Notes From the North Country

This summer, my wife and I bought our first house.  It was a great moment for us.  But really, it was an accident.  

I don’t mean that it was an accident in the sense that we’d gone down to Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up some new bath towels and came home with a three bedroom cape and some land.  I mean that we hadn’t planned to buy our first house this summer.

I most certainly had planned to ask my wife to marry me back in December, and we knew we wanted to get married within the year.  We didn’t want to be one of those couples who drag out their engagement for four or five years while haggling over every detail of the wedding, such as what color the groomsmen’s boxer shorts should be (light blue, obviously — why do couples fight over this stuff?) only to, like a glider with the wind suddenly gone, crash to earth and divorce once we no longer had wedding haggling to support us.  We’d marry in late June, hold the reception at our rental home, honeymoon for two weeks, then spend the rest of the summer — for me — trying to get used to saying “my wife” instead of “my fiancee” (or “my girlfriend,” which I still hadn’t broken myself of).  Buying our first house — something we’d taken a number of serious steps toward doing, such as discussing it, would have to wait.

It’s not like we didn’t want to buy a house.  It’s just that we didn’t want to buy a house in a town whose daylight features, even after almost three years, were basically unfamiliar to us.  Since we both worked more than an hour from home — in opposite directions — we’d hoped to wait out closer job offers before ultimately splitting a more reasonable difference and purchasing our first home wherever that might be.  Buying a house was about much more than doing yardwork or roof repair — it was about making the kind of adult compromise that you have to live with.  Sort of like voting in the current election.  And just like voting for Jill Stein, renting seemed like a way that we could shirk that responsibility, while not feeling too guilty.  We just weren’t ready, we told ourselves.

But sometimes what it takes to finally force a decision is good, old-fashioned terror — or at least a deadline.  I’m not talking about serious duress — like when you’re flying a plane with 155 people on board and suddenly both engines blow out and you’ve got about twelve seconds to either set it down in the Hudson and hope everything stays buoyant, or try to make it back to LaGuardia and risk turning Teaneck into a smoking crater if you come up short.  I’m not talking about facing duress like Tom Hanks in that new movie “Sully.”  Which by the way was my first visit to the movies since two years ago when — speaking of duress — I saw that sappy John Green film in the hopes of finding out what my students were into and realized I was the only person in the theater who a) did not have a crush on the main actor, b) could legally drive, and c) was not weeping uncontrollably by the end of the opening credits.  Why did I go see that?  Having to buy a house on short notice was nothing like that.

What it was like was unexpected.  One minute I was busying myself with pre-wedding planning (that’s a lie — my wife did the heavy lifting; I was sitting around on the couch trying to remember the lyrics to “Regulators”).  The next minute I was staring open-mouthed at an email from my realtor saying that, basically, due to a slight breakdown in communication, nope, we could not renew our lease.  He wanted us out of the house on June 1st, just a few weeks before our wedding.  What happened was that when I’d suggested to him, back in January in a fit of optimism, that we might be interested in looking at houses to buy, I’d meant “not really, but humor me and throw me a few leads.” He’d read, “Go ahead, sell our rental and buy yourself that yacht.”

After a few rounds of begging and pleading and what I call “playing the wedding card,” our realtor agreed to let us stay through mid-summer — enough time to hold the wedding at home, but not much more than that.  That’s when we realized: we didn’t want to lug our belongings into another rental, only to be shewed out again in twelve months.  It was time to buy our first home.

While it technically wasn’t the biggest, most life-altering decision a human being has ever faced (that would be deciding what to wear every morning during middle school), it was still daunting.  We didn’t want to become one of those hapless couples who blunder into buying a house they can’t afford and end up evicted and living in a Camaro behind the Try ‘N’ Save.  We didn’t want our sheepish faces turning up on commercials for shady real estate lawyers who “helped us get back some of what we lost, so stupidly.” We wanted to be smart.

