Doesn't matter, go up.

Mount Adams: check.

It's the hardest of the Presidentials. Called a "hiker's mountain," all approaches have at least a 4,000 ft vertical elevation gain. It's the second highest mountain in the range (5,774 ft), and as someone put it, "the highest without an auto road to the summit."
And I was in no mood to climb it. I put off my climb for a day, due to being lazy (and recovering from Mt Washington's calf-burning decent). I finally told myself, you're doing it. I woke up at 8am and the rest went like clockwork.
Mountain climbing (well, mountaineering; there's no technical climbing skills involved) and distance-hiking are studies in inevitability, I say. You get a lot of time to yourself out there (especially if you go solo, as I do). I spend my time thinking on a wide variety of topics. One of my eloquent theories that I have formulated is the "study of inevitability." For me, climbing a mountain or completing a long-distance trail is inevitable, once I set my mind to it. Sure, each step is torturous and the whole thing is difficult, but it's not a challenge in the sense that it might not work out. Of course there are the accidents and rare occurrences that can derail the best laid plans or overcome the strongest willpower. But barring those, there's no question that the job will get done.

I go to bed the night before a climb (of this simple magnitude, we're not talking Rainer here) and know that the next day I'll summit. I'm prepared, skilled and focused. It's not a question of if I'll hate it (I probably will), if the weather will be fine (my research says it will, but my pack is prepared if it's not), or if my legs will give out on the climb (they better not, because they'd have to keep going anyway). It's just one step after another.

Eventually, there will be no more mountain in front of me. I can keep climbing long after the earth stops rising. I'm not the fastest climber/hiker, but I am inevitable. Each step is progress. Walking up a mountain is the seemingly unceasing task of making one's head height into one's foot height.

And then you're done. Then you get to go back down, and that's the worst part. No achievement to look forward to, gravity mocking you like it's your friend. Slinking back to where you began.

But somehow I can distance my emotions, feelings, thoughts and so forth from my overall goal. It doesn't matter that I'm exhausted, hate the experience, think this is stupid, am uncomfortable and could think of plenty of other things to be doing at the moment. Climb.
But I'm tired.
Doesn't matter, go up.
I could turn around right now and have hot tea and watch a movie!
Doesn't matter, go up.
This mountain is stupid, there's no accomplishment in climbing it.
Doesn't matter, go up.
The trail dips while I'm not at the summit yet! How dare it!
Doesn't matter, go up.
I don't want to.
Doesn't matter, go up.

I find it's best when I don't consider the scale of the task at hand. Yeah, it's inevitable that I'll get to the top/end, and I know that, but then each moment is just a chore. I'm putting in my time, nothing special. Each step in a marathon is just the tortured completion of the whole. So if the whole is bound to be complete, that just makes the moment torture. So I free the mind and go elsewhere.

I do math problems, plan my life, philosophize, relive past accomplishments, categorize feelings, re-live past events, tell someone off, budget the month, reconcile my college experience, resolve arguments on personal and global scales, ruminate, write computer programs and tie knots. All in my head. Sometimes I talk out loud. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I scowl, sometimes I cry. Is this normal?

Doesn't matter, go up.

Above the clouds

On Friday, I climbed Mount Washington, the highest mountain in the Northeast United States. It stands a lofty 6288' above sea level, and is the keystone of the Presidentials, and the White Mountains. Its closest competitors lie in the Blue Ridge Mountains, down in North Carolina. It's the 8th tallest peak this side of the Mississippi.

Friday was a clear day among foul ones, with Thursday being completely overcast (I drove past the Presidentials, and couldn't even see the start of their slopes, only 100 ft away) and Saturday being rainy and stormy.
I started early and took my time, and soon enough I was at the top. I'm getting the hang of this climbing mountains business. No need to say that the trail was vertical in some places, there was a lot of scrambling over rocks, etc. I guess that all goes with the territory. Certainly with the White Mountains.

Above treeline is not some arctic tundra, as I had pictured. It's pretty reliably cluttered with talus. No easy way up, and no easy way down.









I went up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail (then ducked onto the Lion Head Trail), which was extremely well kept. It was a swath 12' wide, and more or less paved. Unfortunately, it was paved with more rocks (although there were random). It wasn't easy going. But I guess it's a durable surface, to withstand the hundreds of people who travel it.

