David Elliott, 1St Principles Design
I’ve been writing about making the most of unemployment, turning the economic situation to your advantage, maybe even getting a job. All of which often means tackling something you wouldn’t have tried if you were working – like a winter weekend hiking in the mountains.
Sound insane? You’d be surprised. It’s inexpensive, good exercise, and good for your soul. Besides, most of those resumes aren’t getting read anyway, so get away from it all for a little while. What follows is an account of an adventure a friend talked me into this last winter in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was all of the above, and even gave me an idea for an optical design.
Everyone should spend a night at an Appalachian Mountain Club hut in winter. Yes, it’s rustic, that’s how you house 40 people deep in a pristine forest. Besides, the simplicity adds to the adventure, slowing time to a walking pace, reducing necessities to what fits on your back, and offering a new perspective on comfort. So while the rest of America turns up the thermostat, at Zealand Falls Hut sustainable cutting translates to 6 hours of wood heat a day - and sweeping snow out of the dining room. Light is similarly husbanded, provided courtesy of your caretaker packing in 100 pound gas cylinders.
Consider it a history lesson, a kind of alpine Sturbridge Village in which you get to live like your ancestors. Warmth is relative, achieved with proper dress, reinforced with mugs of hot, iron tasting water, and interspersed with shivering while changing cloths, getting in or out of bed, and visiting the outhouse. At 32 degrees, the dining room is warm. In the unheated bunk rooms nail heads and knots blossom with frost, the rough board walls glittering in the beam of a headlamp. But it really “isn’t so bad” as I somehow find myself observing in the toilets at 2 am and 14 below zero.
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We wake the first morning to wind and snow, 4 inches so far and expected to continue all day. Departing for Mt. Zealand, Mt. Bond, and Bond Cliffs the temperature rises above freezing, but thankfully there is no change to rain. Around us glint snow flakes as big as sequins, showing off a crystal structure exactly like the paper cutouts made in grade school.
Reaching Zealand peak we calculate our rate of progress at one mile per hour, less than hoped. Ahead, the trail toward Bond is a foot and a half deep of unbroken snow. If we continue, we’ll be racing nightfall on the way back while retracing a path obscured by drifting. Besides, Ken, a veteran of our company has a sore knee. We reluctantly decide to turn back.
But first, as consolation, I indulge a favorite winter hiking pastime and snowshoe a hundred yards of the trail we aren’t taking, effortlessly bounding downhill, enjoying the sensation of fresh powder yielding and sliding underfoot. Uphill is a lot more work.
Returning to the hut mid afternoon, we have it to ourselves for a few hours. Ken asks, “You’re not disappointed are you?” and I am not. We chose carefully, and I believe wisely. “Winter is the best time to hike,” as he observed earlier, “but it’s dangerous.” I burn a little residual energy by hiking the hundred yards to fetch water. Hint: you have to pump fast. .
Next comes the golden rule of the huts, change all your cloths. Since the indoors is much like the outdoors (i.e. cold), treat it as you would any stop on the trail, only more so. You will get cold unless every piece of clothing is dry and you dress warmer than when you were hiking. Of course this requires you to bring two complete sets of cloths, from skivvies to top fleece. After changing, you hang what you wore hiking on the drying racks that lift to the ceiling on pulleys.
In the middle of my obligatory clothing change an older woman walks in wanting to know all about our trip to the Bonds – illustrating a couple more principles of hut life: One, the camaraderie, and two, the coed nature of the living quarters. Her group intends to hike to the bonds and is pleased to think we have broken trail for them. I finish dressing in the next room, and next day she and her retired friends do indeed reach the bonds.
Next morning at dawn I leave my warm sleeping bag and head to the toilets asking “Why am I subjecting myself to this torture?” You can’t even wash your hands, unless you count the waterless hand sanitizer, which I don’t. But stepping outside I glance toward the next peak, every branch luminous with frost, and my mood lifts.
After washing breakfast dishes, and hands, in water heated on the stove, I step onto the porch under a blue sky when I’m treated to another novel effect of sun and snow. Just yards away in the direction of the sun, from zenith to ground, the air shimmers in a dazzling column of light. Like dust motes visible only where the light catches them, a thick swarm of tiny ice crystals blaze. What’s most remarkable is their combined effect, like an array of mirrors focused on the observer, producing this blinding, gold fringed halo.
Intrigued, but eyes scorched, I return to packing for the 6 mile hike back to the car. That accomplished, and back in the embrace of conventional comforts, I’m in a kind of culture shock. Days spent in the cold, miles walked in the snow produce a mixture of feelings: accomplishment, respect, and yes dread. I turn up the heat and put on an extra fleece to drive away a chill. But we are already talking about next year, and our wives seem likely to join us.
For more information on the Appalachian Mountain Club huts – or membership – visit www.outdoors.org.
David Elliott, www.linkedin.com/in/dkelliott, 1stprinciples.wordpress.com