Besides, one major life milestone per summer was enough.  Most years, I hadn’t had any.  My biggest achievement last summer was biking from my house to Cannon ski area and back with only one stop for ice cream.  This summer was going to be big enough already without a For Sale sign.

And the commitment of buying!  I wasn’t ready.  One minute we’d be carefree renters — phoning up our landlord to come over and hose off a squashed bug on our deck; the next minute we’d be grizzled home owners, like Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino,” shaking our bony fists at the neighborhood kids: “Get off my lawn!” and trying to save money by rewiring our own electrical outlets.  Or worse: we’d start making everyone take their shoes off.  We could NOT become those people.

But life — and surprise emails from your realtor — have a way of forcing your hand.  And if there’s one thing I learned in more than a decade as a whitewater kayaker, it’s that when things get rough, you just have to go with the flow.  If there’s another thing I learned as a kayaker, it’s that if nobody will ride in your car, it’s not because they don’t like you, but because your car smells like the Potomac River.  So go with the flow we did.  But we made sure to keep our wet gear in the trunk.

It took us a few weeks to start going with the flow.  During Week One I did everything I could to walk upstream.  But soon it was Time to Move Forward: find a new house, or start scouting bank ATMs with soft carpeting.  We had to move quickly.  Suddenly there was no time to waste with the airy wish-list items for a first home that we’d idly tossed back and forth during car trips (hot tub and sauna, retractable roof like the old Texas Stadium, drawbridge and moat with alligators).  Very quickly we had to clarify exactly what we could live without (the moat, but not the alligators).

So we got practical.  Having grown up in a house that predated the U.S. Constitution, and strongly advised by my parents *not* to buy a fixer-upper unless I was entirely clear-eyed about the process, or entirely insane, I knew better than to take on some latter-day Tara with the idea of restoring it to past glory.  My wife and I — both educators by day, inclined to see the latent potential in all young people — became cold-eyed realists around houses.  Our realtor would chirp on about the beauty of some new home we were visiting.  “Sure, sure,” we’d say dismissively, “lovely trim and all that.  Let’s talk about the septic system.” The sight of some newly-repurposed building housing a new charity to feed homeless war orphans merited no more than a head shake from us: “That roof’s got two years.  Tops.” Or some beautiful, rolling pasture for sale: “Twelve acres in Bethlehem?  Good luck with those property taxes.” At one point I became so fixated on the details of our negotiation that I found myself wondering, “Now what would Donald Trump do here?” That was when I knew: if we didn’t work this out soon, forget buying a house — I might actually live out my days in a padded cell.

But I’m not committed.  Nor am I typing this from a cot at the St. Johnsbury YMCA.  We found a house.  Not only that, we found a beautiful house in far better shape and for less money than we imagined.  Would the process have gone better if we’d had the five or six months to prepare, as we’d planned?  I can’t imagine that it would.

There’s one last story I want to tell.  Right as we were moving in — the moving van was still in the driveway — a door on the second floor of the garage that we’d opened to pass items straight into storage heaved and buckled and then ripped right out of the wall.  We hadn’t unloaded our bed yet and I already had my first home repair project.  I looked at the broken mess — the ancient hinges, the rotting wood — and asked myself: Am I really ready for this?  Then I went into the garage and opened up the tools my father had given me back when I was still renting, when I never thought I’d need them.  I opened them up, took out the old hammer, and went to work.  After a few trips to the hardware store, a few trips up and down my new step ladder, and an hour in the sun cursing under my breath as I worked — and I had the door reattached.  It was different than being a renter: this time I was somehow working toward our future.  Until then I hadn’t been sure I was ready for home ownership.  Turns out I was — and all it took was an accidental home purchase.

“Is the summit on top?”

“How come I can still breathe this high up?”

“This is my first time up Mt. Washington. What am I supposed to do now?”

 

We teachers tell students, “There are no silly questions.” But rangers on top of New England’s highest peak might begin to wonder.

Four years ago, Mike Pelchat, manager of Mt. Washington State Park, posted a list of actual questions asked by tourists at the summit information desk of Mt. Washington.  The list is absolutely phenomenal.

