zealand Falls Hut and Jude still needed Carter Notch Hut to complete their lists. As we approached Pierce it appeared we might be in for some foggy summits, but things turned out fine. The views from Mount Eisenhower were awesome, and on the return trip to Pierce they were equal. This was especially nice as we had arrived at Dry River Campground the day before in the pouring rain and weren’t sure if we would even be able to climb. There was so much rain we decided to hike into Arethusa Falls which was absolutely tremendous with so much water pouring over it. We had to dry our boots by the fire to use them the next day to make this climb.

K(67) J(40) E(37)