To the Summit on Saturday

(More blog entries from ryan)

Finally...

The Mt. Washington Auto Road will open to the summit on Saturday, May 24...

...but that's not the end of the story.

John, our Road Foreman, described the weather on the summit today as, "Something no one should be working in". The more detailed description included 60 mph winds and ice pellets. Plus, overnight, we had more snow drift in just below the summit. Not exactly the conditions we were hoping for in order to put the finishing touches on the Road this week.

With that in mind, we don't expect to be able to open to the summit for our scheduled 8:00a.m. opening. It is going to take some time to finalize road preparations in the morning. (This, of course, assumes good weather, but the forecast is looking good.) I'll post an update here once we do get things up and running. (We'll still be open to 4.5 miles at 8:00a.m. assuming no ice at this elevation).

Once the Road does open, we will be running our Guided Tours, and you will be welcome to drive your own vehicle. Due to the sand and gravel on the paved sections of Road, we will not be allowing motorcycles on the Road until weather conditions allow us to sweep the pavement clean.

It's been a crazy spring, and let's hope that the "official" start of summer means things are calming down. Hope to see you this weekend...on the summit!

- Ryan

Comments

Re: To the Summit on Saturday
by Sue Burnham on May 23rd 2008, 5:45 pm

Many of our visitors to the Auto Road don't truly understand how Weather at Altitude impacts our capacity to operate. This site is vital to getting " the word out" Huge props to my fellow MWAR crew. You rock, every day and in every way.

Re: To the Summit on Saturday
by Howie on May 23rd 2008, 8:03 pm

Hey folks, To get a jump on the conditions on the summit take a look here: http://www.mountwashington.org/weather/conditions.php This is the Mt Washington Observatory's current conditions page, here you'll see summit temps and wind along with the past 24 hour history. Also note the vertical temperature profile showing temps along the Auto Road. If you see below freezing temps with wind you'll know we'll be battling icing tomorrow morning since there's heavy cloud cover right now with rime ice forming. Most of you know all about this - but some may not so I'm just trying to be realistic on our chances of opening for early ski runs in the morning. We're still hoping to be on the summit tomorrow - "weather permitting" as always! And thanks, Sue! You rock too!