“Are those clouds on a time schedule?”

“How often do you fire the fog horn?”

“Does the altitude make kids crazy?”

Continue reading “Hilarious Stupidity on Mt. Washington”

The Voice

You know how sometimes you can hear people on the summit before you actually get there, so you know that you’re close?  This was like that — except much worse.  We heard the guy from way up above:

 

“Ridge of the Caps is THE route up Jefferson!  Trust me.”

 

“Oh my god, there are SO many idiots in the Whites these days!”

 

“I’ve been hiking all my life, actually . . .”

 

It was the loud bro-speak that reminded me of the obnoxious preppy who lived on my hall freshman year of college.  Except instead of pontificating about how to score with women or pass Poly Sci without trying, this guy was the self-appointed blowhard of New Hampshire hiking.

 

“ . . . but it wasn’t until I started my first 48 that I got serious.”

 

To me, the summit of a mountain has always felt holy, or at least a place that you want to enjoy in peace.  And on a summit like Mt. Jefferson in the White Mountains of New Hampshire — about as wide at the top as the roof of an SUV — it’s basic trail etiquette — not to mention basic politeness — not to noise pollute.

 

“Yeah, I’m working on my 48 for the third time.  No big deal, you know?”

 

Working on my 48.  When I first moved to New Hampshire two years ago, I started hearing that phrase almost every time I talked to other hikers.  While the singular Vermont hiking accomplishment is arguably the completion of the Long Trail, in New Hampshire it’s completion of the state’s 48 four thousand foot peaks.  When I was a kayak racer, old-timers — who’d been in the sport before its Olympic inclusion — used to joke that any teenager in a kayak nowadays was no longer a “kayak bum,” but a “future Olympian.” In New Hampshire, you’re never just hiking, you’re working on your 48.  But there are problems with this.

 

The List

Now, its loudmouthed practitioners aside, I have nothing against the New Hampshire 48 list.  After all, lists are fun.  They’re motivating.  Why?  Because they’re goals.  I keep lots of lists: books I’d love to teach in my high school classes (The Prince, How to Win Friends and Influence People), foods I’d like to cook (bacon wrapped scallops), basic tasks most adults can do that I’d love to be able to do without adult supervision (cook), and of course mountains I’d like to hike (Khatadin, the Matterhorn [if I’m ever given a terminal diagnosis]).  I love lists.

 

And I love the New Hampshire 48.  I’m working on it myself.  Why else would I ever slog out to Owl’s Head, except to get away from my creditors?  Just a few days ago, two days after our wedding, my wife and I finished cleaning the house, laced up our boots, and took our second whack at Mt. Isolation, a barren bump on the ridge barely worthy of being called a “summit,” seven hours of suffering and spectacular views that’d we’d have never done if it weren’t on The List.  The List is a good thing — provided that you go about it in the right spirit.  

 

For some that truly means “bagging” the peaks.  At its worst that can mean rushing, getting in and out quickly just to check off items on your list.  But it doesn’t have to.  These people — like our obnoxious friend on top of Jefferson (who was finally revealed to be a rather smallish and pasty man drowning in his own cargo shorts) — hike 4,000 footers exclusively.  Each weekend they simply head to the next mountain on their 48 list, with all the straighforwardness of a child following the rules.  Are there those so literal that they hike through the list in the height order in which it’s printed?  I’m sure there are.

 

There’s nothing wrong with this.  Sometimes what you need in life to straighten yourself out is a fixed pursuit.  It may be that racing up and down Interstate 93 every weekend in order to race up and down the tallest peaks of New Hampshire with tunnel vision is just what you need to ride out a rough stretch.  Anything less than laser focus is an invitation to depression to waft back in.  It’s best to keep moving, eyes on the next goal, the next summit.  Having a list is having a plan, and sometimes that’s what keeps you going.  It’s an extension of what’s always been great about hiking in the first place — the escape to nature, the purifying simplicity of putting one foot in front of the other, the simple endurance of carrying on that hiking teaches you.  Putting one summit in front of the other is a natural outgrowth only enhances the effect.  Forty-eight is a good number too: not so large that it’s unattainable, but large enough to be therapeutic: even if you’re ripping through mountains because your wife cheated and you can’t talk to your teenage daughter, it’s still going to take a good chunk of ruminative time to finish hiking those mountains.  Which after all is just what you need in the first place.

