Emily and I have been talking about doing White Mountain Peak for ages. It's the only 14K peak you can ride up to. Usually it was wildfires that caused us to cancel and delay doing it but we finally made it happen. And of course there was lightning in the forecast and a bit of rain. We almost had to cancel. There was rain for the start of the ride that delayed us a bit. Fortunately no lightning. The rain was serendipitous as the cold temperatures caused us to bring more layers and we needed them later. The forecast was for sun and warmth in between the lightning and precipitation which is why I didn't think I would need layers but the wind chill was pretty significant. When we first talked about doing this ride, it was on gravel bikes and from the bottom. So glad we didn't do that today. MTBs are the way to go. The gravel is very chunky and bumpy. Add the sunny and chilly tailwind and it felt like just like Iceland. We were just missing the rest of the group. The climbing is steep. It's about 23mi./6,300' to get to the peak and then you have to do some steep climbing on the return. From Barcroft Station to the peak, the gravel got chunkier. Most of it was hike-a-bike and at one point we decided to just lock our bikes and leave them by the side of the trail and hiked the rest of the way. We had light sprinkles intermittently on the way to the peak but as we were hiking up, we did see a flash of lightning but it was far away. From where we ditched the bikes, it was 1.65mi and ~1000' to the peak. Even the hike was hard and it felt like a bit of a death march. I spent the first part of it trying to eat a burrito while climbing. I can't exercise (breathe) and eat at the same time. Hikers coming down were concerned about the time and wanted to make sure we had lights. We didn't really have proper lights. I had lights but didn't bring them because I thought we'd get back before sunset. The descent, barring the stupid climbs, was super fun. The Stumpy was just smashing and very confidence inspiring. At the peak, it was always described as a scree field and I was expecting it to be very loose but the rocks were all pretty tightly packed. I was mistaken about when sunset was, not that that mattered as we got back 2 hours after sunset. Oops. Emily had brought a headlamp that wasn't very bright. Also around sunset, I was starting to get super hungry and bonking. I hadn't eaten anything since the summit burrito. It got dark pretty fast and at one point we were stopped at the side of the road getting Emily's headlamp out when I guy with a pick up asked us if we needed a lift. I wanted to say yes but I wasn't in a functioning state and told him we were okay. We goofed. The headlamp wasn't cutting it so we used the flashlights on our iPhones and propped them in our bar bags. That was better but it still wasn't great. Add to this, there were lighting flashes happening off in the distance all around us. I thought, if it starts raining, meaning the lightning has moved in to our area, we'd be in a lot of trouble. I was quite hungry and tired but we managed to limp home with our makeshift lights and somehow didn't crash or get struck by lightning. At one point we almost ran into some cows that were in the middle of the road in the dark. This was easily our sketchiest adventure.