White Mountains

aaron wolf in the white mountains

I considered titling this post “how not to hike the White Mountains,” because to be perfectly honest while I had an absolutely unreal experience, the White Mountains kicked my ass. To anyone who would consider a journey through the White Mountains, do heed this piece of advice: pack light. My pack was way too heavy, I had among other goodies some fishing gear (+5lbs), loads of stove fuel(+3 lbs), a spare pair of camo pants (+ 5 lbs), and most gratuitous of all a nice Canon Digital Camera weighing at least 7 lbs which made it out of the pack for all of 15 minutes (mostly used my pocket sized Fujifilm). In all my pack must have starting out weighing at least 50 lbs. By the time the trip was over the tent was weighed down with ice, and two pairs of frozen socks added more weight.

East Side trail

The trip started on a Thursday afternoon from the Hancock parking area where the East Side Trail leads into the Pemigewasset wilderness. The East Side Trail follows alongside the East Branch River for a couple of miles. It’s easy hiking in classic Northeastern New England wilderness. The scenery along the valley trails in early October is stunning. White birch trees arched over the trail with their autumn leaves burning florescent red and orange, intermingling with Oaks, Maples and various verities of evergreens including Fur and Spruce trees.

I took my time in the valley and hiked about 3 miles in two days. The weather was mostly overcast and cool for the first couple of days. The weather forecast, always an unpredictable affair in New England, called for improving conditions on Saturday. So Saturday morning, expecting better weather, I headed up the Bond Cliff trail to Bondcliff Mountain (4265’) and Mt Bond (4698’).

Steeper than it looks.

To be honest I totally underestimated the difficulty of these climbs. I have hiked to the top of some over 4000’ mountains in Alaska and while they could wear a guy out nothing I remember in Alaska compared to what I had to deal with to get to the top of Mt Bond. For one thing Alaska is mostly tundra and often times, like in Denali Park, there are no trails to follow. This helps because a hiker can scan the mountain and with the help of a good map can usually find a nice, sensible and gradual route to the summit. For better or worse, in the New Hampshire White Mountains the hiker does not choose his or her approach to the summit, only which trail to take up. Turns out some of the trails in the White Mountains are insane, blazed no doubt by militant aerobic fitness instructors. Sections of the Bondcliff (and the Twinway trail near Mt Guyot on the way down if hiking north) are extremely steep trails over large chunks of rock.

Along the Bondcliff Trail

The difficult terrain up the Bondcliff Trail is only made exponentially more difficult when some naive unsuspecting hiker like myself decides to huff it up the trail with a ridiculously heavy pack on, like the one I was carrying. Problem with a heavy pack is on a trail like Bondcliff not only will it wear you down physically, it also severely limits your range of motion making it difficult to shift your body weight and adjust ones center of gravity to maintain balance. And maintaining balance is critical up there. Most of the trails at the higher elevations, and all the summit trails through alpine environments, are basically scrambles over slabs of crumbled rock. With a heavy pack these rocky trails are like ankle land mines, one bad step or slippage on any of these rocky passages, roll your ankle with that much weight and pop, broken ankle.

The budding optimist in me found a few up sides to bearing such a heavy load. For one thing I moved incredibly slowly, my GPS showing travel speeds as slow as 0.1 mile per hour. This allowed me to really get into the Zen of hiking up a mountain, one step at a time. An incredible amount of concentration went into every step.

Mt. Bond summit

Although only about a 6 mile hike it took me all of seven hours before reaching the AMC Guyot Campsite. The hike was absolutely exhausting, the views stunning and the weather dramatic though deteriorating. Just before breaking the tree line and moving into the alpine regions of Bondcliff ice could be seen clinging on the needles of the Fur trees as the wind picked up and ripped through gusting to at least 60 mph. The wind was so powerful above the tree line that several hikers, including myself, got pushed around and nearly knocked off their feet. If you did not have booth feet planted when that wind picked up chances are you’re falling over, hopefully not over the edge of a cliff.

View from the summit of Bond Mountin

The whole thing was menacing and intimidating but at the same time wholly beautiful. The time spent on the top of these mountains in cold windy weather is a calculation between how long you can endure the wind and cold temperatures before slipping into an unrecoverable hypothermia vs. being totally absorbed by the unbelievable views and the absolute rush of bearing witness to the landscape. The stunning beauty of the views, the White Mountains in autumn, gives rise to a kind of physical and emotional appraisal of the landscape and ones place within it. Looking out on the horizon put butterflies in my stomach and seeing the vast expansive horizon from that altitude was enough to make me lose my balance. Combine thinning air, complete physical exhaustion and adrenalin pumping your heart full of basic life and death fears leads to a completely and totally over whelming and satisfying experience, almost an outer body sensation. Orgasmic. The kind of feeling a guy could very well become addicted to.

A cliff overlooking the Pemigewasset Wilderness.

Descending Bondcliff, on the trail to Mt Guyot.

You can see the trail in the bottom center of this photo.

These rocky alpine trails make for a difficult passage on windy days.

Was not exactly a private experience though as the mountain was jammed with other hikers. I’d say hello as they hopped right by me up the trail with their super ultra light high speed backpack gear. Most of them friendly but also giving me a funny look like I was that guy, the naive hiker, fishing pole and all, who decided to go up the mountain with way too much junk in his backpack, which basically I was.

