Thursday afternoon i reached the summit of Mt. Whiteface on a clear, bluebird day. It was -15 degrees in the wind, and the whole summit was bathed in it, whipping snowdrifts over ledges in swirls and streaks. The last quarter mile to the peak followed an exposed ridge line. It was brutal. The wind found any exposed skin and singed it. That diamond-cutter kind of cold that makes it feel like you're turning to stone. Once on top i was able to get out of the wind behind a rocky, south-facing ledge. The howling ceased, and there was only peace and quiet under a crystalline sky. The white, ice-covered stretch of Lake Placid lay below, the High Peaks appeared foggy blue beyond. It was my 23rd peak. The midway point. My next few days would be spent back home in Boston where my brother, in from Houston, was waiting for me to meet his new daughter. The Patriots were in the Superbowl. It would be a nice chance to get out of the cold for a few days, to reboot before pursuing the remaining 23. I was in the Happy Place. Sitting pretty. On top of the world. I put on my warm coat, my sunglasses, and leaned back against my pack. With the sun streaming down on my face, i crossed one snowshoed foot over the other, and before i knew it, fell contentedly asleep.
My weekend back in Boston was...a mixed bag. In the same way one might describe war as "kind of a bummer." Friday night my father and i had a blowout fight. The kind that can end a relationship. Saturday morning my girlfriend of seven years ended ours. Sunday evening in my parents' living room, surrounded by feverish toddlers who licked and sneezed on the cheese and salami before returning it to the party platter, i watched the Patriots win the Superbowl. Monday a snowstorm shutdown what i was trying to make of a hasty departure. Tuesday night at 9 i finally returned to Saranac Lake to continue my quest.
Sick.
I looked at the forecast for the week. Negative temperatures and potential snow across the board. Except Wednesday. It would be cloudy, but at least a couple degrees above zero. I felt physically ill and spiritually defunct. I had as much desire to plod up a gray and freezing peak the next day as i had craving for five to ten spirited kicks to the face. I seriously considered calling it. Taking my next two weeks here to just lay around. Read comic books. Go ice skating on the old speed track in Placid. Ride the toboggan slide out onto the lake. See "American Sniper" again. Drink New York beer.
Lots of it.
But misery loves company. Some bodily punishment would be good company. I decided to hike.
I hit the trail at 7:30, an hour later than i'd intended. Too late for 4 peaks and 20 miles. I went for it anyway. I knew it would hurt, banged up as i was from the weekend. I wanted it to. The feeling of shell-shock I'd been carrying since Saturday had been replaced overnight by teeth-grinding fits of fury, dangerous mental depictions, and despair. I needed something physically afflictive to match my emotion. I wanted to hike so hard and far that every sinew would snap, every bone burn and break. I wanted to stand at the bottom of a canyon and call an avalanche down.
I considered these scenarios as i tromped down the Lake Rd veering south toward Dial. Fresh snow from Monday's storm had dropped eight inches across the trail, the wind had added drifts of random chaos. I headed up. Mindlessly up. Sleepwalking basically. Where the trail went i couldn't tell and didn't care. I had a notion to keep walking. Straight on till morning, maybe longer. Get ten peaks. Or none. Climb the steep parts everyone warns about. Panther Gorge to Haystack. The Saddleback cliffs. The mercury was forecast to fall fast once the sun went down. I could care less. I had food. A stove. An emergency bivvy. Water? I'd pull it from a stream. And if giardia came with it, so be it. I wanted my guts twisted into knots.
I began to slow. I adopted a pace that would carry me across 25 hours instead of ten. I strapped myself psychologically onto the torture rack and settled in. I was desolate. A ghost town. The only human being on earth.
A snap from behind spun my head, and there was suddenly a person less than 15 feet behind me, bearing down.
"WHOA!! What the f--" Man or woman, demon or devil, i couldn't tell. "Holy... you scared the s@*t out of me!"
She beamed a smile back. "Oh! i'm really sorry. I should thank you! You broke the trail this far for me! I saw your name in the register, but I didn't expect to catch you. This is great! I'd Love a partner for this hike!"
She stopped in front of me. She was 55, had a young face, shiny eyes with lines at the corners that grinned on their own. Her short, gray, curly hair poked just out from under her red beanie. To give an overall impression: she glowed.