 

#FearlessLiving

Some people don’t even need time, they just need a goal.  You see evidence of this online.  Sometimes in the summer you’ll see a Facebook post on the hiking forums by a woman who has decided to turn her life around — not just by taking up hiking, but by hiking the New Hampshire 48.  She and her best friend / Zumba partner (or fully supportive / medicated boyfriend) have struggled up Mt. Tecumseh (“#Fearlessliving, #Nevergiveup!!”) They always post the obligatory selfie from the top, looking absolutely demolished.  In the photo they are holding up their fingers in a #1 sign, along with a handmade sign that reads “#1 Tecumseh.” This sign is supposed to show that they have climbed peak #1 out of 48.  I used to only see these signs in photos when they said “#48” — as a way that hikers used to document finishing the list, typically on Mount Carrigain.  But last summer I started seeing them all the time, almost like a New Hampshire hiking meme.  I’m guessing that most of these quests die out before they attain double digits, but if it gets them out enjoying the White Mountains for even a few afternoons, and if they don’t need a helicopter rescue, who’s to complain?

 

Savoring the Mountains

So you can race through the list, you can use the list as a goal to settle your life (even if you don’t finish), or you can take a third approach — the one I like to take.  It’s quite simple: you can take your time.  Instead of bagging the peaks, I try to savor them.

 

What does that mean?  It means that from time to time I dip back into the list and hike another 4,000 foot peak, but I don’t hike 4,000 footers exclusively.  It means that one day I hike Jefferson, but the next day I hike Welch and Dickey.  Sometimes I hike North Kinsman twice before I do a new peak.  I don’t dive straight for the plumb 4,000 footers, I surround them by hiking the foothills first.  Sure, I’m lucky.  I live within an hour of almost all the trailheads.  And I’m not knocking people who race through the 48.  I just want to savor the journey.  Because unlike our friend on the top of Mount Jefferson, I have no intention of doing the list three times in a row.  I want to make the first time last.  

 

Here are a few of my own hiking mantras for eliciting maximum enjoyment from the pursuit.

 

Hike the Interesting, Smaller Mountains

Just because a mountain is tall does not mean it’s more interesting.  Some of New Hampshire’s 4,000 footers are flat-out boring hikes, such as the mind-numbingly ordinary Mt. Hale.   Others, like the notorious Owl’s Head, a nine mile slog to a viewless summit, are trips no reasonable person would do if they weren’t on the coveted list of 48.

 

On the other hand, New Hampshire is covered with far more interesting, lower summits.  Mt. Chocoura, the Baldfaces, and the Moats are all shorter than 4,000 feet, but each have rocky, open summits with spectacular, 360 degree views.  Why pass up a chance to hike these great mountains just to do taller, less memorable ones?

The Baldfaces in New Hampshire (Peakery.com)

 

Hike Small, Then Hike Big

I like building up to things.  Don’t go straight for Mt. Washington.  Hike the smaller Presidentials first.  Don’t go straight for Franconia Ridge.  Spend some time on Liberty and Cannon and gaze upward and imagine what the taller peaks will be like.  I’m not talking about building your fitness level.  I’m talking about savoring the experience.  I had done the “small” hike of Bald Peak in Easton, New Hampshire four or five times, each time looking up at the massive North Kinsman above before I finally made my first hike all the way to the ridge.  That made it all the more sweet when I finally got there.  You don’t have to wait as long as I did.  But some waiting really does increase the anticipation.

