Mt. Madison (attempt) - Great Gulf Trail, Osgood Cutoff, Osgood Trail, Osgood Tentsite Spur - 1-13-2019

Hiking Trail Conditions Report
	Peaks	Mt. Madison (attempt), NH

	Trails:	Great Gulf Trail, Osgood Cutoff, Osgood Trail, Osgood Tentsite Spur

	Date of Hike:	Sunday, January 13, 2019

	Parking/Access Road Notes:	Great Gulf trailhead is not plowed. I just pulled off to the side of the road at the entrance and tried to leave just enough room for a plow to get in in the unlikely event it gets plowed today. Only car there at 7 and only car there at 5:30 when I left. I imagine one other person parked here during the day as I saw bootprints along Great Gulf Trail coming out. -8F when I started at 5F when I returned.

	Surface Conditions:	Snow - Packed Powder/Loose Granular, Snow - Unpacked Powder, Snow - Drifts

	Recommended Equipment:	Snowshoes, Ice Axe

	Water Crossing Notes:	Lots of little ones. The hardest thing about them was coming off the steep â€œmini banksâ€ with ginormous snowshoes. No issues in actually crossing.

	Trail Maintenance Notes:	A blowdown or leaner (usually just a small limb) here or there on Great Gulf Trail. Nothing real pesky. There were many more (and much peskier) blowdowns on Osgood Trail and Osgood Cutoff. All passable though. Many of them (particularly at lower elevations), I was able to just go around. Other ones I was forced to go over/under. Broke off some limbs on the blowdowns up higher so that you could more easily swing your leg over them. Most were small and I imagine could be handled with a hand saw. I believe there was only one larger one and that too may be able to be dealt with by a saw. Some evidence of blowdown maintenance was evident. More trail blaze could be used everywhere but thatâ€™s to be expected. I canâ€™t recall if there was any blaze I saw on Osgood Cutoff. It was probably the most difficult portion of trail to follow all day. There was some on Great Gulf but not a lot at all and mostly towards the beginning (they donâ€™t use trail blaze once in s wilderness area I believe). There was quite a bit of blaze on the Osgood Trail between Great Gulf Trail and Osgood Cutoff. Although much of it looked old and faded, some did look newer lol. The blaze here seemed to be needed to as without it, I feel like this portion of trail could be quite difficult to follow (more so than Osgood Cutoff without blaze). After jct with Osgood Cutoff I donâ€™t recall any blaze.

	Dog-Related Notes:	I donâ€™t think I dog could handle the unbroken powder.

	Bugs:	None

	Lost and Found:	None


	Comments:	Another grueling day. Tackling W48, gridding, and redlining at the same time leaves you doing creative but very difficult things such as this!! (But I love it:) Osgood Cutoff on the ascent and Osgood all the way down to make a little loop. Snowshoes car to car. I broke trail the entire way up except for a set of ski tracks towards the beginning of Great Gulf Trail. Started off just sinking in a few inches with snowshoes over the ski tracks. This was light, fluffy powder over a semi-hard crust. Shortly after jct with Osgood Trail, Great Gulf Trail had sections where the snow seemed like it was entirely a semi-hard crust and youâ€™d sink through it much, much deeper than just a few inches and it would break slowly. That got tiring real quickly. Perhaps these were hard packed snow drifts below treeline? That was off and on for a bit before it was all powder again (which also began to increase in depth) before coming to The Bluff; a very cool spot. Broke trail back to campsites to redline. I donâ€™t recall how deep I sank on Osgood Cutoff. Probably 6-8â€. Got a later start than I wanted (7:15am) and knew I wasnâ€™t likely to make it to Madison anyway so I made redlining Osgood Cutoff and the tentsites a priority. I decided to see how far up Osgood I could get before turning back and was hoping, rather ambitiously, for treeline. Gaia says I turned around at 3961ft so Iâ€™m thinking I turned around just under a half mile to treeline. If the trail was hard packed Iâ€™d imagine that full crampons would be necessary on the steepest parts of the Osgood Trail. Me and my Beheameth Xl snowshoes managed but it wasnâ€™t easy (not as bad as Webster Cliff Trail last weekend though!). For a significant portion of my descent along Osgood Trail I used a pole in one hand an an ice axe in another and walked backwards with my snowshoes. I still fell several times but never far and I usually caught myself. This felt much safer to me in my huge snowshoes than going straight down. With at least one barebooter who didnâ€™t seem to be sinking much at all in addition to me out and back, you could probably bareboot the first 1.8mi of the Great Gulf Trail now.

	Name:	Liam Cooney

	E-Mail:	liamcooney96@gmail.com

	Date Submitted:	2019-01-13

	Link:	https://
		Disclaimer: Reports are not verified - conditions may vary. Use at own risk. Always be prepared when hiking. Observe all signs. Trail conditions reports are not substitutes for weather reports or common sense.