Smoke in the cabin was a thick slosh of butane and firewood and cooked pasta. Outside were stacks of log and draped moss. The air of the Whites was cold enough to warrant fall, but sufficiently warm that the ice axe I had strapped to my pack would not find good use. We huddled in, a throng of listeners as the stereo Wonderbooms blasted through my mix of 70s and 80s folk and rock.
Earlier that day, I had travelled down with the Harvard Mountaineering Club to the New Hampshire town of Conway. I worked through the laborious, mindless chores of emails and texts and polishing writings, before making the ascent up to our cabin next to Huntington's ravine. Autumnal foliage paved the trails that cushioned our steps. If I could attach colour to the air it would be a faded faience, glazed by the cooling of altitude, crisp and brilliant in its hues, soft to the breath but strong in its remnant scents of birch and fir, bunchberry and lichen.
The short leg of Tuckerman Ravine Trail meandered up the mountain in parallel with Cutler River, and between my steps I could remember the plentiful silvergrass of Lantau. I had first learnt my footwork there. In hiking boots I tended to land flat on my feet, registering each quiver of the earth that reverberated up my tibia. I liked beaten dirt trails. You started by treading each careful step, avoiding the odd branch and upturned root; then you learnt to glide along the sharp edges of rocks lodged firmly in the ground, until you realised that even the wobbly ones could be firm and stable if pressure is applied at the right angle. Soon you'd tear off in the heights of the trees, separated from the sky by nothing but a trail of rocks, a conduit of nothing but freedom.
Later that night, I settled and nestled into sleep. At 2am sharp, all five of our alarms went off at once. It was T -30 for Presi. A flurry of footsteps, chatter, packs. By 2.30am we were off, marching in the midnight forest under a full and refulgent moon. Another step towards the objective Prezi and I had been planning for all semester.
I wasn't too nervous at all. I was exactly where I was meant to be. Uncertainty only unsettles me when I am not prepared to throw at it every last resort I have; otherwise it's just like coming home. That was the Whites. Or I guess, mountains do that to me in general. I felt a similar sentiment in Yosemite. Home is a place where every ebb and flow is a self-justifying truth. I can leave but I cannot forget, I can chide but I cannot question, I can be injured but its embrace absolves all hurt.
And so I don't think anything can truly be that bad on this trip. Even the descent, in all its tardiness and aching backs, was something much greater than the repetitive motion of my sore feet. But before that final leg down from Jackson, then, in the dead stillness of a White Mountain night, we had yet to complete any significant gain in elevation. The ascending began when we followed Osgood up to the summit of Madison. It took us a good hour or two, and by the time we broke treeline we could see the break of dawn. The earth lit up from the horizons like a hemi-spherical night light. Between the mountain spurs silky, white clouds flowed through as if a river. Towards the south the clouds were thicker, but as they approached Gorham the ground opened up and the wisps parted, diluted enough that the lights shone through from a sleepy town before sunrise.
We sent Adams next. Then Jefferson, and eventually Washington, in the full force of a White Mountain gale. Gusts might have reached up to 70-80mph, and I had to lean at a 60 degree angle to the ground to stay upright. Along the way we were accompanied by evergreen spruce and fruitless lingonberry, crimson alpine bilberry and map lichen that plastered the rocks like graffiti. In the free-blast sunshine and full-force wind, we traced the ridge of the mountains up to the tallest peak in the US northeast.
After a pre-planned rendezvous, the rest of the group pushed on. From this point on, the rest of the day spun into an increasingly hefty swirl. We sprinted down Washington and sumitted Monroe, Franklin, Eisenhower, and rather painfully, Pierce. I had been at the back of the trail order and was burning dangerously through my gas. On the 2.2 miles to Jackson, I had the easier job of leading. We did our best to climb quickly and run on flats. I remembered the exponential build up of lactate on that final pitch up Jackson. I was on all fours scrambling. Some moments later, the monotonous grind tapered off into flatter ground. A primordial instinct in me stirred. I stepped up, slipped, felt the rest of the team tear past me. I kept moving. It started with a jog but by the time I reached the summit I was running.
We hiked more than 40km and 2500m of elevation in about 16.5 hours. I was pretty tired, but I came home.
Link to Strava: Fall Presidential Traverse.