 

Avoid “One and Done”

I think it’s really, really motivating to have a hiking goal, but be careful of the “one and done” mindset.  This is when you tell yourself that because you’ve hiked a mountain once, you’re done with it forever.  This mindset robs you of a certain fullness.  I have a feeling there are people like this: once they’re done with the New Hampshire 48, they don’t see a point to hiking anymore.  It turns mountains into boxes to check.  You miss the beauty of hiking a familiar peak in an unfamiliar season — when it’s covered in snow, or when the colors are bright red and orange.  I know that the time is short and new mountains are fun, but beware the “one and done” mentality.

 

Be Careful of Starting on the 4,000 Footers

If you haven’t done much hiking, the 4,000 footers aren’t always the best place to start.  You’re more likely to enjoy hiking if you start small.  If you start big — and even some of the easier 4,000 footers, like Tecumseh and Osceola, are “big” — you’re more likely to become tired and frustrated and turn yourself or your companions off to hiking.  Think of it like anything: take your time and build your skills and conditioning.  Stop and enjoy the view along the way.  Once you’re sure that you enjoy hiking, then commit yourself to hiking the 4,000 footers — and you’ll probably find that you’re experienced enough to really enjoy them.

 

Slow Down and See More

I think the New Hampshire 48 is a great list and a great goal for hikers.  Speaking for myself though, I think I’d feel a little sad if I’d hiked through all of New Hampshire’s highest peaks in some speed-record time.  I’d have nothing to look forward to.  It’s better to leave yourself some mystery, to enter into a longer, slower relationship with the mountains, rather than to rush through them.  You see more, paradoxically, if you go slow.

The One Flower I’ll Drive to See

I never thought I would be one to appreciate flowers.

There was a time — not long ago — when I didn’t know a daisy from a petunia, and didn’t care.  And the truth is, I still don’t — with one exception.  Two years ago, I happened to move to the exact corner of the White Mountains at the exact time when something irresistible occurs each June: the profusion of color that is lupine season.

I remember when I first saw lupine.  My fiancee had been reading somewhere that the lupine were supposed to be spectacular in a nearby town called Sugar Hill.  “Flowers?” I thought.  “Who cares?” Sure, spring is really pretty when things start to bloom — I get it.  But driving around to look at flowers?  I’d rather be climbing a mountain, or kayaking a river.  Nevertheless, we drove up Route 117 into Sugar Hill for a look.

Continue reading “Lupine Season”

The other day as I was happily cruising down a deserted side street, bypassing the tourist-clogged main artery of North Conway, New Hampshire, it occurred to me that I might have finally earned the right to call myself a local here in the White Mountains.  And it’s not just traffic short cuts that I’ve discovered; over the past two years I’ve stumbled on the best places to eat, the best places to drink, the best place to get cider donuts, and most importantly, the best places to hike.

The White Mountains have some of the top hiking in New England.  I’m fortunate to have much of it right outside my front door.  Remember that SNL skit when Tina Fey did a dead-on impression of a loopy Sarah Palin?  She explained her foreign policy “credentials” like this: “I can see Russia from my house.” Well, on a clear day, I can see the East Coast’s finest hike from mine.

What are New Hampshire’s best hikes?  Allow a local to answer.

Continue reading “A Local’s “Must Do” New Hampshire Hikes”

I took the opportunity during this week — my vacation week — to do some whitewater paddling.  As anyone reading my recent posts understands, I’ve become obsessed with the North Fork of the Pemigewasset river here in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  On Tuesday we got some rain, and finding the Upper Pemi — another one of my hit list rivers this spring — too low, I drove to the East Branch of the Pemi.

The East Branch is a New England classic.  This is the river I’d be paddling on for the last 7-8 miles if I run the North Fork.  By the time it reaches Loon Ski area, it’s a big river — flowing at just under 1,000 cubic feet per second on this day — a nice medium-low level.  I stashed my bike at Loon, where they’re attempting to rebuild the bridge over the river for about the eighth time in three years.

