Over the weekend of the 4th of July, Meghan added to her list of accolades, winning the official title of “Mountain Goat.” Having spent quite a bit of time in the great outdoors, I would frequently harass Meghan for her “city slicker style,” saying I could not marry a woman who had never spent a night in a tent. While time has conspired against us on the night in a tent, Meghan did manage to prove herself in the great outdoors.
It’s been several years since I’ve conquered Mt. Washington, New Hampshire’s tallest peak (one of the highest in the entire Northeast), and I thought it would make a relatively pleasant “walk in the woods.” My thought was to test Meghan’s mettle while giving me and adequate fix of fresh mountain air and vistas unencumbered by Ford Excurgantuans piloted by suicidal soccer moms or the incessant rambling of hipster-wannabes on mobile phones.
The route I chose was designed to keep us a bit away from the crowds that were bound to be on the mountain over a long weekend, and get us above treeline as rapidly as possible. If you have never been above treeline, it’s quite a magical place. The combination of altitude and wind serve to keep the several hundred feet atop the mountain free of any vegetation, save for lichen and tiny alpine flowers, most no taller than a couple of inches. The Presidential range is possesses a particular stark beauty, as it suffers from some of the worst weather in the world, while also being one of the older mountain ranges in the world. Possessing a climate similar to arctic tundra, the mountain also contains fossils from the bottom of an ancient ocean.
Supposedly once as tall as the Himalayas, time has long since reduced the height of the Presidential Range, and I thought our hike would be only slightly more rugged than a weekend walk in the park. We started out on a sunny Saturday morning, with temperatures climbing into the 80’s. The trail was nicely shaded, and we gradually climbed up the rocky trail, the air growing slightly cooler as the trees grew slightly smaller.
Around noon we came to the final push to get above treeline, and the trail went from a steep walk, to scrambling up boulders and loose rock on hands and knees, all the while with several hundred feet of vertical drop should a misstep occur. Meghan contemplated turning around, and in another one of those special moments where I knew without a doubt I was marrying the right person, she managed to scramble up the rock with a smile on her face, and I even have got the picture to prove it!
To reward her efforts, I had schlepped my backpacking stove up the mountain, along with some freeze-dried pasta primavera. While it would likely be regarded with scorn on the streets of Florence, it was quite tasty after a morning of climbing, and a far more adequate reward than my usual back packing lunches of peanuts, granola and other assorted snackfoods.
Our rock climbing adventure over, we continued for several miles along the exposed ridgeline, contending with increasing wind speeds and falling temperatures, until both met around 40 (miles per hour and degrees F).
After about six hours of rough walking, we summited the even more surreal environment of the Mt. Washington Visitor’s Center. In their infinite wisdom, the National Park Service and various other organizations have combined forces to create a summertime road and railway to the summit, combined with museum and junk food complex, effectively rendering the home of the world’s worst recorded weather into a tourist trap. While the winds and snow routinely kill people in every year on the mountain, the “visitor’s center” allows those with no other business on a high peak to kill themselves via bad hot dogs, and glazed doughnuts.
After a day of seeing less than ten people, all of them in some degree of good physical conditioning, and with an “outdoors-y” look about them, we ascended into a troupe of large folks sucking slurpies, a man in complete Gang-star gear smoking a cigarette while contemplating the “crazy f—ed up shiznit”, and an Indian family, complete with grandma in an authentic sari. I am still undecided as to which is more interesting, the strange flora and fauna that grows in that harsh environment, or the strange people and personas which invade that setting.
The trifecta of both of us being relatively spent, the setting sun and most importantly, my urge to being out the mountain woman in Meghan satiated, we decided to take advantage of that strangest of species homo sapiens. We put on our best “friendly hiker” faces, and staked out a prominent position in the parking lot on the summit, in an effort to hitch a ride down the mountain. After some wide-eyed city slickers claimed there was “no room” in their empty 6-ton Oldsmobuick Continental, a pleasant couple from North Carolina provided good conversation and a down the mountain. Our driver, a former long-distance backpacker himself undid our 8 hours of walking to the summit in a meager 30 minutes, safely returning us to the Pinkham Notch visitors center before sunset. Not wanting to end our woodland adventure too soon, we took a quick 1 mile walk on the Lost Pond trail, returning to our car where my most wonderful of fiancées displayed her inner mountain woman:
Sounds like a wonderful time.
See you soon!