Post by The Narrator APM on Oct 12, 2020 14:03:27 GMT -8
What would I say, sitting there in the circle of other hopeful immortals, if the wind picked me up and slammed me against the mountain? You think funny things when you are in the midst of a great challenge, a challenge that's no longer a “weekend warrior, look how I get my rocks off” endeavor but two hours in time in which your mind begins to list off each of the possible outcomes and you are unable to put a check mark next to any of them.
The crew leader at the Madison Hut was matter-of-fact. “I’m not sure I’d try to make it in this and I live up here.” He was 25 and lean with sharp facial features and the ruddy face of the sort people get when they live and breathe the White Mountains season after season. He looked at the three of us, not unpleasantly but with an air of indifference. I looked again at the most recent forecast scrawled on the chalkboard. People were hovering around it, studying it like the newest tablet handed down from the heavens. You could hear folks muttering.
The plan was to get up in the morning and hike 8.5 miles across the high ridgeline of the northern Presidentials to the Lake of the Clouds hut where we would spend the night. That meant crossing over or around Mounts Jefferson, Clay and, finally, Washington, then another mile and a half to the hut. We’d be above treeline across all of the infamous Gulfside Trail and if we’d had any doubts about what that meant, the National Park Service signs had disabused us of them.
And there was the next day’s forecast, radioed in from the Mount Washington observatory, written without emotion in powdery white chalk:
SEPT 20th: RAIN. HIGH 51, LOW 34. WINDS 40-50 MPH, GUSTING TO 70-80 MPH.
We had come a long way for this hike. Had planned a long time. We’d get some rest and decide in the morning, we said.
---------------------------------------------------------------
We left early, under a gray sky and a whistling wind, leaning into the long, steep ascent up Mount Jefferson. We couldn’t help but notice there weren’t many folks out there. After a few minutes, a lone woman hustled up from behind us. “My name is Linda Roberts,” she said. “I’m hiking alone to the Lake of the Clouds. I want someone to know, in case something happens to me.”
There was a time, during the first hours of the trek, that although it was hard-going, we were still in the adventurous zone. We were excited, though if there was any vista to behold, we would never know it that day. We hiked across an alpine meadow and through boulders as big as small buildings. We continued climbing, then descending, then climbing again, through the clouds and mist, precariously looking for places to put our boots, one at a time, as we picked our way through the never ending other-worldly landscape.
I’ve come to the conclusion that if you really want to experience all the highs and lows of a good, mind-bending hike, be the guy in the middle. We’d made a pact before we even got out of the car the day before that we’d stay together, regardless. If things got dicey (not that we had truly believed they would), we’d just go slow and stick together. That ended up putting me in the middle, which was about right. Sonny was the rabbit, hopping from rock to rock as we climbed, full of boyish adrenaline, hooting and hollering, firing me up. In the back was Duane, much bigger than Sonny, a lumberer, plodding, stoic, undeterred. I was between them, bounding one minute, sucking wind the next, bridging the tortoise and the hare. Sonny kept an eye on me, and I on him. Often, I was looking so far up at him, I wondered how he got up there, and how I was going to do it. And back a ways, Duane too, looked for me and I for him. I paused every ten minutes or so, straining my eyes through the glop to discern whether the vertical shape in the distance was moving toward me, or whether it was just another cairn, silently observing our struggle.
Eventually, we were on a steeper pitch, inching around the cone of Mount Washington, crawling along in a dense, white-gray fog. The wind was now intense, gusting violently, threatening to blow us off our feet. All I could hear was my pack cover snapping under the gale, whipping back and forth, over and over again. The rain lashed us, like thousands of tiny nettles against the sides of our faces. I could see the mist and rain in the wind, billowing up from the chasm below into the side of the mountain with what felt like hurricane force.
I had the sensation of peering into a colorless kaleidoscope with a smeared lens . Wearing glasses didn’t help. On, they were hopelessly fogged up. Off, I was all but blind. And below, as we strained and balanced ourselves looking for the next place to gingerly step, there was nothing but immense scree fields of jagged rocks covered in slick, green lichens that seemed to stretch forever. No people. Would not be any there. Just us. Three guys from Alabama on a weekend hiking trip in New England.
I have always been mesmerized by strong weather. A gale wind, punishing heat, numbing cold, a flash of electricity. And we were deep into it, stressed, short of breath and soaking wet. The temperature had fallen precipitously and each time we stopped to gather ourselves, to be sure we were all still there, we got cold. Very cold. I thought about what I had read about hypothermia. I talked to myself. Told myself this was another grand adventure. Told myself this was really dangerous. Told myself to quit talking to myself. We each fell several times. The last time I had seen Duane up close, the look on his face was not good. He looked like he had seen a ghost. I said the only thing I could think to say at the moment. “We don’t have any choice, bub. We have to keep moving.” Another hour passed. We kept moving, balancing, trying not to twist an ankle, break a wrist or worse.
Suddenly, I heard Sonny yelling over the howling wind. WHAT THE **** IS THAT??? And again, WHAT THE **** IS THAT?
At that moment, I heard it. A sound so loud it rang out over the gale. A deafening machine sound. And there it was, a train trestle arose out of the mist suddenly directly in front of us - and a train was a hundred yards away, careening down the mountain away from us on a track to nowhere. We were dumbfounded.
Struggling to bend over with our heavy sodden packs, we ducked under the trestle, and hunkered down against the wild, bucking wind and driving rain for another hour until, finally, we could make out the roofline of the hut. When I stumbled through the front door, I had no idea how far back Duane was. Five minutes later, he walked into the hut like a zombie. It took us an hour to get warm. The lone woman was there. I heard someone say they were glad to see us. We were glad, too. We could go back to it being another adventure.