When I got to the put in at Lincoln Woods though, I started to wonder, “What if I walk upstream a little ways and put on higher than normal?” The river was at a nice level, and I wasn’t especially excited about just running the usual stretch.  I’d written last week about the time I carried my boat up the Lincoln Woods trail for three miles to Franconia Brook — and about how uncomfortable and draining this was.  I wasn’t planning to do this today.  I’d just hike up about a mile or so . . .

Continue reading “Hudson Gorge, Hang Gliding, and the East Branch of the Pemi”

In last week’s post, I wrote that the river that had risen to the top of my Hit List during the brooding period this winter was the North Fork of the Pemigewasset, arguably the longest stretch of whitewater in New England that nobody ever kayaks.  Why?  Because you can’t get into your boat until you’ve lugged it four miles uphill.  A four mile hike will keep most of us away.

Let me rephrase that.  A four-mile hike with a kayak will keep most of us away.  Even though we as a nation are growing more obese with every flavor-packed snack produced (after all, what can you really do when someone engineers something as diabolical as Trader Joe’s bacon-flavored popcorn?) — still, there are whole parking lots full of paranormally dedicated hikers here in New England who will not only think nothing of hiking four miles uphill, but they’ll want to do it during a blizzard, while it’s pitch dark, wearing shoes made entirely of hemp.  Take the “grid” movement for instance, New England hiking’s latest fad.  Completing a grid involves hiking each one of New Hampshire’s forty-eight 4,000 foot mountains during every month of the year.  That means you have to hike 18 miles out to Bondcliff in December.  And then in January.  And in February.  It’s crazy.  No wonder the moniker “gridiots.”

Continue reading “North Fork of the Pemigewasset”

In last week’s post, I wrote about Hit Lists.  Those are the rivers and waterfalls you spend all winter psyching yourself up for and telling your buddies that you’re going to run while you’re drinking beers and it’s -14 out and dark at 5 pm.  Then the snow melts and you throw the boat on the car and start chasing some of those rivers and waterfalls.  Some of them, you just never make it to.  The Linville Gorge was on my hit list for a decade and I just never got there.  Sometimes you do get there but it looks a lot bigger than you thought, and you walk away.  But sometimes it all comes together.  Last week I wrote about some of these moments — some of the most impressive and historic descents in New England kayaking in the last 15 years.

Last week’s post was all about great athletes, careful planning, pushing the limits, high levels of courage and skill, impressive accomplishments in a kayak.

This post is not about any of that.

Continue reading “Spring Hit List: Boating”

I have always been a big fan of the Hit List.  Not in the mafia sense (although people who tailgate or clog up the left lane should definitely have their licenses revoked).  I mean having a hit list of goals: places to travel, mountains to hike, foods to try.  Mine usually take shape during winter, when I’m dreaming about what I’ll do when we have more than 42 minutes of daylight and a temperature that’s comfortable for those of us who don’t happen to be sled dogs.  You make a hit list because half the fun is looking forward to something.  The anticipation is the best part.

While it’s always key to put old favorites on the hit list (I want to hike Franconia Ridge every year until I die), the best hit lists have things you haven’t done.  The ultimate is having something that nobody’s ever done.  In kayaking, we call that a “first descent” (sometimes abbreviated — if you’re a really insufferable “bro” who happens to be “stoked” — as a “first d”).

Every winter back in the early 2000s, I’d get it in my head that I wanted to do a first descent.  I wanted to find a river nobody had ever done.  In kayaking, in the early 2000s, it was still theoretically possible.

Continue reading “The Spring Hit List — First Descents in New England”

To hear my grandfather tell it, I almost never existed.  From the head of the dinner table Howard Bird, Jr. would wave one arthritis-riddled hand toward his flesh and blood: my brother, my father, my uncle, and me.  “None of you,” he’d smile, “would be here right now if I had skied in that race.”

It’s a cruel irony that as we mature and can better appreciate our grandparents, they age and become less and less themselves.  By the time I was a teenager, my grandfather was in his 70s.  He’d already suffered one heart attack, and now he had painful arthritis.  He took a lot of medications.  Soon he had trouble getting up the stairs.  But when he occasionally mentioned “that race,” you could see the years melt away before him.

