The summer takes its toll

As I packed down the Gale River Trail the other day, I turned my ankle not far below Jacob’s Ladder, the long rock staircase which is the trail’s most notorious ascent. At the time, the twist seemed painful but not particularly serious, but by the close of lunch, I couldn’t walk, and purple blotches were spreading along the outside of my heel and toes. Hiking back up to Galehead that night was out of the question.

That more hutmen, or hut kids as we call ourselves nowadays, don’t hurt themselves in their duties is astonishing. The Huts Department bosses are emphatic about not carrying more than 60-70 pounds of weight on our pack up to the hut, but between exuberant 19 year-olds such as my hutmate, George Heinrichs, who has twice carried up a “century”—a load over 100 pounds—and the occasional need for lots of fresh vegetables and frozen meat all at once, loads exceed these limits from time to time.

Before the huts began to use helicopters for the pre-season supply run of a summer’s worth of canned foods, hutmen carried much greater loads. One croo member would run to the base each day, toting back up flour, tins of soup, and the like. The record load for the Gale River Trail is just over 160 pounds, while at Lakes, one hutman carried 312 pounds down from the summit over two days. Needless to say, as one OH informed me at our 75th anniversary earlier this summer, most OH from that era now have terrible knees and backs.

At Galehead, three of us are currently nursing sore ankles. For those with chronic pain, the summer becomes much more about socializing and enjoying the hut than hiking, and pack days must be carefully managed so as to be bearable. Our Assistant Hutmaster at Galehead, Hillary Gerardi, broke her leg badly last summer while working at Lonesome Lake. Confined to her house in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the boredom eventually drove her back to the hut—but she ascended the Lonesome Lake Trail on crutches.

This year, hut kids have luckily avoided any serious breaks or burns (another serious danger, given the amount of time we spend in the kitchen). Our more rustic colleagues, the caretakers, have not been so lucky. Last week, Anthony, the Garfield caretaker, broke his leg and foot when a log supporting a rock slipped and slammed into him, throwing him quite a distance. He had been building a rock staircase on the Franconia Brook Trail with another caretaker, Aaron from 13 Falls, who promptly raced the three miles up to Galehead for help and the radio. The area of the accident is in a remote bowl in the Pemigewasset without radio contact.

Three of us from Galehead and Aaron headed down after informing Pinkham Notch Front Desk of the accident’s details. We planned on walking Anthony out with crutches to Franconia Brook Campground, some 8 or 9 miles from the site of the accident; NH Fish and Game decided to bring in a helicopter, however, precipitating a mad dash to Anthony to move him to a clearing in time to get the chopper’s attention. Anthony was in remarkably good spirits—he’s a tough fellow—but the bone was clearly out of place beneath his skin, and the swelling was dramatic. We moved him as quickly as we could, but given the thickness of the forest, the National Guard Blackhawk was unable to see us waving our jackets when it passed directly overhead.

An hour and two more near misses later, the helicopter headed off to refuel. We were beginning to dread walking Anthony out, when Eric suggested via George, whom was manning the Galehead radio, that we climb a tree or light a fire or “do something McGyver like.” Better an illegal fire than a broken back from a weak limb. My old campcraft was actually put to use as we made a small teepee of twigs, supported by birch bark. Aaron luckily had a lighter, and we got a small blaze going as the helicopter returned. But how to make thick enough smoke to attract attention. I remember the incredible blaze some campers had made by putting a recently chopped balsam fir tree in our campfire on my Wild River Expedition in early July: we piled fresh fir boughs on the fire, and a dense column of smoke rose above the treetops at last. The helicopter saw it and finally swooped in.

Anthony will be out for the rest of the season, unfortunately. As for myself, I will be hobbling back in tomorrow, somewhat more cautiously than usual. My desire to pack a century has been extinguished; it will be enough to make it through the summer in good health, having seen every last sunset from the hut.

Social call

One of the great pleasures of working in one of a string of mountain huts is the chance to visit with friends. There about forty of us in all, spread out in a line over fifty-five or so miles, and we all get to know each other during Gala, the week of training at Mizpah that precedes opening the huts for full-service.