A Retrospective: 10 of the more interesting places I've slept; part V

Everyone sleeps, and usually the hardest part about traveling is finding a good place to do it. Housing is expensive, and comfort is important. This series of posts shares some of my solutions to finding a cozy place to spend the night:

Sometimes the solutions aren't cozy.

-In my very first post, I relate the story of my travel back to the US from Italy, with all of its pitfalls and snags. I'd like to reference one of the aspects of that story: I've slept underneath a bush in Paris. It was a very uneasy sleep, not very restful, and only lasted a couple hours, before the train station re-opened. There is a long time between midnight and morning, though, and even 4am is very far away when you're cold and shelterless at midnight or 1am.

-As I left my study abroad program in Italy, leaving my luggage at a storage place, I had a 50+ lb pack on my back, and a sketchy plan to see Naples and Pompeii, then fly to England and walk across it. Simple. I take the train down to Naples with my Eurorail pass, and find myself in the Naples train station at 10pm. Not a good place to be. Busy, gritty, unsafe. So I scrap plans for sleeping in that train station (see previous posts, train stations are usually good places to sleep). I grab a slice of pizza (finally, thick crust pizza! I immediately comprehend the differences in pizza recipes that have been alluding me for 4 months) and catch a train heading around the Amalfi coast. A few stops in, Salermo. Quiet little town, it's on the map, so can't be too small. Perfect. I get off, and scope out a place to sleep. So much safer than Naples. Oops, the waiting room has been taken over by Rom. There's about 50 people in the small room, carpeting the floor, under plastic and cardboard, huddled together for warmth. I'll let them be. So I make my way to an out-of-service car (again, see previous posts, very good sleeping arrangements). Half an hour later, the cleaning crew comes through and kicks me out. So I head out into the night. It's pretty cold, but I have a sweater. I walk around for a few blocks, find the ocean (ok, small town indeed, it's about 3 blocks wide), and then find a nice patio/overhang that's the entrance to a bank. I stretch out my sleeping pad, climb into my sleeping bag (its first use, I just bought it for the trail across England), huddle my belongings close, and uneasily sleep for a few hours. I wake up to the dawn, pack up and catch the early morning sights over the Amalfi coast. Success! On to Pompeii.

How to kill a day

Read a book, watch a movie, surf craigslist, clean out inbox, bake something, eat something, take a shower, check all remembered and semi-remembered log-in accounts on the internet.

How to kill a few days:
All of the above, plus, find more books to read, stalk people on facebook, organize pictures, develop methodology for surfing craigslist, surf eBay and other online stores, hike.

How to kill a week:
All of the above, developing finely evolved style and techniques for each. Climb mountains.

How to kill a month:
...working on it. No answers yet.

Climbing Mount Jefferson

Lacking a job, I've turned to climbing mountains. Not very profitable, but at least it's cheap.

My first 4000-footer was Mount Jefferson, the third highest mountain in the state, weighing in at 5712' above sea level. It's also the most accessible, since the Caps Ridge Trail leaves from about 3,000', and runs straight up the ridge to the summit.

That sounds easy.
Pure vertical walls of granite, dripping with snow, slush, ice and water, tell a different story.So it took a little longer than expected, and the final climb above treeline was pretty relentless.

I took a couple side trails to get back down, venturing out toward Mts Clay and Washington, and traveling on the Appalachian Trail for a bit. This turned out to be a bad choice, as there really wasn't a trail to follow (despite cairns every 20'). It was all upturned shards of granite lightly covered by snow, hiding pitfalls and crevices. The connecting path to get me back down the mountain was completely unbroken, so half a mile took me close to an hour. Snow was past my knees in some places, and I fell more than once. I went at a snail's pace, testing each foot placement with my trekking poles. Thank goodness for synthetic pants. All the snow just whisked right off of them, and I remained warm and dry.

I also used my pants to great effect when scooting down the vertical sheets of rock. Like sledding, without the snow, sled, clear path or illusion of safety.But it was a perfectly clear day, very warm and clear. I couldn't have asked for better weather.

Next up: Mount Washington.

Hiking does not equal Mountaineering...