The sun was setting by the time I got to Gayot Campsite. Actually I ended up in the overflow camping area as the Gayot campsite proper was filled up. I found this to be rather amazing that there were enough people crazy enough to climb this mountain in October to fill up an entire campsite. Even the overflow area was overcrowded. One particularly ambitious girl started moving around other people’s tents to make room for hers. She cleared what looked like enough room for two tents and since the area I started to set up in was looking too small I asked if maybe I could squeezes my tent in so I’d have enough room to put the rain fly on my tent. To which she said “You won’t need to use a rain fly, nobody else is.”

“Really?” I thought to myself, because looking around all I saw were tents with rain flys attached. I mean the forecast was for 20 degree temperatures and snow.

So here we all are about spend Columbus Day weekend freezing to death on the top of a mountain and this bitch is giving me bad advice to ensure no one moves in on her oversized tent space which she made by moving around other folks tents “for them.”

The forecast posted at the campsite – lows in the 20s, strong winds and snow – had me a bit concerned. When I left Indiana two weeks ago I thought I’d only be spending one weekend in the Pine Barrens. As such I only packed my crappy summer sleeping bag. Two weeks later I’m on top of a snowy mountain. Somehow – mostly exhaustion I suppose – I managed to sleep soundly after smoking the only unbroken cigarette of the three that were remaining in my pack. I made a point to sleep on my back so I’d snore extra loudly for the bitch with the mega size tent who, not surprisingly, attached the rain fly to her own tent.

I woke up early, water, socks, boots all frozen. Sunday’s forecasts called for lows on the summits to reach -10. I decided it would a good idea to find my way down back into Pemigewasset Wilderness valley. I followed the Twinway Trail for a couple miles over Mount Guyot (4580’) and South Twin Mountain (4902’). South Twin Mountain was an amazing spectacle.

At 4900’ South Twin Mountain is basically a weather factory. On one side of the mountain it was cloudy and overcast, on the other partly cloudy, and in the middle, on the peek, one is literally standing with their head in the clouds where the weather is being made.

Vally Trail

It took most of the day to get back down into the valley. Although exhausted when I reached the Falls Campsite at the end of the Twin Brook Trail I decided not to make camp and press on down through the Franconia Brook Trail. I was out of cigarettes and only had three oatmeal packages and a bag of roman noodles. Since it was almost dark I knew I’d be doing some night hiking down the Franconia Brook Trail, and some part of me knew if I attempted a night hike I’d get lost…which of course I did.

The Franconia Brook Trail used to be a rail road passage. As such it’s a fairly easy trail to follow because it’s wide. Even so, while hiking in the dark I managed to miss a river crossing and before I knew it I was lost about five miles inside the Pemigewasset wilderness at night. Rather than get more lost by trying to find my way back to the trail I started a fire and pitched my tent by a creek. In some ways this may have been the best night of the trip.

Although I was a bit frightened about not knowing where I was (and of course the batteries on the GPS decided now would be a good time to run out of juice – good thing I had a compass), I was down to less than a day’s worth of food, and knowing the freezing evening temperatures where imminent all put me into a bit of a panic. All I could do to keep from freaking out was to succumb to the fact that the best course of action was to get some rest; there was little to no chance of finding the trail before day light. I forced myself to stop worrying about how I’m going to find my way back, what I’m going to do if it snows, what if…, what if…instead I absorbed myself in just the moment. I let my consciousness get filled with the sounds of the nearby stream, the warm glow of the fire light…the warmest fire light I’ve ever seen. I just relaxed and appreciated the fire, then, looking up into the sky which had cleared, I could see entire galaxies revealed, clouds of stars framed by the shadows of Fur trees. I went from nervous to bliss and it felt great to just be there, resting, warm for now.

I reflected on my trip and the motives behind such an undertakings. For some people with too much gear – people like me – the journey to the top was slow, difficult, and painful. For others who had super ultra-light gear it was a race against the clock, for bragging rights and a chance to secure the best campsite. I wondered does this experience really amount to anything more than inspiration for a motivational office poster?

In some ways the routine of chasing down summits is not unlike a day at work. You begin with a cup of coffee, looking over a map like the morning newspaper, setting out the day’s objectives, preparing the gear – just another day of conquering the mountain. And while the process can defiantly teach you something about yourself what does this teach about the mountain? Who among these colonialists with their superfly gear and self absorbed concerns ever stopped and listed to the mountain? All those hikers in the Guyot Campsite on the top of Mt Bond were one lighter, torn tent, or defective sleeping bag away from death.

How would such an epitaph read? “Here lies the body of Aaron Wolf who died for lack of a Bic lighter and a Northface jacket.” Fact of the matter is while I felt a sense of accomplishment, I had spent the last 48 hours completely depending on my gear and putting so much concentration into looking at (or looking for) the trail that I lost all sense of what was happening around me. I had “trail vision,” a narrow focus on making the next objective. Getting lost changed everything.

From the moment I accepted that I was lost my only objective was to settle down and get myself in a rested and resourceful state of mind, no objectives just the moment and my relationship to it. I remembered listening to the howling wind through the trees and heard laughing spirits bubbling from the mountain waters, shadows dancing next to me in the firelight. The views on the summit were amazing but the feeling of finding a steady mind while lost in the wilderness was nothing short of spiritual.

The next day, as soon as the sun was up I started to look for the trail; it took all of about 30 minutes find it and another 3 hours to get back to the parking area. I have not been the same since.