Mt. Washington is the highest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 ft. It’s notorious not just for its height but for the erratic and often dangerous weather conditions that can occur at the peak, often with no warning. It holds the record for the highest measured wind speed in the Northern Hemisphere at 231 miles per hour. The summit has hurricane-force wind gusts more than 100 days every year. Over 150 people have died on Mt. Washington since 1849, due to sudden changes in weather, bad equipment, and poor planning.
Every other car I saw in New Hampshire had a bumper sticker that read, “I climbed Mt. Washington.” If it was a brag for a car to get up there, I knew it was going to be a feat for us.
We did indeed sleep in the gravel parking lot that night and woke up the next morning with a plan to hike 11.1 miles to the Lake of the Clouds hut that lay just 1.5 miles and 1260 feet from the Mt. Washington summit.
Lying in my sleeping bag that morning, I stared at the trail as it snaked steeply into the woods across the street. Our sprint down the mountain last night meant that it would be a slow slog up out of the notch that day. Everyone else was making some motions towards starting the day except for Turbo, who somehow remained asleep despite the hubbub; sleeping bag pulled tight up to his chin, hat down over his eyes, and handkerchief tied around his neck. I took a deep breath and counted to ten in an effort to force myself to sit up. When that didn’t work, I counted to ten again, this time groaning loudly as I rose.
My body ached from the night on the gravel, and the initial 2700 foot climb up Mt. Webster didn’t give me any time to warm up to the day. At several points along the trudge up the mountain, the trees cleared and I was able to catch my breath while looking behind me to the notch below. It was immensely satisfying to watch the parking lot and road become specks in the distance, the cars become hot wheels, and the people tiny ants.
Around five miles into the day, we reached Mt. Jackson, at over 4000 feet. The last two tenths of a mile were steep boulders and rocks that made hiking upright impossible. I scrambled up, finding handholds and nooks in the rocks to lodge my feet in, to propel my body up and over. Erin had to stow her hiking poles, the boulders rendering them useless.
The famously fickle weather of the Whites continued to hold off and as we stood on the summit; I could see the ridgeline stretching in front of us. Hiking above tree line, a rarity South of New Hampshire, was a surreal experience. The day was a rollercoaster. We hiked from Mt. Jackson down to Mizpah Spring hut for lunch, then up 500 feet to Mt. Pierce, down below 4000 feet to a notch, before starting the climb to the Mount Washington Summit. We reached Lake of the Clouds, which stood at just over 5000 feet elevation, in the early evening.
“So…. who wants to go ask about work-for-stay?” I said as we approached the hut. Because of the weather on top of Mt. Washington, we knew we needed to give ourselves plenty of time to get up and over the summit. We were too late in the day to tackle it that afternoon, so our only option was to stay at Lake of the Clouds hut. And that meant doing work at the hut in exchange for space to sleep.
Everyone simultaneously kicked at the dirt for a long beat, until, as we all knew she would, Erin said, “FINE,” and walked off towards the hut. Erin was always the one we volunteered to ask for rides, negotiate places to stay, or talk a motel owner into letting six of us stay in a room without charging us. She didn’t have the anxiety around talking to strangers that I did and people naturally liked her easy laugh. Plus, she’s impatient, so the rest of us knew that if we just stalled long enough, she would just “do it her own damn self.”
Pilgrim, Sug, Turbo, Ben, and I milled around outside for a few minutes when Erin returned, telling us with a shrug, “Well. We can stay, but they don’t have any bunks left. If we help with serving dinner and cleaning up, they said we can sleep on the dining tables after everyone goes to bed. But... they also said we need to stay out of the way and get up and leave before breakfast.”
“Fuck that,” Pilgrim and I retorted in chorus. The idea that we would have to serve pampered hikers their meals and scurry around hoping not to disturb anyone just so that we could sleep on their floors made me furious. Especially when we would gladly just camp outside if it wasn’t forbidden by the AMC. It wasn’t paying for the huts that I objected to, we couldn’t pay if we wanted to—these huts were reserved almost a year in advance—it was that we were basically denied access to this part of the trail in favor of wealthy weekend adventurers. And for now, at least, the trail was our home, so it felt like being kicked out of our own house.
“We don’t really have another choice, do we?” Ben pointed out, evenly. More and more, Ben was becoming our collective voice of reason. I gave him a withering eye-roll, but I liked that he was calm and reasonable without being condescending.
