IN WHICH I GO UP AND DOWN MT. WASHINGTON,
MEET AN OBNOXIOUS LITTLE GIRL,
AND LEARN ABOUT THE "FOUR THOUSAND FOOTERS"
FOR THE FIRST TIME
The summer I was ten, and Abbie was eleven-and-a-half, we went on our first family mountain adventure. It only lasted two days, but they turned out to be memorable. This particular trip, which involved hiking up Mt. Washington (the highest point in the northeastern United States, at a little over 6,000 feet), was planned so that Dad could visit the weather observatory on the summit. That was okay with us; it sounded like a nice family outing.
One evening prior to the trip, Dad sat us all at the kitchen table, so he could explain in more detail what was to occur. He began by showing us a postcard, with a picture of a sign on it. The sign read:
"STOP. The area ahead has the worst weather in America. Many have died there from exposure even in the summer. Turn back now if the weather is bad - White Mountain National Forest.”
Well, that was a sign to excite a ten-year old boy, but didn't make me think of "a nice family outing!"
Adopting his best meteorologist-lecturer voice, Dad talked about the photo. "If you didn't know what I'm about to tell you, you might think this sign was somebody's idea of a joke. Worst weather in America? Come on! That's probably not quite 150 miles from Andover, and we're talking about New Hampshire, not the North Pole! Even in the mountains – wait, mountains? There are only seven summits in the entire range that are higher than 5000 feet. Those are hills, not mountains!
"Add to all that, on the day that we actually come to that sign, we probably will have been walking all day under a clear, blue sky, with the temperature in the 50s. It may be windy, and we'll be glad to have our jackets, but we won't feel any danger from the weather. If we were just the average hikers, we might just walk right by the sign without another thought. And, in mid-summer, we'd probably be okay.
"But here's what you'll know that the average hiker won't know. The highest wind speed ever experienced by a human was recorded on Mt. Washington - 231 miles per hour. Hurricane-force winds (75 mph or greater) are recorded on average more than 100 days each year. Winter temperatures have reached minus 50 degrees, colder than anywhere on earth except the South Pole. With strong winds, the wind chill factor can dip below minus 100. Snowfall averages almost 300 inches a year, with a record of almost 50 inches in one 24-hour period. Put that all together, and it sounds pretty severe.
"Obviously, those extremes aren't daily features, and not at the times of year that most hikers are in the mountains. But violent storms can develop suddenly, it can snow any day of the year, dense fogs are common, freezing temperatures can occur in mid-summer, and daytime temperatures on the peaks seldom get above 60 degrees, even in July and August. With a wind that seldom completely stops, and that regularly blows at 30, 40 or 50 miles per hour, the summer wind chill can be surprising.
"One well-known story of a weather-related disaster on Mt. Washington occurred on the last day of June 1900. Two hikers got caught by a storm near the summit, and both died from exposure. One was within sight of the buildings. Obviously, that isn't common, but it is a reminder that you're not necessarily safe in summer."
Being a 10-year old boy, I urged Dad to tell all the gory details of the 1900 disaster. He didn't mind.
"William Curtis and Allan Ormsbee, set out on the Crawford Path to climb to the summit of Mt. Washington. This was different than many of the disasters, because they were experienced mountain hikers. Also, they knew a storm was coming, but the trip was less than 10 miles long over a well-marked trail, so apparently they felt confident they could beat the bad weather to the summit. They were wrong. High winds and heavy icing brought both of their journeys to an end. Their bodies were discovered the next day, Ormsbee’s within sight of the summit buildings. Curtis was found a little farther down the path."
Well, we certainly did know a lot more about the mountains than we had before Dad's lecture. I was left with one big question: would we just have a nice hike, or would I not live to see my eleventh birthday?
***
When the day finally came to actually start our adventure, we left Andover early in the morning, and drove north to Crawford Notch in New Hampshire. ("Notch" is what a mountain pass is called in northern New England.) We left our car there, and started the hike up the Crawford Path toward the summit of Mt. Washington. Later that day, friends from Andover arrived, and drove our car around to the cog railway station, so we wouldn't have to go back the same way we came. That worked out very well for us.
