March 17, 2012, The Most Villainous, Breakneck Route

March 17, 2012,  The Most Villainous, Breakneck Route

Some people who travel in the mountains are minimalists.  On his hikes in the Yosemite Valley, the naturalist John Muir took along just an overcoat and a pocket full of raisins. Emily Klug, a German lady who was a regular guest in the high huts of the White Mountains, kept but a few provisions rolled up in her long, woolen skirt. Messner on Everest; alone and without oxygen.

Others travel in full-combat utility mode. My friend Rick used to wear the first military cargo pants I ever saw; all strings tied to things within easy reach, hidden in too many pockets to count.  He’s long since ditched the dark olive pants for smart, technical mountain threads, but today his kit still goes way beyond his Boy Scout “ten essentials”. Buried in the back of his Range Rover there’s an additional ten items should the need arise: a climbing rope, an ice axe, crampons, and a six-pack of beer on ice. Rick still knows how to plan for a safe, fun time.

Rick’s preparedness always starts with his underwear. His shirt-tail cousin, Odd Roar Lofterød, founded the Norwegian sportswear company Odlo and kept Rick well supplied. The Odlo brand introduced the world to polyester baselayers (long underwear), freeing us all from the misery of cold, sweat-soaked, cotton undergarments or the alternative; itchy woolens.

Like OdLo, Rick’s dad was from Norway and Rolf wanted to make sure his offspring knew how to handle themselves in the snow and mountains. He built a vacation home for his family in North Conway and named it Trollhaugen (Troll Hill).

Rick and Deb on Peaked Mt., 1977

Years ago, one March afternoon, Rick and I and a friend from college strapped on snowshoes and packed our skis up the little mountain behind Rick’s house. Someone thought to bring some shrimp cocktail along and to this day our ultimate acclamation for perfect corn snow is,  "It's the shrimp!"  I still enjoy that run down the Peaked Mountain slabs and out through the birch glade into Rick’s old neighborhood.

Phil, 1984

Fast forward thirty-five years to today, Rick and I are at it again. My friend Phil initiated this trip and he best qualifies as our leader. Phil is a level-headed, self-deprecating kind of guy, and the senior member of our little group. He has more experience in the mountains than the other two of us combined. His preparedness is beyond reproach; if he’s missing anything, it’s because he wants it that way.

About the time Phil was born, his father chose to make the White Mountains his home because of his love of climbing. Phil naturally grew up learning the ways of the trails, cliffs, and rivers that were right in his backyard.  In 1965, Phil and his dad Joe were the first mountain guides to hang out their shingle in North Conway, if not the White Mountains. Joe died in 2008, but his NH vanity license plate “ICEAXE” is still in the family.

Phil and Rick will discover they were on the same mountain teaching skiing together around forty years ago. Small world.  Rick and I go back 37 years to a “Lost and Forgotten Ski Area” in Jackson where we both taught skiing, and Phil and I connected 33 years ago while he was courting my cabin-mate and his future wife, Ann.
chapter 2: Risk

Snow Day and the Juice

It's an intermediate backcountry ski run with the usual disclaimer: in optimal conditions. My climb up the Old Jackson Road (OJR, OJ, the Juice) took about an hour and a half, setting a track in 8" of powder. Optimal for skiing, exploring and taking pictures.  I know the route better from my salad days as a summer run in shorts and sneakers, part of a mixed surface 10k loop from the Glen House. The OJR is now a short section of the Appalachian Trail, but started out in the middle of the nineteenth century as a wagon route to the Mt. Washington Carriage Road.

Now the traveled way is narrower and you see white blazes for the AT, and a few blue blazes at crossings with the local Pinkham trail network. This is transitional forest full of minor drainages and ledge outcrops. Large beech trees, yellow birch, and spruce cover an understory of small firs and hobblebush discouraging too much off-trail travel.

The OJR starts at an elevation of 2032' right behind the AMC Pinkham Notch Visitor Center and runs northerly for about 1.5 miles, climbing 650 feet until it meets the Auto Road. A hundred and fifty years ago, teams of horses pulling loads of sightseers from Jackson ten miles south, and bound for Mt. Washington passed through here.  The teams had already climbed some 1300' to this point and the shortcut eliminated the additional miles and elevation loss getting to the Carriage Road's gate and tollhouse at the Glen House.


Continue on up a quarter mile the Auto Rd. to a large turnout. In summer, down-bound  motorists cool their brakes here and pose for pictures alongside trail-hardened AT thru-hikers who are soaking up the tourist culture in this unusual clearing on the edge of the Great Gulf Wilderness. Drop the skis at the turnout and scramble the usually packed Madison Gulf trail a quarter mile to Lowes Bald Spot for a nice view.

Next, ski the 10% grade down the road about a mile to connect with Connie's Way for the return trip to Pinkham, making it a decent half-day loop. Large Bombardier cats from the State Park and Mt. Washington Observatory and the Auto Road Snowcoaches travel the road daily, so the surface can be  chewed up, sometimes frozen, or just right if you get it early right after a light storm. Too much snow and it can be a bit of a slog. If the surface is rough, ride the untouched snow high on the road shoulder. The return trip along Connie's Way has its ups and downs with a beautiful, bridged crossing on one of the Peabody River feeder streams and lots of moose sign. The trail was named for 1975 Pinkham croo member Connie Waste.

At the end of the trip, stop into the "Trading Post" at the AMC for a snack and some cocoa. As they say, "The latchstring is always out." The Joe Dodge Lodge, Trading Post, and support buildings are spread out on the site of an old logging camp first used by the AMC for summer visitors in 1920. Joe Dodge, an early Pinkham hutmaster and so called, "Mayor of Porky Gulch",  first opened the AMC camp to winter visitors in 1926. That year the notch road was unplowed and the only way in was on skis or snowshoes. The area was full of porkupines, hence the nickname Porky Gulch. Since the state was paying a 25 cent bounty for a porkupine nose, Joe pretty much cleaned them out of there and used the proceeds on town trips for ice cream sundaes.