And, of course, he was right, even if camping outside of the huts and designated campgrounds was allowed in the Whites, sleeping outside when none of us were carrying tents anymore wasn’t a great idea in an area known for its unpredictable weather.
Pilgrim and I continued to grumble, but eventually gave into our fate and headed into the hut. The rest of the night only solidified our skepticism. There was a weird dynamic between our group and the hut workers, who were all around our age. At other huts we’d stopped at, we’d had fun talking to the people working at the huts. We generally had a lot in common, all of us were recent college grads choosing to escape to the mountains for a season. But we were resentful at being treated less-than the other guests and in return, the Lake of the Clouds crew treated us like adversaries rather than allies.
We finished a long evening of chopping vegetables and cleaning dishes and were exiled to wait outside until the paying guests had cleared out of the dining area.
Ben and I lay side by side on the lawn outside of the hut, holding hands. I’d briefly leaned my head on his chest, but as he lifted his arm to drape around me, I was quickly reminded that neither of us had showered in days. We talked quietly about the book he’d given me, that I’d finished the night before. I confessed that I’d liked my first Vonnegut more than I thought I would.
“Get a room, you two,” called out Turbo.
I looked back to see Sug, Pilgrim, Erin, and Turbo all sitting about 10 feet away. They’d obviously been talking about us.
“Yeah, but even if we got a room, you weirdos would still be there,” I called back.
I looked at Ben and said in a low voice, “Are we being annoying?”
Ben shrugged, “Maybe... but I don’t think they really care. I mean, I don’t care. Do you care?”
“No! Well, I don’t know. No,” I answered tentatively. In truth, I didn’t really care what the guys thought about Ben and I being “couple-y” but I did care what Erin thought. I was spending more and more time with Ben—during the day while we were hiking and at night. And that was time I’d normally spend with Erin. I didn’t want her to think I was abandoning her for a guy, even though I worried that was exactly what I was doing.
One of the young hut workers stuck his head out of the front door, “you guys can come in if you want.”
We’d been told that we could sleep in the dining area, but that we couldn’t move the heavy wooden tables and benches. That left us the option of throwing our sleeping bags down on the dusty floor in between the tables or sleeping on top of the tables. I chose a spot on the ground, while Erin settled on the table above me.
“Dude, this is like when we used to sleep on your trundle beds!” Erin said, peering down at me.
“Am I going to wake up to you staring at me like you used to?” At every sleepover, Erin would wake up before me and stare until I finally roused myself out of a sound sleep.
“You’re probably going to wake Not Yet up when you roll off the table on top of her in the middle of the night,” said Pilgrim, struggling in his sleeping bag to find a comfortable position.
* * *
No one rolled off a table that night, but none of us slept much either. Worried we’d be scolded for not getting up before the paying guests were ready for breakfast, we were all up and out of the hut before sunrise.
Erin was antsy to get going, knowing that her knee would slow her down on the big climb, so while the rest of us finished our breakfasts, she took off towards Mt. Washington.
“See ya at the top!” I called.
I watched her tiny figure disappear up the rocky incline and wondered if I should have gone with her.
The morning was clear and fairly warm, and I wondered how many hikers were lucky enough to get to Mt. Washington on a clear day.
Pilgrim left next and then Turbo and Sug, following the trail while the sun rose in the sky. Ben and I were last, starting maybe 15 minutes after Erin, figuring we’d catch her on our way to the summit. We were already above tree line, so the trail was marked by sign posts, rock cairns and the occasional white blaze painted on a boulder.
It took less than an hour for us to reach the top, and as the summit came into view we saw Pilgrim, Turbo, and Sug waiting for us, looking confused as they spotted us.
Pilgrim asked, “Where’s Sweets?”
“She’s not here?” I responded, feeling a little panicky, “How could we have missed her?”
I flashed back to Shenandoah, when Erin had passed out on the trail. It was why I always tried to stay behind her these days. But if she had fallen or passed out, we should have come across her on our way up.
“There were a few spur trails, do you think she maybe got lost on her way up?” Turbo wondered aloud. And as soon as he said it, we all knew that was exactly what happened.
Just as we were organizing ourselves to go search for her, I heard the telltale click-clack of hiking poles on rock, followed by a peek of Erin’s red hair rising up a trail I hadn’t noticed before off to our left.
“Erin!” I yelled, running towards her.
“What the fuck, dude?” she asked, now the one who was confused. “How did you guys all get here before me? And why the fuck did that take so lo… dude, I fucking went the wrong way, didn’t I?”
