Reading (For Dummies)

Globes and Maps

Over the weekend, I went on a trip to Tuckerman's Ravine at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. It was, in the words of my old man, the "classic road trip."

The day before the trip, an old old friend that I barely know emailed me asking if I wanted to go up into the 'Dacks with him over the weekend. I declined, saying that I had to go to Tuckerman's. He could come along if he wanted. I was planning to leave at 8am Friday after my wine & cheeser. Craig drove out from Rochester and actually got to my house at 7:50. I guess he didn't get the memo about SUOC time.

We left to pick up another friend, Dustin, and drive him home (somewhere near Rome). We got there, Dustin's mom made us all breakfast, and then we went four-wheeling in Dustin's 1973 Jeep CJ-5. We got stuck in the snow, and then the jeep ran out of gas. That was at noon. Craig and I looked at each other, and decided that we had to get going, as Tuckerman's was, according to Mapquest, a 7 hour drive still.

Mapquest lies.

We drove to Albany to try and bum some lunch off of my friend Rebecca, but she wasn't home. Ohwell, we thought, we do need another pair of gators, so we went to the local EMS. They were a little too urban to carry things like gators (seriously, they didn't have any), so we went to Albany Mountain Gear (local shop, very helpful). We were then on the road again. This was 4pm.

We started up the Northway, cut across Vermont and New Hampshire, and finally figured out where the trailhead was at *11pm*. Some canadians at the base made the ranger out to be a real prick, and told us all the lean-tos were full, so whatever we did we should plan to be awake early to avoid his wrath. We made it to the shelter area around 2am, and began looking for the SUOC banner. By 3:00am we decided to give up; we had wandered all over the place, including partway up to the bowl, in search of more lean-tos. We hiked up part of the Lion's head and slept on my rain poncho sometime around 3:30.

At 5, I woke up to a little bit of sunlight and rousted Craig. We broke camp quickly and quietly, covered our tracks off the trail, and headed back for the caretaker's cabin. I set up our stove on one of the picnic tables to make a little coffee and oatmeal. It was then that I realized the coffee was still in my truck at the bottom. I let out a small groan, and finished attaching the stove. After pumping it up, I opened the valve a bit, and fuel began gushing out.

So we breakfasted on Clif Bars.

Some other folks were waking up, and I inquired about the locations of other lean-tos. It turns out that we slept maybe 100 yards from where SUOC was. Also, the ranger wasn't a prick. He was sharing drinks, among other things, with members of the outing club the night before, and was keeping an eye out for us with a thermos of tea and location of our missing comrades.

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous. On an hour and a half of sleep, I hiked about in the bowl, up through the Right Gully. Getting down was a lot scarier: climbing parties were actually roping themselves together for mountaineering practice. That was the intelligent thing to do, though after a bit of timid walking, I suddenly realized that old Kerouac line, "You can't fall off the mountain." With a yelp, I ran down.

Erik (my bro) showed up late Saturday afternoon with extra beer in tow. So we spent the evening hanging out with the rangers, swapping stories, homebrew, whiskey. We went banzai sledding down the jeep road (there was still 4 or 5 feet of snow on the ground in the ravine). Life was good, swirling, happy.

Sally and gang left early Sunday. My brother and I tooled about in the bowl, and he decided he wants to sell his snowboard. I suppose injuries of the last few years, broken bones and torn sinew have reminded him of his own mortality. I never really had the suicidal sense that he used to to begin with, so I can't really say if it's a gain or a loss.

Drew gave us some better directions out of and across Vermont, along route 4. Unfortunately frost heaves and small towns all along this road kept the speed down to around 30mph. We had left Pinkham's Notch at around 4pm. By 8pm Sunday, we (my brother, Craig, and I) made a command decision to take Superslab (i-91) down to route 9, and cross vermont that way. As soon as we got on i-91, we hit a US Customs roadblock. I believe some combination of spit and curse words escaped my lips, as I envisioned the suspicion that three sunburned hippies from New York would invoke in customs officers. I didn't want to repack my bag. After wiping the phlegm off the inside of my windshield, we rolled to a stop beside the official. Our officer friend poked his head in my window. He scowled his face as he was hit with the stench of unbathed hippie, and he asked if we were US citizens. "Yes," I said. "Si, Senor," Craig said. The officer wasn't amused, but let us go. And that was that, we were on our way.

Craig and I got to Syracuse at 1am Monday. He had to drive to rochester after that. I'm still not sure if he's alive, he isn't returning my phone calls...