Never Drive Mount Washington Before You Know This Rule

The Mount Washington Auto Road climbs eight miles to the 6,288-foot summit of the highest peak in the northeastern United States. Average grade twelve percent, sustained. Two-way traffic on a narrow road, long sections of gravel, and for most of its length no guardrail, with the drop starting at the edge of the pavement. It opened in 1861, for horse-drawn carriages. The alignment is essentially unchanged. Around 250,000 people come up it every year. You pay the toll and they hand you a packet of instructions. Lowest gear. Under 20 miles an hour. If you smell your brakes, pull over and stop. There is also a rule most drivers have never heard of. The road limits how much weight you are carrying inside the vehicle, and the figure used is 900 pounds. Driver, passengers, luggage, everything. That is four adults and their bags. It is not about what the car can hold. Testing found that weight above that figure strains the transmission when a vehicle is held in low gear on a sustained steep grade. The driver feels it, backs out of the gear, and starts using the brake pedal instead. Which is the exact sequence that destroys brakes on this mountain. The summit records some of the most extreme weather measured anywhere. On 12 April 1934, observers there recorded a gust of 231 miles per hour, still the fastest wind ever measured by a person at a staffed station. This video covers what the road actually asks of a driver: why the descent is the dangerous direction, what brake fade is and how it announces itself, when the road closes and who decides, and what to check before you go. Sources and further reading: Mount Washington Auto Road, official driving guidance, vehicle restrictions and road status Mount Washington Observatory, summit weather records and the April 1934 wind record Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb, support driver vehicle weight guidance New Hampshire State Park, Mount Washington summit operations This is general information, not a substitute for the instructions the road gives you at the toll house. Check the road status and the summit forecast on the morning you travel. If you have driven the Auto Road, tell me in the comments what it was actually like, especially coming down. The people who drive that mountain regularly know things about it that no packet of instructions can cover.