“Sweets, I’m constantly in awe of your ability to use the words dude and fuck in any sentence,” Pilgrim mused.
“It is pretty amazing,” I agreed.
We made our way across the summit to the weather observatory that sat on top of Mt. Washington. The building was open now, and later in the year would have a snack bar for hikers and tourists who rode the train or drove to the top of the mountain to claim their “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington” bumper sticker.
The sun was still out but wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped about 10 degrees, so I was grateful to be indoors for a few minutes.
We spread out, Erin to the bathroom and I headed for the pay phone. After I tried without luck to get ahold of my mom and then dad, I thought about who to call. It felt weird not to call Kevin, but instead I decided to call two of my best friends, Hadley and Bethany. They were both in the middle of planning their weddings, weddings that I was excited to be a part of, and I was long overdue to hear what was happening in their lives. They’d also spent a lot of time over the years with Kevin, and I felt like I needed to tell them that we’d broken up.
It turns out, they’d already guessed. I caught Hadley at her Cincinnati, Ohio apartment. We spent a few minutes catching up and I took a deep breath and said, “Hads, I have news.”
“You and Kevin broke up, didn’t you?” She interrupted.
“Yeah. Wait, how did you know?” I said, taken back.
“I called it!” she sounded triumphant. “You’re totally dating one of those guys, aren’t you?”
“Wait, what? I mean yeah, but how do you know there are guys?”
“Oh my god, I told Bethany! I knew as soon as I saw pictures of you and Erin with those guys posted on your website that was what happened!” In addition to our emails and mail drop updates, Erin’s brother had been posting a few pictures we’d sent him from the trail on a Geocities site that he had set up for us called “HikerGirlz.” Apparently, Brian had included one of us with all of the dudes from Cara and Chris’s wedding.
“You don’t have to sound so excited,” I mumbled.
“Oh, sorry, are you upset?” She tried to sound sincere, but I still detected amusement in her voice.
“Well… no.”
“I can’t believe I nailed it! You have a mountain man! I knew you were going to come home with a mountain man!” Hadley demanded I tell her everything about Ben, and I found myself grinning as I gave her the rundown.
We’d just left Mt. Washington and were headed down the peak when we heard a rumbling. Erin and I lagged behind the boys but could see them, the size of action figures, down the trail. We saw them stop as they, too, heard the loud sound.
“Oh shit,” Erin said, realization spreading across her face, “it’s the train!”
The Cog Railway runs from Marshfield Base station six miles up to the top of Mt. Washington. When it started running in 1869, it was the world’s first mountain railway and still remains the second steepest track in the world. P.T. Barnum called it “the second greatest show on earth.” It ran entirely as a steam engine until 2008, when they introduced diesel engine trains. Many hikers resent the train for its noise and air pollution, and for people getting to go to the top of the mountain with so little personal effort. For whatever reason, whether it’s animus or just a nod to the Cog Railway’s nickname “railway to the moon” there’s a long-held tradition of thru-hikers mooning the Cog Railway as it passes by.
Erin and I yelled together, pointing wildly at the smoke billowing above the next peak, “TRAIN!”
As the train rounded the mountain on its final ascent up to the top of Mt. Washington on the morning of June 27, 2003, passengers of the Cog Railway were greeted with four bare thru-hiker butts.
* * *
“You’re not like a lot of girls I know,” Ben said to me a little later that day as we walked together. More and more, we’d been lagging back from the group for small parts of the day to have time to walk just the two of us.
I cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
He hesitated and then said, “Well, you’re not overly-emotional, but you’re also not like one of those women who prides herself on being a guy’s girl.”
The part of me that loved that he saw me as special and different wrestled with the baby feminist who knew it was dangerous to be held up as an exception to “most women.”
He laughed at my skeptical expression and said, “I’m obviously not saying this right.”
He took on a mocking stereotypical “bro voice” and said, “You’re like... all the cool parts of a girl without the dumb parts.”
“Oh dude, you obviously don’t know me that well,” I laughed. “I’ve got allll the dumb parts. My move is just to bottle up all those emotions and then break down or shut down when it gets too much.”
“I’d like to see that,” Ben quipped. “Sounds super healthy.”