“That race” was The Tuckerman Inferno.  Not the current version, a springtime pentathlon.  My grandfather meant the original Inferno: the most extreme ski race ever held in the eastern United States.

It was something.  Racers kicked off from the summit of Mt. Washington, skied to the edge of Tuckerman Ravine, tried to weigh how much they valued their own lives, skied over the edge, then continued all the way down the Sherburne Ski Trail, to Pinkham Notch.  For those scoring at home, that’s 4 miles and more than four thousand vertical feet.  That’s more than the total drop at Vail, Aspen, or Killington — and much of it’s far steeper than anything you can find at any of those places.  The original Inferno was so unique and so dangerous that even today it would be outrageous and terrifying.

It’s just the type of event that should have had a long and rich history.  But instead it was just a glimmer.  Fickle weather, unpredictable snow conditions, and sheer logistics meant that the Inferno was held just three times: 1931, 1934, and 1939.  Soon after, World War II broke out, and the Inferno never regained momentum.  It made brief appearances in abbreviated forms several times since then, eventually morphing into the present day pentathlon whose final leg consists of a ski down Tuckerman Ravine.  But by the time I was a boy at my grandfather’s table, the Inferno hadn’t been held in its original, top-to-bottom glory in 50 years.

The last time it was, a tall, skinny college senior who looked a lot like me had entered it.

In April of 1939 my grandfather was a founding member of the Yale Ski Team better known for failing in big races than for winning them.  That spring, with New England enjoying an outstanding snow year and the Inferno set to be held on the last day of his spring break, my grandfather signed up to race in it.  To practice, he spent his two weeks off from school camping at the AMC lodge in Pinkham Notch and skiing in Tuckerman Ravine.  This was his view each morning.  It’s Tuckerman Ravine in April of 1939.  Look at that snowpack!

I’d like to pause here and remark on what a bad-ass Howard Bird Jr. was.  Let’s start with the fact that he was skiing Tuckerman Ravine in 1939.  Let’s start with the fact that anyone skied Tuckerman Ravine in 1939.  For one thing, Tuckerman Ravine is scary.  Period.  In any era.  The first time I looked over the edge, I was 21 and skied five days a week at the Middlebury Snow Bowl and at Mad River Glen.  I’d skied at Squaw Valley and in Alaska.  I looked over the rim and almost shit myself.

And I was on modern equipment.  Have you ever seen the skis those guys were using back in the 30s?  They look like something you buy at Home Depot and nail to your patio.  And the boots?  If you ever want to feel bad about yourself, try skiing down a gentle slope on cross country gear.  You’ll be windmilling like a drunk guy in an earthquake.  Now try skiing down the side of a building on them.  That’s what those guys were up to back on Tuck’s in the 30s.  Those boots had less support than Air Jordans.

Then there’s the little matter of my grandfather’s workouts, which floor me.  During those two weeks of spring break, he and his buddies would hike from Pinkham Notch to the summit of Mt. Washington and then turn around and ski it without stopping to practice for the Inferno.  Then they’d do it a second time.  In the same day!

But my grandfather never got to race in the Inferno.  A big storm blew through that morning, as big storms often do on Mt. Washington: totally without warning.  My grandfather was already halfway up the Headwall when word came down that the race was postponed.  He put on his skis, turned around, and skied to the bottom.  There would, he must have thought, be other days.

Except that there weren’t.  The Inferno was pushed back two weeks.  My grandfather, who didn’t have a car, tried everyone he knew, but couldn’t get a ride up from New Haven.  To hear him talk, he wasn’t sad to have missed it.  Instead, he’d joke that none of us would be alive if he hadn’t — because he might have done something stupid trying to win the race.  Still, I have to believe he was at least a little regretful.  Especially because by missing that race, me missed being a part of history.  The 1939 Inferno is legendary in American ski circles for one reason: Toni Matt.  That morning during his run, the nineteen year-old Austrian and future National Champion lost sight of where he was somewhere in the upper snowfields.  Although he’d planned to check his speed before he got to the Lip, before he knew it, the ground was dropping away.  Thinking that if he did try to turn at that speed, he’d surely crash, Matt did something that continues to awe anyone who’s ever stood at the top of the Lip: he skied straight down Tuckerman Ravine without turning.  As Matt himself said later, he schussed it.

