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I tried to get a solid 8 hours of sleep the night before the hike, but it was no use. I kept tossing and turning, awake every hour with the same thoughts: “What am I doing? Climbing Mount What? Washington, who?”
In the month leading up to the hike, I’d “conditioned” myself by getting on the treadmill three times. Even more depressing is the fact that each session lasted about an hour and a half and reached an average top speed of 4mph.
So basically, I’d spent 4.5 hours walking to prepare for Mount Washington. Was I really ready? Yeah, let’s do this.
I drove to Tom’s for 5am and we picked up Ryan on the way north. I was completely zoned out, partly from the lack of sleep, partly because I didn’t know what I was getting into. The weather in Boston wasn’t great – rainy and dark.
An ominous beginning, but as we made our way north the sky lightened up, the rain stopped and blue sky and sunshine came out. We were going to have perfect weather for our trip.
We arrived in Randolph, NH around 9:30 or so and parked the Xterra at Lowe’s Store. “Our journey begins here,” I thought. “There’s no turning back now.” All 3 of us had brought food, so we consolidated a portion of it into a ‘”foodbag”.
Since Tom was carrying our tent, I was volunteered (by Tom) to carry our food. No problem, I thought and packed it away into my backpack. I think that my pack weighed 25 pounds or so pre-food, but it felt like 40 pounds afterward.
I didn’t have a scale to prove any of this, but it was heavy and I was not happy. “This must be some kind of rookie initiation, but I’ll show these jokers. I’m carrying all of this frozen pasta, granola, and summer sausage up the mountain, damn it.”
Our hike up Lowe’s Path started just before 10am. It seemed somewhat steep and I was sucking wind within the first 15 minutes. Tom and Ryan attempted to stay within earshot, but their pace was much faster than mine, so within half an hour,
I was all by myself, struggling and once again, wondering what the hell I was doing here in the mountains of NH for the next 4 days.
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Getting into a Rhythm?
Our first break came at 11am. Ryan said that the normal pace was to spend 45 minutes walking, then rest for 15 minutes. This sounded reasonable to me, but in reality, I needed to stop after about 15 minutes. I dropped my pack, relieved to shed the weight,
and sucked down water and ate raisins and peanuts. I could tell that I was already slowing our party down, but both Tom and Ryan assured me that I was doing fine. I almost believed them.
After some minor adjustments to my pack, we continued on and within 10 minutes, both Tom and Ryan were well ahead of me, nowhere to be seen. Interestingly enough, I didn’t mind the fact that I couldn’t see them. I’d rather suffer by myself and go at my own slow pace.
I actually found it to be somewhat peaceful hiking alone. I had only been in the woods for a short amount of time, but my head was already clear as a bell. I wasn’t worried about work that I had to do for clients, I wasn’t worried about emails and phone calls that I had to return,
I wasn’t worried about trimming the guest list for my upcoming wedding, I wasn’t worried about anything. All I had to think about was my next step, my next breath, my next drink of water, and getting to our campsite that was 4.5 miles up the mountain.
At this lower elevation, I was pleasantly surprised to find many birch trees all around me. When I was in high school, I read a poem by Robert Frost called “Birches”. Our teacher pointed out the imagery that Frost created in the poem and ever since then,
I’ve been particularly fond of the tree. It was a strange feeling, but as I passed so many birch trees, I felt somewhat comfortable and almost at home. This may be New Hampshire, but we were still in New England and I’m a New Englander. It’s all good, I thought.
Solitary Confinement
I hadn’t planned on hiking alone for the majority of my time in New Hampshire, but I quickly began to prefer it. Don’t get me wrong – Tom’s an old friend of mine from college and we get along quite well. We’d lived together our junior year at Babson College and had even traveled to Ireland and Amsterdam the summer that Tom graduated. Ryan was a good friend of Tom’s and from the limited time that I’d known him, I knew that he was a good egg.
The problem was that when they were just ahead of me, they’d stop, turn around and say, “You OK?”. I really appreciated them looking out for me, because I didn’t want to get eaten by a bear, but if there was any degree of distance between us, I tried my hardest to close the gap. I felt like I was slowing them down, so I had to suck it up and keep moving.
When one of the others was ahead of me, we were usually engaged in conversation, and I had to stick pretty close to them to hear. Of course, this meant that I had to hustle my butt off inorder to be part of any conversation. Eventually, I decided that my self preservation was more important than any conversation that the guys were having. I wanted to be one of the guys on the trail, but I was sweating way too hard and I needed a drink desperately. Sorry guys.
I’m sure that it was tough for them to get into a rhythm, having to stop every so often and make sure that I wasn’t dead, so I found that it was easier to slow my pace down and let them continue on at their own pace. The early part of the hike was nice because they were never really all that far away from me and we kept in contact by whistling. It sounds kind of stupid, but I felt better knowing that they were just over the ridge or around the corner. If a mountain lion or bear charged me, at least they’d hear my screams and would be able to recover my body.
I spent my time alone, looking at the various trees and plants that surrounded me. Everything looked somewhat familiar, but just a bit different from what I knew in RI. I took plenty of photos, not wanting to miss a thing. I’m sure that this only put me further back behind the guys, but I didn’t care. I was on my way to climb a mountain and the nature photographer in me was going to document as much as possible.
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The First Real Test - The Chute
By 1pm, I reached the first real test of the hike – a section of Lowe’s Path called “The Chute”. This was a steep section of boulders that went straight up. Plus, there was a small stream running down the left side just to make things slippery and a bit more interesting. It’s as if the person who designed the trail said, “We could make the trail rise gradually, but screw it – let’s climb this waterfall. We’ll be home in no time!” Much to my surprise, Tom was at the top of the Chute, checking in on me and offering moral support. He said that something called “The Log Cabin” was not much further. Ryan was already there and we’d kick off our boots for a while and relax. All that I had to do was get up the Chute.
I stood at the base of the Chute and wondered how the hell I was going to make this happen. I had “conquered” the flat portion of the hike and now I was spent. My clothes were soaked with sweat and I was tired. Luckily, I wasn’t sore, but I was really, really tired. Who knew that carrying 40 pounds uphill for 3 hours could be so challenging?
As I started to consider my route up the Poop Chute, 5 teenagers and 2 adults popped their heads out of the woods behind me. “Hey there, “ I said, for lack of anything better. These were the first people that I’d encountered since we’d started the hike. “Not too bad. Where are you headed,” the eldest guy asked me. “I’m going up there,” and pointed up to Tom, “That guy has some beef jerky and I’m going to go eat it.” I’m sure that I sounded crazy, but like I said, I was tired. “OK. Good luck with that,” he said, which I thought was pretty funny. Then all 7 people walked up the Chute like it was nothing. No slipping, no fretting, no out-of-shape-guy in the back slowing down the rest of the pack. All 7 of them went up and disappeared from view in 2 or 3 minutes. Alrighty then. I guess these New Hampshire people are really in-shape. Bastards.
It was a bitch, but eventually, I made it up the Chute. I came to climb Mt. Washington. Did you honestly think that a Chute would stop me. Please.
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