Nowadays, the AMC offers the only overnight accommodations high in the notch and township named for Daniel Pinkham, a fellow widely believed to have pushed the first road through here in 1836. There are conflicting reports about the origins of what was originally called the Shelburne Road. According to Russell Lawson in his book Passaconaway's Realm, the Province of NH hired a Fryeburg woodsman named John Evans in 1774 to build the first road though the "eastern" notch. Ten years later Evans was reportedly guiding the Cutler Expedition to "the Great Mountain", and found his road all but impassable from wind and water damage, neglect, and disuse; sound rational for a second, planned road sixty-two years later.

Sidestash, Utah

Sanctuary, Cobabe Canyon, Utah

We explore this fabric of terrain like a cricket might explore a rumpled picnic blanket; disappearing into every shadow, crawling out of the creases, looking around from the high places. My response to light is to move back into the cold, quiet protection of the the forest. Sam instinctively leaps from the sharp edge of a limestone fold to an uncertain landing. Below him I swing to a stop in a narrow drainage, choked by scrub willows. Above us, Thomas has given little to gravity and slowly descends the ridge, waffling between sun and shadow, stillness and wind, the aspens and firs. Sooner or later we’ll tumble out of the canyon and tell our stories, share a ride up, and plan the next adventure.

Douglas Fir

Crossing Easter Bowl, I’m immersed in an achromatic tank of fog and snow. The going is tentative and I let gravity pull me along a slightly curved, edgy line. In this weather, on this treeless slope, there is no visual reference and most people’s spatial awareness is about 90% disabled. In my case, a mild vestibular disorder makes things worse. Behind the goggle lens, all I see are the familiar, protozoan specks of debris floating around somewhere in my eyeball that sometimes move across the white page of my bedtime reading. When I reach a place where drifted snow has blocked the ski track,  I’m unaware that my gentle traverse has stopped until I rock forward and nearly topple over. The wind is driving snow onto the right side of my face. Lacking sight, I try to recruit a better sense, and the stinging on my cheek is good feedback.  I adjust and push off again. Ski poles like whiskers guide me toward a hard edge of immense Douglas Firs.

Webster Cliff: not a ski trip

icy trails, December, 2011

This hike wasn't my idea. It was Tom Ryan. He's the guy who hiked all of the 4000'ers just shy of twice in one winter  with his miniature German Schnauszer. His book about that winter is called Following Atticus. It got me going. Did a lot of this type of thing in college until I got wrapped up with ski business, married, had kids, borrowed money.

The Appalachian Mountain Club's Four Thousand Footer Club was formed in 1957 to introduce hikers to some of the less well-known sections of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I still have my dad's 1960 AMC guidebook and right up front there's a list of of the 46 highest (now 48) to check off. A sub-clique of hikers grew out of the original 4000'ers, hikers who keep the winter list.

Dad's first two out of the 48 were Mt. Oceola  and its East Peak.
They were my first too. I was eight. The last peak Dad checked off was Isolation in 1971. We made that trip together right after my high school graduation.

During college I left the Whites for a summer job with the Baxter State Park trail crew working around Mt. Katahdin. Dad and I naturally did Baxter Peak together, his native state's highest. After that we didn't hit the trails together until the summer my mom died. Those hikes were therapeutic, away from the heavily traveled 4000'ers, and shorter. He was 69.  Instead of a list, he now has a hornbeam hiking staff with a name and date of each hike carved into the ironwood. He's ninety-two and still uses his hiking staff on his daily walks around his Florida neighborhood.

My journal lists numerous wintery ascents, usually on skis, but none quite measure up to the A.M.C. winter-club standards. Either the earth's tilt wasn't quite right, or a hill's prominent feature was its powder snow, not its elevation. Well short of completing the winter list, the last qualifying hike was with my college outing club. It was Mount Hale and I spent a long night on the summit in a too-small tent freezing my ass off.

This winter we're having a snow drought in the Whites, a double whammy in an already depressed economy that depends on winter tourism. At Great Glen Trails/Mt. Washington, where I'm a weekend tourguide, my snow coach sits up on blocks beside route 16, a disgraced, roadside billboard. On the lower mountain, there's a scant inch of snow on the nordic trails. Fighting off cabin fever, I'm cleaning up the blog and I try to take care of the to-do lists my wife leaves around.

My winter list: PB+J, two liters of water, chocolate, an orange, extra mitts, balaclava, snowshoes, Microspikes, headlamp, insulating layer, trip plan, and cell phone.

Ten AM start with an inch of snow underfoot at the Webster Cliff trailhead in Crawford Notch. When I timed out around 4000', there were  occassional 12" drifts and a consistent 6" of wet snow on the trail. A couple of guys and I yo yo'd for the lead most of the way up until I hit my turn-around time. They continued on to Mt. Jackson. Sure wish I'd gotten there. Such a lovely summit.

Weather was warm with a start temp of 28, finishing up around 3:30 at 37. Early sun given to lowry skies toward mid-day. I photographed ice and a murder of acrobatic ravens. The Microspikes got the mvp award for the day, with my EMS System III parka a distant 2nd. Without the parka, I might have survived a good soaking from the snow-melt dropping off the evergreens, but this trip would have been a catastrophe without traction underfoot.

The springtails were out like it was March. Across the notch, ice climbers were peppered against the Willey icefield, and there were F-15s making fast passes somewhere above us in the clouds. Something for everyone!

winter up high