Any trail would have been a new one for Abbie and me, but this turned out to be an excellent one to start with. The first couple of miles were through a pretty forest of maples, beeches, birches and such, but you might not have believed it was a real trail. It went straight up, so steeply that sometimes we had to grab onto trees to help pull ourselves forward. It really was the main trail - in use for a couple hundred years. No sissy graded paths for New Englanders!
It was a fun climb, but we were glad to break out of the forest on top of Mt. Pleasant, a bald rocky dome, with great views in all directions. We descended a little from Pleasant, then hiked up and down for several miles, gradually increasing our elevation, as we followed a long ridge toward the main face of Mt. Washington. At first, it was through the forest, but not a forest that most people would be familiar with. We walked between dense groves of spruce, fir, and other evergreens - all mature living trees, most probably several hundred years old, but none taller than about five feet. The almost constant strong winds, and the heavy ice coating in winter, would not allow them to grow any taller. It was pretty amazing to see.
We left the dwarf forest behind after a mile or so, and then there was nothing in sight but bare rock, all the way to the final climb up Washington. Other than a gusty wind that occasionally threatened to knock us off our feet, it was an excellent day for a mountain hike. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and (if it hadn't been for the wind), it would have been almost warm. It looked so easy to just take off, and run up the mountain, but this 10-year old remembered his Dad's lecture. Caution was always in order.
In mid-afternoon, we arrived at where we would spend the night. Here, I need to do some apologizing, and a lot of explaining, because I didn't realize until I started this paragraph that, so far, I have written absolutely nothing about this rather important subject. I will correct that failure, now.
If you are climbing Mt. Washington, and plan to stay overnight on the summit, you are in for a disappointment. There is no lodging of any kind. You'll need to turn around, and start walking back the way you came, or ride down on the cog railway. However, there is one alternative, if you have made advance reservations. At Lakes of the Clouds, two small ponds just below the final climb up Washington, the Appalachian Mountain Club ("the AMC," or "the Appies") have a hut - a small hotel - where you can buy a bed in a bunkroom, a good home-cooked dinner and also breakfast, and a place out of the weather where you can spend the evening sharing with fellow hikers your day's adventures. "Lakes" is just one of a series of similar huts that the AMC runs across the White Mountains, each a day's hike between the previous one and the next one. Dad had known about getting reservations, so we were set up for the night.
I don't have any memory of what we had for dinner that night, but I'm sure it was good. The "hut boys" (mostly college students) pack in all the food, and cook everything on-site. They do a great job with everything from handling reservations to providing information and advice on the area and the weather. "Hut camping" certainly wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea, but it's one way to do it when there aren't a lot of good options.
Sometimes, the hut boys or a guest speaker would give a formal talk about some aspect of the area, but that night everybody just talked. They talked about what they'd done that day, what they planned to do tomorrow, and what they'd done on previous hikes. It seemed like everybody was talking at once (they pretty much were!), but everybody seemed to be having a good time. I stayed interested for a couple hours, but found myself nodding off, so finally made my way to the men's bunk room. Mom and Dad were still going strong, last time I saw them. I hadn't seen Abbie in quite a while, and assumed she had succumbed early. I thought that a group of men, all snoring in their own particular ways, might make it hard to get to sleep. It wasn't; I slept peacefully until almost breakfast time.
At breakfast, the noise level seemed to be about the same as when I went to bed, and the conversations I was hearing seemed pretty similar, too. I decided I needed a little peace, so after I finished eating, I grabbed a jacket and went outside. I seemed to be the only one not inside, so I picked a nice rock to sit on, and sat for a while.
It was another clear day, with not a cloud visible anywhere. Even the wind had died down to just a breeze. It would probably take us less than an hour and a half to reach the top of Mt. Washington. I'm sure we would be luckier that Mr. Curtis and Mr. Ormsbee had been in 1900.