We work eleven days on before getting three days off. Some hut croo go home for days off, but many simply travel from hut to hut. It’s cheap, fun, and beautiful. Observing how another hut runs is instructive—new ideas, whether for morning BFDs (Blanket Folding Display skits) or cleaning counters, spread by word of mouth. Most of these visits are set up during social call—a fifteen minute stretch on the radio immediately following the the post-breakfast reservation call.

Earlier this season I spent a night at Lakes of the Clouds Hut. All huts have their distinctive qualities, and Lakes’ may be its numbers (others would say its superb alpine location), both in terms of its croo—with 10 members, it is the largest in the system—and its guest, of whom there may be as many as 98 in a night. Lakes of the Crowds, indeed!

Nonetheless, the Lakes croo was extremely hospitable. My overt reason for visiting was to take photos of the Dwarf Cinquefoil, but playing Twister in BFD clothes on the croo room floor after a few whiskey sours ended up being a bit more bracing. In the morning, the hutmaster Beth showed me the remains of a plane wreck in Oakes Gulf dating back toe the winter of 1969-70. Its propeller was confiscated by hut croo after the season began and, until its disappearance four years ago in mysterious circumstances, was the most sought after raid item.

This past week we at Galehead played host to my old Mizpah hutmate RD Jenkinson, over on a croo switch from Lonesome Lake, where he is Assistant Hutmaster. The weather during his stay was rather poor, so the four of us stayed inside most of the time, sharing cook days, having slumber parties in the poop (attic), and consuming a remarkable amount of beer. On the hottest day, when the sun managed to burn through the clouds for a while, Hilary, RD, and I descended to 13 Falls, where the caretaker is a friend of ours from last fall and the cascades have dug out several swimming holes.

A strong bond develops between those who start in the same season. RD was a great companion at Mizpah, a confidante and partner in idiocy, whether raiding, shooting the bb gun, or rolling around on the razor scooter during dinner talk. This week we managed to put Hilary in the sink (twice!), wash our hair together (both long), and write a farcical love letter to Galehead Mountain in the croo log.

In the end, the hut and the mountains are far less important than the people we work with up here. A kind word, ridiculous joke, or willingness to listen—this is what hut makes hut life so enjoyable and gives us our esprit de corps.
Pictures: Thad, Caroline, and Beth fixing salads; Ben Lewis filling water pitchers; Caroline, Thad, Beth, and Meredith playing homemade Twister; and RD, Hillary, and Erin on the Galehead roof.

Secluded Hawthorne Falls

It has been a humid summer up here at Galehead, which makes cool clear days all the more coveted for hiking. On one such day a couple weeks ago, George Heinrichs, one of our first-year croo, and I took off for Hawthorne Falls, another beautiful destination in the Whites that is inaccessible by trail.

From Galehead, we hiked west along the Garfield Ridge Trail to its junction with the Franconia Brook Trail, which cuts south into the heart of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. Here, we took a right (north) into the underbrush. Skirting beneath Garfield’s summit cone, we entered a ravine which eventually drains into the Gale River.

What with a rainy week, the ferns and moss were exceptionally verdant. After a half-mile or so, we dropped into a small canyon fed by a cascade at one end. From here until the falls, we kept to the stream bed and its banks—the sides were steep, and indeed the vegetation, still mostly balsam fir at this elevation, was dense and prickly. The stream’s descent is quick and spectacular on a small-scale. Chains of cascades, even small waterfalls, are interspersed with clear and calm pools. Wide ledges, hinting at much greater flow in springtime, made for surprisingly easy walking, though the steepness of a few drops slowed our progress and made for a few scrapes.

The landscape reminded me of southwest New Zealand. While rain levels around here do not approach that of a true temperate rain forest, it is decidedly wet at higher elevations. As I tell guests who come on my Mountain Weather program, it isn’t simply bad luck that hikers so often find themselves in the clouds up here. As mountains push air masses up and over their flanks, the colder temperatures associated with higher elevations cause the moisture in the air to condense into clouds and, if the dew point is reached, rain.