Not only did Matt win the race, but he scorched the four mile course in just 6 minutes and 29 seconds, an absolute astonishment to anyone who has ever skied over this same distance.  The previous record, set by Olympian Dick Durrance, was over 12 minutes.  Matt’s top speed was estimated at 85 miles per hour.

For my grandfather, who was fond of telling this story about Toni Matt, that run from halfway up the Headwall the weekend before turned out to be his last run ever on Tuckerman and his last run on skis for more than twenty years.  It’s funny how these things work.  You think to yourself that there will be plenty of time.” And then — there isn’t.  The years get away from you.  My grandfather lived a remarkable life.  He thrived in international business.  He had four children.  He got to live and work in Columbia, Geneva, Mexico, and New York City.  He once talked Jesse Jackson out of a protest.  He wrote a book.  He lectured on campuses across the country.  He even got to ski again, during 18 months of living in Switzerland.  He taught my father to ski.  They took a few ski trips to Vermont after they moved back to the States (including one trip to Stowe at which they saw a Warren Miller film at the town hall narrated in person by Warren Miller).  But by the mid-1960s my grandfather stopped skiing and never skied again.  By the time I started skiing in the 1990s, health problems had forced my grandfather to give up almost all of the sports he’d loved as a younger man.  As far as I know, he hadn’t been back to Tuckerman since 1939.

It wasn’t until three years after he died that I finally made it there myself.  My friend Chris and I drove over from college one Saturday morning.  I still remember how improbable it felt: much, much too late in the season to be skiing.  But sure enough, there it was: snow on the side of Mt. Washington, and there was Tuckerman Ravine, a giant glacial cirque way up above the valley.  It looked impossibly steep.  Chris, having forgotten his hiking boots, made the trek up Left Gully in loafers — just the sort of old school gear simulation my grandfather would have smiled at.  We put on our skis and instead of skiing the gully, we drifted across to the top of the Lip, right where my grandfather would have skied.

My first thought was: “Holy s-*t, this is steep.” But my next thought was something I didn’t expect: “I can’t believe Grandpa did this.” It was odd.  I hadn’t gone to Tuck’s with him in mind, but suddenly I was face-to-face with the same rite of passage — totally unchanged — that he’d faced 70 years before.  That it was still so scary, even on my modern equipment and with all of my experience, only made his accomplishments speak more loudly.  It was as though for a brief moment all the time between us disappeared and I could see what a man he had been.  It’s not often we get to do that.  Many of the generational rites of passage — graduating from school, getting a job, buying a house — seem so different now from when our parents and grandparents did them that it’s hard to feel a kinship in these moments.  But there was Tuckerman before me — and it had been just as steep and exposed back in 1939.  I have to say, I felt a lot of pride as I skied over the edge in his proverbial ski tracks.

I felt the same pride last spring when I made my second Tuckerman trip.  This time it was even better, because I was with my brother, who’d sat at that same table with my grandfather and listened to his ski stories.  It was beautiful out — sunny, 60 degrees, no wind — basically the perfect day on Tuck’s.  There were thousands of people.  The air was festive.  We made conversation with strangers on the trail, at the hut, on the floor of the Ravine.  I traded sunscreen for a beer.  Everyone was giddy.  It was all of our last runs of the year, and it was easily the best.  My brother and I stood at the top and I looked out across all of New England as across all of the 76 winters since 1939 and I knew that my grandfather would have approved.  “It doesn’t get any better than this,” I thought, and pushed off over the edge.

Happy spring skiing in Tuck’s.