I guess I started thinking about them because, from what Dad had said, they must have been about here when they began to worry about their lives. If they'd had a nice hut, they would have been okay. Unfortunately, Lakes wasn't built until 1915, so they had absolutely no shelter between here and the buildings on the summit. Dad had said it was just a little ways above the ponds that Mr. Curtis had died. I was probably looking directly at the actual spot.
I must have closed my eyes for a moment, because suddenly I was aware of someone standing very close to me - so close, in fact, she was almost stepping on my toes. At first glance, all I took in was the face of a little girl, who had her hair done in pigtails.
"How many 'four thousand footers' have you done?" she asked, without preamble. I didn't respond quick enough, and she went on. "I've done four, now - Hale last summer, and three yesterday."
I still didn't have any clue as to what she was talking about. "I plan to climb them all, eventually." All right, finally a clue! A "four thousand footer" was something you climb. However, that didn't make sense. Dad and Mom had joked that, in California, a hill wasn't even considered a hill until it was 6,000 feet high. Mountains started at about 10,000, and went up from there. What could be worth climbing that was only 4,000 feet high?
Another thought came to me at that point, I was pretty sure that Lakes - where we were located, at that very moment - was 5,000 feet high. Was she really talking about climbing things that were 1,000 feet lower than the level ground we were now on? Something was fishy.
I found myself a little bit interested, but I wasn't going to ask some little girl for information. I decided to get rid of her with a counter-attack. "How old are you, little girl?" I asked.
"Seven, How old are you, big boy?"
"I'm ten, but we're talking about you, not me. I'm very worried to think your parents are letting you climb things. It's a very dangerous sport for anybody, and especially here where they have the worst weather in America. You could very easily get hurt, maybe even killed. Besides, at your age, shouldn't you be home, playing with your dolls?"
She didn't react specifically on my playing with dolls comment, but she gave me a look that seemed to say quite a bit (and none of it complimentary). Her response to my questioning her climbing abilities didn't take much time. "My parents like me to climb with them. In fact, they bought me these special boots so I could be even safer."
She had moved back enough that I could tell her feet from mine, and I looked down. She did have very fine-looking boots - maybe, even custom-made. (That may not seem unusual to you, but remember we're talking about 1950. At that time, most hikers and campers were relying on Army surplus stores for their boots, packs, sleeping bags, and such. My feet, at the time, weren't even big enough for Army surplus. Abbie and I were hiking in J. C. Penny's standard work boots.)
As suddenly as she had appeared, the little girl disappeared. I didn't really see her leave; she just wasn't there. I didn't mind. I think we'd had enough of each other. I was intrigued with the 'four thousand footer' thing, but I wouldn't have asked a seven-year old for more information about that (at least, not that seven-year old). I did ask the first hut boy I saw.
He gave a little chuckle. "You've heard about that? Well, it's kind of a game that New Hampshire hikers play. There are about 50 ... I don't want to call them mountains, or peaks. Some are just kind of little bumps on a ridge. Let's just say that there are 50 'spots' in northern New Hampshire with elevations at least 4,000 feet above sea level. Some hikers give themselves the goal of standing on top of all fifty."
"What do they win?" I asked.
"Win? No, this isn't a contest. It's just a goal you set for yourself, like visiting all 48 states, or going to all the National Parks. It's a game you play with yourself, and doesn't really matter to anybody else.
"I like goal-setting. It gives you something to plan for, and helps you decide how to use your time. It also has some specific benefits. If you climb all fifty - or nearly all - you'll have seen some great mountain country that most visitors never see, because they just stick to the standard, popular trails. I think it's also good because it spreads out the hikers, so they don't all end up walking the Crawford Path on the same day."
"Fifty seems like an awful lot," I observed.
"Well, it is. There are a few of the spots that are so remote that you have to devote a whole day - or even a whole trip - to just one addition to your list. On the other hand, I can think of several popular hikes where you can climb three in just a few hours. Well, for example, if you came up the Crawford Path, you got one four thousand footer when you climbed Mt. Pleasant. "
"That counts?"
"It does. If you go on to the top of Mt. Washington, you get number two, the big one. On the way, you can take a little side trip, and add Mt. Monroe to your list."
