Mount Madison

But it's called the Presidential Traverse because it goes to the top of a bunch of mountains that are named after presidents.

Of course, the famous Mount Washington in New Hampshire, there's Mount Madison, there's Mount Adams, there's Mount Clay, which is part of it.

Everybody knows Henry Clay was not a president, but he has one of the peaks and In order to get the FKT, you got to climb up clay too.

And so we had a guide, Britta, who's from the Green Mountain Collective, and she's an expert.

We get back into the hut.

We warm up again.

And it's like, well, OK, now we got to go up Mount Madison.

We start going up Mount Madison, and it starts hailing.

Pine Mountain probably for sunrise as well, but for sunset for sure.

yeah um depending the time of year i don't know if sunset might be blocked by the presidential range if you're on in face i know like this time of year in the fall i think you'd be good it would kind of be to the side of mount madison um but pine mountain for sure has much more of an open view west um but either way you're going to get really nice color from sunset and kind of as mike mentioned too they're both relatively um imps definitely a pretty good climb pines a little bit more moderate but they are very good like if you want to take off an hour before sunset or whatever like and you want to haul it up there, like they're really good hikes for sunset.

Yeah.

You can

Kind of looking from left to right, I kind of map this out.

So stretching first, you have the Card Mariah Range.

Um, and then eventually it comes around to Pinkham notch and the presidentials, um, Mount Madison is the most impressive thing probably in the entire view.

It's directly in front of you in the foreground.

And then decided I wanted to hit Pine Mountain for sunset.

Wanted to get to those ledges on Madison.

And for whatever reason, I just kind of had in my head, I wanted to go from the Gorham side because I'd done that like four years ago and hadn't been back since.

And I was texting you guys while I was heading up here and an FYI for everybody, that Gorham side, there's currently sort of a dispute with the landowner.

From both those outlooks, you've more or less got a view all the way east.

You sort of see the Cartamaria Range and the Wildcats and Pinkham Notch.

You can see Washington sort of poking out to the east or southeast, I guess, of Madison.

Madison's kind of the biggest thing in your view.

It's like...

Some of the mountains are obviously like Mount Adams, Mount Washington, Mount Madison or whatever.

And then there's these like Smarts Mountain or Cannon Mountain, Wildcat Mountain.

So I was trying to do some research and they said that there is an old English language tendency behind it where typically Mount plus name became... especially common when the distinguishing word was a proper name, like Mount Washington, Mount Jefferson, Mount Madison.

And then name plus mountain was common when locals thought of the whole landform or ridge as the overall mountain.

That's why you have like the sandwich range, you know, the kinsmen.