...And this is mountaineering. Quite a difference.

It's the tail end of fall here, and Mount Washington has a nice layer of snow on it. I've been hiking a lot (that's what you do when you have the White Mountains in your backyard), and I usually start out in fall, and end up in winter. At around 2,000 ft the snow starts to stick, and by 3,000, it's a good 3" deep, sometimes more, depending on which side of the mountain you're on.










I hiked the Imp Trail, which visits a glacial erratic on the side of Imp Mountain. The profile of the erratic looks like an imp, hence the name. Not as famous as the Old Man of the Mountains, now deceased, but still a profile. I guess there are plenty of those, in the Granite State.


A few thousand feet of elevation gain landed me among snow, and great views. I was across the notch from Mt. Washington, which was lost in clouds. The wind chill has been hovering around zero these past few days. I'm hoping to climb it sometime next week, if the weather holds.

Living the Lonely Life

Here I am in Gorham, NH, a small New England town that prides itself in how small it is. It's in an amazing location, perched on the outskirts of the White Mountains National Forest, within sight (on a clear day) of Mount Washington, the Northeast's highest peak. It's 10 minutes from Maine, 30 minutes from Vermont, not too far from Canada, and completely in the middle of nowhere.

Perfect.

I've successfully escaped summer, and have landed in the final throes of fall. I woke up this morning to a couple inches of snow (they quickly melted). The fall foliage is magnificent up here (I see why it's a popular vacation destination). It will probably be gone when the week is out. Already some mountains are looking bare. It's about to enter into that dismal time before ski season and after fall foliage, where it's cold, rainy and deserted. Not too bad.

I'm living in a trailer right now. Well, to be fair it's a mobile home. But I've lived in trailers before (a parked RV for my summers in Abingdon, VA on a horse farm). I have my own bedroom this time around, but share everything else. We'll see how long it lasts.

I'll hear before the week is out if I get the dog mushing job, and maybe they'll have suggestions of nearby places to stay. They still think I'm in Philadelphia, and I didn't want to let them know that I threw caution to the wind and moved up to New Hampshire, blindly hoping to get the job they weren't 100% sure existed. That doesn't seem to inspire much confidence from future employers... Especially when they were a bit nervous about letting me know that the job didn't actually exist yet.

So I've filed for unemployment (hey, free money!) and am searching the area for a job to get me through to November (or all winter?? What am I doing?!). Should be interesting!

I know absolutely no one in the area, and don't find that to be a problem.

Fall in New England

So I drove up to New Hampshire to interview at a dog sledding kennel. I again packed up everything into my car, switching to my winter gear, and hit the road. I was up late packing up the car, and got up early to hit the road. I had a 4pm meeting in New Hampshire, and woke up in Delaware.

I got on the road at around 7:30, and drove the whole day. New York was a mess, with my google maps directions breaking down a little. And I hit a lot of traffic. But I eventually got sorted out (thanks to the gps on my phone), and continued on. As I passed through Massachusetts, the ground started to rise and the leaves started to turn.

Eventually I was driving through the full spread of fall in New England. Despite mediocre weather (it was overcast, with intermittent showers), the views were spectacular. I didn't have my camera handy, and didn't really want to stop, so I took a few quick pictures with my cell phone.

So I got to the kennel, and spent a great weekend in New England, with perfect views across mountains, tons of dogs around (the kennel had close to 100), very friendly people, and a fun new sport to learn.

Now I'm in a newly rented room, waiting to hear whether the kennel got the contract or not, waiting to see if I got the job or not. Meanwhile, I'm looking for something to do. I'll hit up the local barns this week, see if they need a stable hand. Maybe other odd things. Nothing's ever boring.