Relief is the most underrated of emotions. It is a product of endurance, a well-earned bounty we’ll do well to remember, as we plan our next trip.
The crew leader at the Madison Hut was matter-of-fact. “I’m not sure I’d try to make it in this and I live up here.” He was 25 and lean with sharp facial features and the ruddy face of the sort people get when they live and breathe the White Mountains season after season. He looked at the three of us, not unpleasantly but with an air of indifference. I looked again at the most recent forecast scrawled on the chalkboard. People were hovering around it, studying it like the newest tablet handed down from the heavens. You could hear folks muttering.
The plan was to get up in the morning and hike 8.5 miles across the high ridgeline of the northern Presidentials to the Lake of the Clouds hut where we would spend the night. That meant crossing over or around Mounts Jefferson, Clay and, finally, Washington, then another mile and a half to the hut. We’d be above treeline across all of the infamous Gulfside Trail and if we’d had any doubts about what that meant, the National Park Service signs had disabused us of them.
And there was the next day’s forecast, radioed in from the Mount Washington observatory, written without emotion in powdery white chalk:
SEPT 20th: RAIN. HIGH 51, LOW 34. WINDS 40-50 MPH, GUSTING TO 70-80 MPH.
We had come a long way for this hike. Had planned a long time. We’d get some rest and decide in the morning, we said.
---------------------------------------------------------------
We left early, under a gray sky and a whistling wind, leaning into the long, steep ascent up Mount Jefferson. We couldn’t help but notice there weren’t many folks out there. After a few minutes, a lone woman hustled up from behind us. “My name is Linda Roberts,” she said. “I’m hiking alone to the Lake of the Clouds. I want someone to know, in case something happens to me.”
There was a time, during the first hours of the trek, that although it was hard-going, we were still in the adventurous zone. We were excited, though if there was any vista to behold, we would never know it that day. We hiked across an alpine meadow and through boulders as big as small buildings. We continued climbing, then descending, then climbing again, through the clouds and mist, precariously looking for places to put our boots, one at a time, as we picked our way through the never ending other-worldly landscape.
I’ve come to the conclusion that if you really want to experience all the highs and lows of a good, mind-bending hike, be the guy in the middle. We’d made a pact before we even got out of the car the day before that we’d stay together, regardless. If things got dicey (not that we had truly believed they would), we’d just go slow and stick together. That ended up putting me in the middle, which was about right. Sonny was the rabbit, hopping from rock to rock as we climbed, full of boyish adrenaline, hooting and hollering, firing me up. In the back was Duane, much bigger than Sonny, a lumberer, plodding, stoic, undeterred. I was between them, bounding one minute, sucking wind the next, bridging the tortoise and the hare. Sonny kept an eye on me, and I on him. Often, I was looking so far up at him, I wondered how he got up there, and how I was going to do it. And back a ways, Duane too, looked for me and I for him. I paused every ten minutes or so, straining my eyes through the glop to discern whether the vertical shape in the distance was moving toward me, or whether it was just another cairn, silently observing our struggle.
Eventually, we were on a steeper pitch, inching around the cone of Mount Washington, crawling along in a dense, white-gray fog. The wind was now intense, gusting violently, threatening to blow us off our feet. All I could hear was my pack cover snapping under the gale, whipping back and forth, over and over again. The rain lashed us, like thousands of tiny nettles against the sides of our faces. I could see the mist and rain in the wind, billowing up from the chasm below into the side of the mountain with what felt like hurricane force.
I had the sensation of peering into a colorless kaleidoscope with a smeared lens . Wearing glasses didn’t help. On, they were hopelessly fogged up. Off, I was all but blind. And below, as we strained and balanced ourselves looking for the next place to gingerly step, there was nothing but immense scree fields of jagged rocks covered in slick, green lichens that seemed to stretch forever. No people. Would not be any there. Just us. Three guys from Alabama on a weekend hiking trip in New England.
I have always been mesmerized by strong weather. A gale wind, punishing heat, numbing cold, a flash of electricity. And we were deep into it, stressed, short of breath and soaking wet. The temperature had fallen precipitously and each time we stopped to gather ourselves, to be sure we were all still there, we got cold. Very cold. I thought about what I had read about hypothermia. I talked to myself. Told myself this was another grand adventure. Told myself this was really dangerous. Told myself to quit talking to myself. We each fell several times. The last time I had seen Duane up close, the look on his face was not good. He looked like he had seen a ghost. I said the only thing I could think to say at the moment. “We don’t have any choice, bub. We have to keep moving.” Another hour passed. We kept moving, balancing, trying not to twist an ankle, break a wrist or worse.
Suddenly, I heard Sonny yelling over the howling wind. WHAT THE **** IS THAT??? And again, WHAT THE **** IS THAT?
At that moment, I heard it. A sound so loud it rang out over the gale. A deafening machine sound. And there it was, a train trestle arose out of the mist suddenly directly in front of us - and a train was a hundred yards away, careening down the mountain away from us on a track to nowhere. We were dumbfounded. Struggling to bend over with our heavy sodden packs, we ducked under the trestle, and hunkered down against the wild, bucking wind and driving rain for another hour until, finally, we could make out the roofline of the hut. When I stumbled through the front door, I had no idea how far back Duane was. Five minutes later, he walked into the hut like a zombie. It took us an hour to get warm. The lone woman was there. I heard someone say they were glad to see us. We were glad, too. We could go back to it being another adventure.
Relief is the most underrated of emotions. It is a product of endurance, a well-earned bounty we’ll do well to remember, as we plan our next trip.