"Monroe? Isn't that the little bump right out here behind the hut?"
"Actually, it's two bumps, but only one of them qualifies. I didn't mention that they decide what goes on the list by its actual elevation, but also on its height above its base, which has to be at least 300 feet. One summit of Monroe is tall enough, but the other isn't."
"That sounds a little iffy."
"I guess it is, but if everybody agrees on what counts and what doesn't, does that really matter?"
"No, I guess not."
Abbie had joined us, and heard most of the conversation. When we were alone, she suggested that we "do it." "Do what?" I asked.
"Climb the four thousand footers, of course. We have one, already, and we'll have Washington later today. I don't think it would take us more than an hour to get up and down Monroe. If we went now, Mom and Dad would probably not even miss us."
I have to admit that I was a little intrigued, but... "We may never even be back here, again."
"Oh, we'll be here. Dad's already in love with the place, and I bet he'll be even more so, when he gets up to the observatory. I think you and I and Mom are going to like it a lot, too. It isn't very far from home, and if we know what we want to do, I think we can become our official family vacation planners."
Without another word or thought, we raced off to the top of Monroe, and were back to the hut before Dad and Mom even started to look for us. Probably everybody who'd ever stayed at Lakes climbed it, plus most of the hikers who just walked by. The trail was well worn.
We left the hut soon after, and started the final climb up Mt. Washington. Just a little way above the ponds, we passed the cross that marked the place where William Curtis died. On the rock below the cross was a large plaque: "On this spot William B. Curtis perished in the great storm of June 30, 1900. Placed by Fresh Air Club of New York." I really had been looking toward that exact spot before the little girl interrupted me. It was a little spooky, I thought, picturing a "great storm" at that spot as we sauntered by under a cloudless blue sky!
Speaking of spooky, you might say the same about the approach to the mountain summit. Everybody knows there's a small city on top, but I swear you don't hear a thing until you actually see the buildings. It's like you suddenly walk out of the wilderness into Civilization. There are buildings, of course, and lots of people, but there is also the cog railway station and - maybe something you didn't expect - automobiles. A toll road comes all the way up the east side of the mountain, and if you want the thrill of driving your own car up a steep, narrow, twisty road, you can do it. (I don't remember if they had tour buses in 1950, but that has been another option in more recent years.)
On the summit, we snacked a little bit, then Dad went off to meet with the people at the observatory. We looked around the museum and gift shop - we saw the famous "worst weather" postcard, and read a lot of the things about the weather than Dad had told us - then purchased tickets on the cog railway.
It's an amazing trip! I couldn't explain how it works when I was ten years old, and I'm not sure I can do much better, today. In simple terms, a little steam locomotive pushes an attached passenger car three miles and 3,800 feet to the top of the mountain. The trip takes about an hour. The engine has a drive wheel under it that meshes with teeth on a central rail. The connection holds the train in place, and also - when pushed - ratchets the train forward. The train runs on trestles, with average grades of 25 percent - and at one point over 37 percent! At that steepness, there is approximately a 14-foot elevation difference between passengers in the front and back ends of the coach. (Some passengers with us demonstrated. It's true. The feet of the man standing in the back were higher than the head of a woman down in front.)
This first trip for us was a little different because we were going down, rather than up. The locomotive was ahead of our car, rather than behind, and was braking and slowing us down, not pushing us forward. The steepness was just as steep; in fact, when we were on what they call Jacob's Ladder (the 37 percent part), I had visions of our little train leaving the track, and going head over heels down to the valley below. It didn't, we made it safely to the base station, and quickly found our car where our neighbors from Andover had left it. We set up our umbrella tent - not because we intended to camp, but because we probably had a couple hours to wait for Dad, and the tent was a good place to nap or read. We did both.
Dad didn't wait for the very last train, but we did wait a couple of hours. When he arrived, he was bursting with enthusiasm about all he'd seen and heard. Abbie and I thought we might not have to wait too long for our next chance at the four thousand footers.
To the Writing It Down Homepage
Leave a comment?