The original Gale River Trail (it now runs to the hut) ran past Hawthorne Falls on its way to the trail junction below Garfield. At some point in the mid-twentieth century, however, it reverted to woods. The Hurricane of ’38 likely had something to with the AMC’s decision. What is now the Gale River Trail was originally the Galehead Trail, but for reasons which again elude me, it was renamed after the original Gale River Trail was discontinued. There were several other trails near Galehead (one ran up the west ridge of North Twin from the current Gale River Trail) which also reverted to woods. In many ways, the Galehead area is a good wilder than it was 75 years ago.

We found no trace of the old trail on that trip, though George, who has been back since, says he spotted some faint traces of it on his subsequent visit. We left plenty of tracks behind us, unfortunately. The luxuriant moss was impossible to avoid—a fragile reminder of how easily we disturb the wild solitude of a mountain landscape.

Hawthorne Falls itself was well worth the visit. While its volume of water is not great, the falls are taller than I expected, perhaps forty feet high. They are flanked by a series of steep granite ledges, making entrance to the amphitheatre at their foot difficult. But from the bottom, we could gaze up at the layers of flow and the play of the sunlight on the drifting mist.

The entire trip probably took only four or five hours. Shortly beyond the Falls, on our way to the intersection between our brook with the Gale River, we stopped for lunch on a wide, sunny ledge. We were stretched out to soak up the sun, having polished off some cheese, pepperoni, and crackers, when two middle-aged fellows wielding hiking poles slowly emerged from the woods downstream. After a quiet but friendly exchange, they passed on, seeking the falls. I had thought bushwhacking the most sure way of finding solitude, but I am finding that in the Whites, even the most remote features have their visitors.

Finding Red Rock Pond

I was out of the hut at 9:30 this morning, heading down the Twin Brook Trail towards 13 Falls. No sign of Aaron the caretaker, so I took a left onto the Franconia Brook Trail and began counting the stream crossings. My destination: Red Rock Pond, a tiny body of water deep within a northwestern ravine of Guyot.

My first solo backpack followed Franconia Brook, thanks to my mother’s high school graduation present to me, a tent. At the first possible opportunity in late May, I headed into the heart of the Pemigewasset, to 13 Falls. The wetness of the spring was unavoidable and alarming. I ran into a young couple both before and after they tried to cross over Franconia Brooks to the Lincoln Brook Trail. Their chipper enthusiasm dissolved during the interim; apparently they were unable to get across, and the man developed hypothermia in the attempt. I did make it to the campsite, where the rush of water was deafening, but the experience left a mark.

Today, however, the streams were easily passable. After the third crossing, which was Red Rock Brook, I began looking for an old railroad grade the Guyot caretaker told me was the easiest way to ascend along the brook. It didn’t appear, however, and I headed into the brush, which was thick but passable. After a hot half mile, the railroad grade appeared out of the woods on the right bank. Here and there, a slight path seemed to appear—the western ravines of Guyot have seen their share of bushwhackers. At one point, I found a tiny small cairn.

Eventually, I was back in the trees. It was difficult figuring out which way to go when the tributaries appeared, but I kept to the left—as close to the northern spur of Guyot as possible. The last stream I followed was entirely dry, making the hike a good deal easier because I could keep to the rocky bed. The trees slowly turned from deciduous to coniferous.

In the floor of the ravine, the pond opened up before me, about an acre large. The slopes around it are quite steep, with dramatic slides reaching quite close to the pond. The pond itself did not seem to have an outlet, though I could hear water rushing in. I ate lunch and poked around. Certainly plenty of hikers have visited the pond before; some reeds were matted down as if slept on (possibly by a moose), and a pair of charred logs lay by the shore.

After lunch, I circled to the far side of the pond and began working my way up the slope towards the longest of the slides. At about 45 or 50 degrees steep, the slide had plenty of loose rock and also exposed bedrock. I kept to the latter, trusting it not to move. I climbed several hundred feet very quickly (it took me an hour to climb from the pond to the Twinway, an ascent of about 1500 feet). Needless to say, views of the ravine and out to the Pemi were superb.

At the top of the slide, the woods were extremely thick. The bushwhacking was slow and the slope quite steep. Gradually it moderated, however, and after about twenty minutes, I emerged onto the Twinway. I was back at Galehead at 3:30, much more quickly than I had expected. The hike simply wasn’t all that long, and though it was difficult, the bushwhacking was considerably easier than I had expected. I’m looking forward to Hawthorne Falls, my next destination.