But i was resolute. What the hell, lady? i thought. Can't you see the depths of the downward spiral i'm in? I'm off to hurt myself because i need it! My soul is black as a wormhole right now and i'm out to cross the void! No, i don't want a hiking partner today! On your way with you. Get the hell...out...of.......
An impregnable grin. She stepped past me. "I'll give you a rest and break trail awhile." Off she went like a track meet.
What could i do? She was so matter-of-fact about it. She made it so obvious that it was not going to happen, but was happening! My mind scratched sideways like a needle off a record. I couldn't conjure any workable resistance. She was so swift, i wasn't even sure she was real. A trail angel sent to rescue me?
I followed.
She wore yoga pants. Yoga pants? Must be a base layer of some kind, but with no waterproof shell over them?! On top she wore a gray t-shirt (cotton?!) with arm warmers. She had mittens, but she held them in her bare hands, like she was too hot to wear them. In a few hundred yards behind her it was easy to see why. She was flying! Her snowshoes kicked and cut, slashed and tossed, like two turquoise machetes through an arctic Amazon. It was amazing! Where did this woman come from? What was her pedigree? Her backpack was more patches than pack. She had badges for whole mountain ranges i'd never even heard of! She was clearly a "gridder," (someone who's done all 46 peaks at least a dozen times) the first i'd run into, or more to the point, that almost ran over me.
"What's your name?"
"Erik. On the forum i'm the Solman. You?"
"Inge. On the forum i'm Inge."
She had a high and enthusiastic laugh, both cackle and giggle. "I thought i wouldn't catch you until the top of Colvin!" We weren't yet to the top of Bear Den; she'd caught me about eight miles sooner than she expected. "My husband hiked the Lake Rd with me and when we saw the size of your strides my husband said, that guy's hauling! And i thought either you were really tall or going really fast!" It appears i'm exceptionally tall.
She didn't slow or break stride, no matter what the topography threw at her. She carried no poles, but instead picked out useful branches and roots to lift herself up. The useless ones that hung out over the trail she broke off to save the trail crews time in the spring. She tip-toed up steep sections and crab-walked up even steeper ones smooth as if she were gliding downhill on skis. She was inertia incarnate; the Unstoppable Force. We were over the top of Dial with cartoonish speed, and she was down the other side picking up steam. Ascending again out of the col it dawned on me that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of keeping up with her. I kept asking her questions i thought would spark long answers to try to knock some of the wind out of her. No chance. She'd talk for five minutes, cap it with a melodic chuckle, and truck on.
On the two mile stretch between Dial and Nippletop she was Moses, parting the White Sea in front of her, the tails of her snowshoes flashing in the froth. The blood surging through my body kicked my brain into hyper-drive, realigning my mind like a robotic Rubik's Cube. Never had i been in the presence of someone so good at something, so determined, so effortless. So G%damned fast!! She was so impressive that despite the tempo, despite the struggle, despite what became very real agony to keep up, i remained in stride. She'd earned a disciple. I'd follow her to the end of the earth.
My upper abdomen began to burn. The Scotty in the control room of my lungs cried out we don't have the power! My legs - dear God, my legs - were a story sad enough to break the hardest of hearts. When i finally conceded and told her i was going to stop for water she relented, as if it had never occurred to her to do that. "That's a good idea," she said. "Maybe i'll have some, too."
Then, for reasons i can't explain, i did maybe the stupidest thing i've ever done. I told her i'd give her a rest, take the lead, and break the trail up to the next summit. For the next half-mile i broke out the deepest snow we would see all day. Around the summit of Nippletop it laid in drifts thigh-high. I plowed through, flashing back to freshman basketball tryouts when they ran us till we puked to weed out the ballers from the bawlers. When JFK reached the island that he dragged his PT-109 shipmates to by his teeth, he could not have been more pleased than i was reaching that summit.
If there are bluebird days, this was a gray jay day; fog in our faces and rocks beneath our feet. We stood atop the blustery peak just long enough for the wind to freeze my soaked base layer, and Inge was off like a shot again, splitting snow like uncoupling a zipper. I tried to keep up. I ran, i jumped, i butt-slid, she was too far ahead. When i completely lost balance and forward rolled over my pack i gave up. She was gone.
