The Most Villainous, Breakneck Route, chapter 7: The Tundra

The climb ends at Lakes of the Clouds hut. We arrive, one at a time, finding a half-dozen hikers enjoying lunch in the sun. One guy stretched out on the hut roof invites me to join him on his inclined sundeck. A huge snowdrift covering the south wall allows easy access, but I pass. The roof is cedar shingles and I remember from my brief employment in the huts, spending leisure time on hut roofs is strictly forbidden. The AMC Construction Crew are specialists in maintaining New Hampshire’s tundra architecture and they are as sensitive about their work as any hut cook is about his biscuits.

Lakes is the largest and most popular of the eight AMC huts, with room for 90 overnight guests. It began as a tiny weather refuge in 1901 after two Appalachian Mt. Club hikers perished nearby in a storm. It achieved full hut status in 1915.

 Because of its size and popularity during the summer operating season, the hut is also known as “Lakes of the Crowds”. I once asked a college kid who was summer “croo”  at Lakes why he wanted to spend his summer in such a place; full house of goofers every night, foggy a good deal of the time, cold and windy.  “It’s the tundra man. Just want to spend the summer on the tundra.”

Lakes sits above treeline in a fragile, alpine environment at the edge of the Presidential Range-Dry River Wilderness Area. It is a sensitive place. The hut septic system is a stone’s throw from the highest thread of the Ammonoosuk River, a trickle of water at this elevation. Some argue the hut shouldn’t be here at all. It’s in a politically fragile position as well. The AMC hut system generates huge revenues for its owners, a non-profit outdoor club, and folks in the valley claim the club should pay its share of taxes just like other businesses that compete for White Mountain tourism dollars.

The Engineering firm I used to work for designed a few of these high-country waste disposal systems. My boss used to say, “At least if we’re doing it, we know it’s being done right.” I had a hand in mapping three or four of the sites and the boss put many miles on his Limmer boots overseeing the fieldwork that was so critical to his successful designs. One can only hope that every visitor to the hut leaves as a better educated, more responsible backcountry user, and packs out most of what they consume in the hut.
chapter 8: The Forbidden Zone