As if he’d conjured it, just a few miles later, I was walking by myself. I looked up and saw Madison Hut, our afternoon lunch destination. Distracted from the trail for one second, my foot caught on a rock and I pitched forward, landing on my hands and knees on the rocky path. As I struggled to stand, my pack slid up my back, knocking the back of my head and forcing me back down onto my bloodied limbs. I froze in that position for what seemed like a full minute and then with a rush, I burst into tears. Not quiet tears, but big, wracking, unstoppable sobs. It wasn’t the pain, but the indignity of the fall, coupled with the already long day—the poor sleep at Lake of the Clouds, the stress of telling my friends about Kevin, the rocky trail requiring complete concentration, probably even the rush of happy but confusing feelings for Ben—broke something open.
I finally unfastened my pack, roughly casting it to the side and sat on the ground, hugging my knees and still crying.
I was finally startled out of my state by a voice, “Sally?”
“Shit,” I looked up to see Ben, standing over me, looking very concerned.
“Are you hurt?”
“No…” my voice quavered, “I’m just tired of these fucking rocks.”
“The rocks are making you cry,” he said, not judgmental, but also not buying my explanation.
“YES,” I said emphatically. “They’re fucking rocky and stupid.”
“Okay,” he said, picking up my pack and helping me up.
“So... everyone saw that?” I asked, finally getting a good look at the Hut and noticing Erin, Turbo, Sug, and Pilgrim all standing outside, watching us.
He barely suppressed a smile, “Ahhh... yeah.”
“Cool,” I took a deep breath and stood up straight. “Well dude, welcome to my dumb parts.”
* * *
It was decided that we should hike down to Pinkham Notch and try to get a room at the lodge there for the night. No one was saying it was because of my meltdown, but I knew it was because of my meltdown and I felt grateful. I was exhausted. It was another 7.8 miles, up to Mt. Madison at 5366 feet and down to the notch at 2050 feet elevation. Erin and I found a blue blaze trail that looked like it would cut about a mile and a half off the hike and talked the boys into taking it. Turbo and Sug were pretty indifferent to shortcuts, but Pilgrim and Ben were pretty staunchly against deviating in any way from the official trail. But between my crying and Erin’s flaring knee pain, they surprisingly relented.
About halfway down the blue blazed trail, we realized we had made a mistake. The trail became super steep and then devolved into almost completely vertical sheer rock drops of between 6-10 feet. I felt the tears welling back up. I was scared of heights, and I felt guilty for forcing the guys down this path that now seemed dangerous to navigate.
“I think we have to go back,” I said, looking at the steep climb back up and thinking about the added miles. “I don’t know what else to do.”
For the second time that day, I felt paralyzed. It was Sug who took action.
“I’m not hiking back up that trail,” he said firmly. “We’re going to get down.”
Sug had us take off our backs and slide them down the rocks. Then we formed a chain- lowering each other down to safety. After a half mile of drops, the trail finally leveled back out.
“No more blue blazes,” Pilgrim said, and I saw a small nod from Ben. Erin squeezed my hand and I let go of the tension I’d been holding on to.
The rest of the trail was an easy descent and we made it to Pinkham Notch by 5pm. Sug, Turbo, and I sat on the porch of the visitor’s center while Erin went in to see about getting a room in the Joe Dodge Lodge, both owned and operated by the AMC.
She reappeared ten minutes later looking annoyed. “No rooms. No matter how I tried to sweet talk the front desk guy, he kept telling me they were full.”
“This fucking day,” I said. “What do we do? I can’t hike anymore today.”
Like the rest of the AMC territory, camping was not permitted anywhere that was not a designated campsite and the next one of those was over five miles away.
“Maybe one of these families will feel sorry for us and let us stay in their room,” Turbo offered, watching a fresh-smelling family of four emerge from the visitor’s center and walk across the parking lot to their room.
“Yeah right,” Sug retorted. “Nobody is going to invite four bearded men and two women who smell like garbage to stay in a room with their precious children.”
“Speaking of four bearded men, where are Pilgrim and Ben?” Erin asked, looking around. Ben and Pilgrim had wandered off when we’d first arrived, and I realized I hadn’t seen them since.
Just as we were starting to worry, they came sauntering over, bags of McDonalds in their hands.
“What the…” Turbo started, “What’s it? Where did that come from?”
“Some guy offered us a ride to McDonalds! We thought it’d be a fun surprise!” Pilgrim grinned.
“Finally, something good in this shitty day,” I said, grabbing fries from the bags Ben was handing around. We all ate in silence for awhile, savoring the greasy food that tasted all the better because it meant that we wouldn’t have to cook our dinner and clean our pots.
Erin broke the silence, “Dude...do you guys remember when I got FUCKING lost this morning?”
“That was THIS morning? Jesus.” I said.