I took my time getting down to Elk Pass. Fell back into my heartsore slog. I'd be lying if i didn't say half of me was relieved. She might have killed me otherwise. I had no idea what truly breaking trail was like. It finally, thoroughly dawned on me why getting your Winter 46 is a kind of a big deal. I'm sure i would have made Dial on my own. And i was probably just miserable enough to have beaten myself all the way to Nippletop, too. But seeing the trail beyond the summit still unbroken, i would've turned around the way i'd come, too dejected to even abuse myself to the degree i'd set out to.
At the Colvin junction Inge was waiting. The trail to Colvin and Blake had been broken by someone ahead of us. We'd seen in the register someone was headed that way, but after the conditions we'd found, we fully assumed they'd turned around. It was encouraging, but not enough.
"Inge, I'm sorry, I--"
"Throwing in the towel?"
Just the way she said it fired up the little i had left in me. "Hell no! I'm gonna get these peaks! Mostly because there's no way in hell i'm coming all the way out here again to get them! And besides that, i came out here wanting to punish myself, and you're doing far worse to me than i could've dreamed of doing. This is a lesson. I accept. Let's go."
She told me to unload my ridiculous pack and leave everything but my water and coat behind. Regardless of whether her motivation for it was altruistic or practical, putting the pack back on was like being born again. Colvin was in the bag within the hour. We didn't even feign interest in the summit. We just dropped our packs and headed for Blake. It was a mission now. We were bagging for the numbers alone. It was callous, automated; we were defying every appealing reason people venture into the woods. I called on every mental game and self-deception i could conjure to get to the last summit. People you love are in trouble at the top of that mountain. There's a bayonet at your back and if you stop they'll drive it through. It was all i could do. Even the joy of descending Colvin was completely sapped by the knowledge that every foot we dropped would have to be recouped on the return. Even as close as a hundred feet from the Blake summit i was wishing for a teleporter to appear to take me back to my bed. A mere second's relief was had at the top of Blake. The kind Sisyphus would feel if he were told he didn't have to push the boulder anymore; he'd now be pushing a tank.
I can't say whether or not it was intentional - Inge said she'd been to guide school, and she damn well knew how to motivate. But the fact that we reached the top of Blake after 4:00 and our headlamps were back in our packs atop Colvin gave us exactly the kind of motivation i couldn't call up any longer on my own. Drive the damn bayonet through, i thought. End this.
Behind Inge's running Tubbs i made it out. Hit the Lake Rd at the very last light. Back at the gate by 7. There were headlights.
"I hope those are attached to a Mini Cooper," she said. They were. Inge and her husband invited me back to their house for leftover lasagna.
Ambrosia itself never tasted so good.
My weekend back in Boston was...a mixed bag. In the same way one might describe war as "kind of a bummer." Friday night my father and i had a blowout fight. The kind that can end a relationship. Saturday morning my girlfriend of seven years ended ours. Sunday evening in my parents' living room, surrounded by feverish toddlers who licked and sneezed on the cheese and salami before returning it to the party platter, i watched the Patriots win the Superbowl. Monday a snowstorm shutdown what i was trying to make of a hasty departure. Tuesday night at 9 i finally returned to Saranac Lake to continue my quest.
Sick.
I looked at the forecast for the week. Negative temperatures and potential snow across the board. Except Wednesday. It would be cloudy, but at least a couple degrees above zero. I felt physically ill and spiritually defunct. I had as much desire to plod up a gray and freezing peak the next day as i had craving for five to ten spirited kicks to the face. I seriously considered calling it. Taking my next two weeks here to just lay around. Read comic books. Go ice skating on the old speed track in Placid. Ride the toboggan slide out onto the lake. See "American Sniper" again. Drink New York beer.
Lots of it.
But misery loves company. Some bodily punishment would be good company. I decided to hike.
I hit the trail at 7:30, an hour later than i'd intended. Too late for 4 peaks and 20 miles. I went for it anyway. I knew it would hurt, banged up as i was from the weekend. I wanted it to. The feeling of shell-shock I'd been carrying since Saturday had been replaced overnight by teeth-grinding fits of fury, dangerous mental depictions, and despair. I needed something physically afflictive to match my emotion. I wanted to hike so hard and far that every sinew would snap, every bone burn and break. I wanted to stand at the bottom of a canyon and call an avalanche down.
