Cog Railway up Mount Washington
- Vicky
- Jun 22, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 22, 2022
On this Maine road trip, we hiked up Cadillac Mountain, canoed with views of Mount Katahdin, and took the world’s first cog railway up Mount Washington (New Hampshire). Mount Washington is the highest peak in the northeastern United States at 6,288 feet. Before we got to the base station we left the Inn at Bowman, a Bed & Breakfast, after having breakfast on the front porch with the views of the mountains. As we navigated, our way to the base station via taking the most mountainous gravel road possible. I was very happy that we had our SUV to go on these backwoods’ road if you could call it a road. (Editor's/Michael's note: there are better routes to get to the base station, but I picked a "short-cut").
We finally got to the Marshfield Base Station to take the cog-train up the mountain. As we made our way to the tracks, we were greeted by the yellow locomotive with purple passenger cars but also, we could see the huge grade we will have to climb way before we even got close to the higher grades to come! We made our way to our seats to get ready for the approximately 45-minute climb up the mountain. On the trip we were told about the cog railway and what we will see at the summit. Our guide told us about the history and the various mountains we could see along the route.
As we made our way closer and closer to the summit you start seeing parts of the Appalachian Trail and even hikers! To navigate the trail, these hikers were using “cairns” a bunch of piled rocks that marked the trail every few feet due to the fog that could (and was) hiding parts of the trail. We felt bad for them because we could see how the wind was blowing them around as we sat nice and warm in the train.
When we left the base station, it was partly cloudy but not too cold. As we got to the top of the mountain and departed from the train, we felt the wind blow us around and how much colder it had gotten. Experiencing the crazy wind, it is understandable why this mountain is most known for its erratic weather. There’s a weather observatory to record this wild weather. This weather observatory recorded the world’s fastest surface wind speed at 231mph on April 12, 1934. While Michael and I didn’t experience any wind of that speed, we did experience strong wind and were freezing as we explored the summit.
We found the summit marker and huddled around the sign to make sure we didn’t fly away as we got our picture taken. We made our way over to where there is a virtual geocache to collect it for myself…it was very difficult to make sure we were in view of the web camera and the wind was just blowing us around. After finally getting all of that situated, we made our way into the summit building that has food, a gift shop, and museum about the observatory. We learned more about the erratic weather and strong winds. In the early days of the observatory, they had to hold the buildings down with chains!
After an hour on the summit, we made our way back down the mountain. Our train had some malfunction as we got almost to the base station, and they had to radio down for some help. As help arrived via four-wheeler and the issue fixed, we continued on our way! And once back at the station Michael and I continued on to the next stop of our road trip: Vermont.
Comments