A Retrospective: 10 of the more interesting places I've slept; part IV

Everyone sleeps, and usually the hardest part about traveling is finding a good place to do it. Housing is expensive, and comfort is important. This series of posts shares some of my solutions to finding a cozy place to spend the night:

-Night travel is very convenient for sleeping. You have to get somewhere else anyway, so you're paying for a ticket, so all that's left is to get comfy. I've never slept in the sleeping compartment of a night train (too expensive), but I have spent many nights on night trains, in uncomfortable chairs, among hundreds of peers, equally uncomfortable. I was in Granada, Spain, heading up to Barcelona. There was a night train that made the run every night, very practiced. It stopped at places in between, but ran like clockwork. I found a seat, tried to find a comfortable position, while mimicking the findings of my peers (legs on seat in front? Ick. Head on window? Ok, but with padding. Sit on your pack? Hmm, good enough). After an hour in the half-lit compartment with everyone radiating misery, I drifted off to sleep. I vaguely remember a couple of stops in the night, but mostly slept the whole time, being utterly exhausted. I woke up in Barcelona, heading the complete opposite way. Something with the route in the night had shuttled the train in two different directions. How did I know which car I was on? How did they know I wanted to go to Barcelona? Was I in fact in Barcelona? When everything turned out alright, I thought nothing more of it, just made a mental note to double check all night trains.
The best strategy, on regular trains, is to find the most seats that you can, in a row, and stretch out and claim them all. The bad news is that someone will probably want one of those seats as the train gets more crowded. I find that pretending to be asleep lets you not deal with the ill will of other tired passengers. I was in Porto, Portugal, taking a train down the coast to Lisbon (supposedly a great visual experience--too bad, it was dark and I was tired). I had stretched out across 3 seats (what a luxury! There were usually only 2 seats), to be jostled awake as a group of six guys in their twenties came on board and started spreading out. One of them really wanted the chair my legs were on, and pretending to be asleep didn't mollify him. Seeing as the guys had tripled the population of the train car, I thought it was reasonable to cede them some territory. I was a bit apprehensive about sharing my minuscule territory, but everyone settled down, I checked that my bag was secure, and we waited out the night. I slept, they slept, we weren't exactly more comradely for the experience, but we all got to Lisbon marginally better rested.

-Switching gears, I have slept in interesting places to avoid travel. Occasionally when too tired to make the commute home, I have slept in the theater where I was working. This was a college thing, as most professional theaters would frown upon this situation. I liked the sets with beds on them the best. They were comfortable. Other times, I would find a couch in the space, or haul in a prop mattress from props storage. The sleeping arrangements were always improvised, with extra fabric as bed linens and prop teddy bears as pillows, and always cold. But they got me through the night, gave me some rest, and got me to the theater before anyone else the next morning. Not recommended.

Gone hiking

I took my parents hiking this week, getting them out backpacking for the first time in three years. And their second time out, ever. It's odd to think that for all of us, our first experience with backpacking was three years ago, on the Kalalau Trail (see picture at top). Since then, I have covered many hundreds of miles, and they have refrained from setting foot, under weight, on the trail.

To be fair, they're a little bit older than I, and they're quite interested in hiking. Backpacking is just a little more intense. It's hiking on steroids. Hiking all day, for many more hours and miles than most people endure. Plus carrying weight, which makes hills and uneven terrain (of which you find plenty, in the wilderness, where one is generally backpacking) very difficult to maneuver. And nights are comfort-free and to be endured, rather than enjoyed. Very different from hiking. Or even camping.

The trail I took them to was called the Thunder Swamp Trail, a rather ominous name for a relatively tame trail. It was either rocks or swamps, with relatively flat terrain throughout (three days of hiking, and only 500' of vertical elevation gain, total). The pace was slow, since the trail was only about 25 miles long, and we had all week. I would have done the miles in a day, but then I wouldn't have been up there, 2 hours from Philadelphia. And it would have been a half-hearted two-day attempt, so I'm glad that I had a good reason to go.

The scenery was decent, with no staggering views (and no nasty climbs, to make up for the lack). This is the lake we camped by on our first night.







The trail was well-maintained, for the most part, with reliable blazes and cleared footing.









There was a lot of water (we realized they weren't kidding about the 'swamp' part of the name), and on occasion the trail was completely underwater.







We didn't see too much wildlife, which was fortunate, since my mom is scared of meeting a bear, and bears are quite common in the area.









The weather was great. It was cool and a little breezy, and overcast to keep the sun off of us, but with peeks of sunshine to brighten the day. The nights were not too bad, especially with all the right gear. My camera did fog up in the early morning, giving me an interesting view of the inside of my tent. The blurriness obscures how small of a space I had for sleeping and after-dark living.