I considered these scenarios as i tromped down the Lake Rd veering south toward Dial. Fresh snow from Monday's storm had dropped eight inches across the trail, the wind had added drifts of random chaos. I headed up. Mindlessly up. Sleepwalking basically. Where the trail went i couldn't tell and didn't care. I had a notion to keep walking. Straight on till morning, maybe longer. Get ten peaks. Or none. Climb the steep parts everyone warns about. Panther Gorge to Haystack. The Saddleback cliffs. The mercury was forecast to fall fast once the sun went down. I could care less. I had food. A stove. An emergency bivvy. Water? I'd pull it from a stream. And if giardia came with it, so be it. I wanted my guts twisted into knots.
I began to slow. I adopted a pace that would carry me across 25 hours instead of ten. I strapped myself psychologically onto the torture rack and settled in. I was desolate. A ghost town. The only human being on earth.
A snap from behind spun my head, and there was suddenly a person less than 15 feet behind me, bearing down.
"WHOA!! What the f--" Man or woman, demon or devil, i couldn't tell. "Holy... you scared the s@*t out of me!"
She beamed a smile back. "Oh! i'm really sorry. I should thank you! You broke the trail this far for me! I saw your name in the register, but I didn't expect to catch you. This is great! I'd Love a partner for this hike!"
She stopped in front of me. She was 55, had a young face, shiny eyes with lines at the corners that grinned on their own. Her short, gray, curly hair poked just out from under her red beanie. To give an overall impression: she glowed.
But i was resolute. What the hell, lady? i thought. Can't you see the depths of the downward spiral i'm in? I'm off to hurt myself because i need it! My soul is black as a wormhole right now and i'm out to cross the void! No, i don't want a hiking partner today! On your way with you. Get the hell...out...of.......
An impregnable grin. She stepped past me. "I'll give you a rest and break trail awhile." Off she went like a track meet.
What could i do? She was so matter-of-fact about it. She made it so obvious that it was not going to happen, but was happening! My mind scratched sideways like a needle off a record. I couldn't conjure any workable resistance. She was so swift, i wasn't even sure she was real. A trail angel sent to rescue me?
I followed.
She wore yoga pants. Yoga pants? Must be a base layer of some kind, but with no waterproof shell over them?! On top she wore a gray t-shirt (cotton?!) with arm warmers. She had mittens, but she held them in her bare hands, like she was too hot to wear them. In a few hundred yards behind her it was easy to see why. She was flying! Her snowshoes kicked and cut, slashed and tossed, like two turquoise machetes through an arctic Amazon. It was amazing! Where did this woman come from? What was her pedigree? Her backpack was more patches than pack. She had badges for whole mountain ranges i'd never even heard of! She was clearly a "gridder," (someone who's done all 46 peaks at least a dozen times) the first i'd run into, or more to the point, that almost ran over me.
"What's your name?"
"Erik. On the forum i'm the Solman. You?"
"Inge. On the forum i'm Inge."
She had a high and enthusiastic laugh, both cackle and giggle. "I thought i wouldn't catch you until the top of Colvin!" We weren't yet to the top of Bear Den; she'd caught me about eight miles sooner than she expected. "My husband hiked the Lake Rd with me and when we saw the size of your strides my husband said, that guy's hauling! And i thought either you were really tall or going really fast!" It appears i'm exceptionally tall.
She didn't slow or break stride, no matter what the topography threw at her. She carried no poles, but instead picked out useful branches and roots to lift herself up. The useless ones that hung out over the trail she broke off to save the trail crews time in the spring. She tip-toed up steep sections and crab-walked up even steeper ones smooth as if she were gliding downhill on skis. She was inertia incarnate; the Unstoppable Force. We were over the top of Dial with cartoonish speed, and she was down the other side picking up steam. Ascending again out of the col it dawned on me that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of keeping up with her. I kept asking her questions i thought would spark long answers to try to knock some of the wind out of her. No chance. She'd talk for five minutes, cap it with a melodic chuckle, and truck on.