Galehead turns 75

This summer is Galehead’s 75th anniversary—in a couple of weekends, our hut will be inundated with old hutmen. They’ll have plenty of stories for us (and particularly for hut girls, it often seems), about packing well over a hundred pounds up the Gale River Trail in the days before flies—helicopter supply runs at the beginning of the summer—and women in the huts. The OH, as they’re known, tend to come from the same mold, much the same as current staffers, who tend to be young liberal art student New Englanders.

The huts themselves have not changed much at the core—the same spirit of hard work, hospitality, and hijinks pervades them, which makes it easy for old OH and current croo to connect. It’s interesting to think that 75 years ago, though, the landscape around Galehead was totally different. The Sanders-Young company was still hard at work logging in the upper reaches of the Pemigewassett, as they would be until 1948, when they finally sold the land to the White Mountain National Forest. Early hutmen must have seen the bare earth littered with slash everywhere, scored by logging roads etched into mountainsides. When I take guests out to for my program on landscape observation and deduction, they point out the lines of fast-growing deciduous trees (White Birch, usually) that colonized the old roads on South Twin. In one hundred years they’ll be gone, but for now, they remain a distinctive characteristic of the Pemi.

Were the old hutmen sympathetic to the loggers, or did they resent their destructive labor in the wilderness? The AMC has from its start been a conservation organization; indeed, JE Henry, the original “wood-butcher” who first colonized these woods with saw wielding Quebecois and Irishmen, was a galvanizing figure for the environmental movement around the turn of the century. The Weeks Act, which created National Forests (some 40 years after the founding of the AMC), owed its passage in no small part to JE’s rapacious pursuit of profit via clearcut. I suspect the early hutmen admired the loggers for their work ethic, even while they deplored the removal of the trees for the damage done to the wild, adventurous spirit of these valleys.

Galehead actually had its own fine grove of timber itself in the early 30s. An enormous stand of virgin conifers stood atop this ridge, which figured in Joe Dodge’s choice of this site beneath South Twin. The hurricane of 1938 hit hard up here, though, taking out all the old trees. The loss had a silver lining, however: Galehead’s magnificent view, 360 degrees from the roof.
Pictures: The scars of old logging roads on the side of South Twin; Galehead below cirrus clouds.

First weeks at Galehead Hut

Up at Galehead, we're spoiled with sunsets.Croo members are: Erin Robson, the Hutmaster, Hilary Gerardi, the Assistant Hutmaster (Assmaster), and George Heinrichs and Amelia Harman, first-year croo. I'm the naturalist. RD Jenkinson, whom I worked with at Mizpah last fall, is also in some of these pictures. Here we are on the summit of South Twin, with our BFD (Blanket Folding Display) clothes on.George and Amelia.The Assmaster.

Venus above Mt. Garfield.

The price of protection

Here is a letter of mine that AMC Outdoors included in its current issue:

“In his article “What is Wilderness,” Ed Winchester noted the positive economic impact wilderness areas can have on surrounding “gateway” towns. The boon has two sides, however. One needs only to look at the sprawling, consumptive mess of North Conway to see that outdoor recreational tourism is accompanied by plenty of negatives. The high property values Winchester seems to laud do more than displace locals—they encourage the fragmentation and development of land adjacent to reserves.

William Cronon questioned in The Trouble with Wilderness whether the existence of wilderness makes it for us easier to justify degrading unprotected land. This may well be the case in North Conway, and perhaps for other lands blighted by sprawl and heavy industry.”

If you’ve read my own piece Wilderness Expands in New England, which I posted on Gulliver’s Nest a couple of months ago (and appeared in The North Star Monthly), you’ll know I favor designating more wilderness areas around the country. Unfortunately, AMC Outdoors has a habit of publishing opinion pieces as feature stories and conveniently leaving out the counterpoints—which need to be addressed. The argument for wilderness is stronger for acknowledging its risks and challenges than ignoring them.

Picture: Galehead Mountain on a foggy evening.