On the two mile stretch between Dial and Nippletop she was Moses, parting the White Sea in front of her, the tails of her snowshoes flashing in the froth. The blood surging through my body kicked my brain into hyper-drive, realigning my mind like a robotic Rubik's Cube. Never had i been in the presence of someone so good at something, so determined, so effortless. So G%damned fast!! She was so impressive that despite the tempo, despite the struggle, despite what became very real agony to keep up, i remained in stride. She'd earned a disciple. I'd follow her to the end of the earth.
My upper abdomen began to burn. The Scotty in the control room of my lungs cried out we don't have the power! My legs - dear God, my legs - were a story sad enough to break the hardest of hearts. When i finally conceded and told her i was going to stop for water she relented, as if it had never occurred to her to do that. "That's a good idea," she said. "Maybe i'll have some, too."
Then, for reasons i can't explain, i did maybe the stupidest thing i've ever done. I told her i'd give her a rest, take the lead, and break the trail up to the next summit. For the next half-mile i broke out the deepest snow we would see all day. Around the summit of Nippletop it laid in drifts thigh-high. I plowed through, flashing back to freshman basketball tryouts when they ran us till we puked to weed out the ballers from the bawlers. When JFK reached the island that he dragged his PT-109 shipmates to by his teeth, he could not have been more pleased than i was reaching that summit.
If there are bluebird days, this was a gray jay day; fog in our faces and rocks beneath our feet. We stood atop the blustery peak just long enough for the wind to freeze my soaked base layer, and Inge was off like a shot again, splitting snow like uncoupling a zipper. I tried to keep up. I ran, i jumped, i butt-slid, she was too far ahead. When i completely lost balance and forward rolled over my pack i gave up. She was gone.
I took my time getting down to Elk Pass. Fell back into my heartsore slog. I'd be lying if i didn't say half of me was relieved. She might have killed me otherwise. I had no idea what truly breaking trail was like. It finally, thoroughly dawned on me why getting your Winter 46 is a kind of a big deal. I'm sure i would have made Dial on my own. And i was probably just miserable enough to have beaten myself all the way to Nippletop, too. But seeing the trail beyond the summit still unbroken, i would've turned around the way i'd come, too dejected to even abuse myself to the degree i'd set out to.
At the Colvin junction Inge was waiting. The trail to Colvin and Blake had been broken by someone ahead of us. We'd seen in the register someone was headed that way, but after the conditions we'd found, we fully assumed they'd turned around. It was encouraging, but not enough.
"Inge, I'm sorry, I--"
"Throwing in the towel?"
Just the way she said it fired up the little i had left in me. "Hell no! I'm gonna get these peaks! Mostly because there's no way in hell i'm coming all the way out here again to get them! And besides that, i came out here wanting to punish myself, and you're doing far worse to me than i could've dreamed of doing. This is a lesson. I accept. Let's go."
She told me to unload my ridiculous pack and leave everything but my water and coat behind. Regardless of whether her motivation for it was altruistic or practical, putting the pack back on was like being born again. Colvin was in the bag within the hour. We didn't even feign interest in the summit. We just dropped our packs and headed for Blake. It was a mission now. We were bagging for the numbers alone. It was callous, automated; we were defying every appealing reason people venture into the woods. I called on every mental game and self-deception i could conjure to get to the last summit. People you love are in trouble at the top of that mountain. There's a bayonet at your back and if you stop they'll drive it through. It was all i could do. Even the joy of descending Colvin was completely sapped by the knowledge that every foot we dropped would have to be recouped on the return. Even as close as a hundred feet from the Blake summit i was wishing for a teleporter to appear to take me back to my bed. A mere second's relief was had at the top of Blake. The kind Sisyphus would feel if he were told he didn't have to push the boulder anymore; he'd now be pushing a tank.
I can't say whether or not it was intentional - Inge said she'd been to guide school, and she damn well knew how to motivate. But the fact that we reached the top of Blake after 4:00 and our headlamps were back in our packs atop Colvin gave us exactly the kind of motivation i couldn't call up any longer on my own. Drive the damn bayonet through, i thought. End this.
Behind Inge's running Tubbs i made it out. Hit the Lake Rd at the very last light. Back at the gate by 7. There were headlights.
"I hope those are attached to a Mini Cooper," she said. They were. Inge and her husband invited me back to their house for leftover lasagna.
Ambrosia itself never tasted so good.
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