Huts and glory: Pack it in, pack it in

AMC Outdoors, July/August 2000

While necessity still demands that crews pack mighty loads (usually 60 to 80 pounds of fresh food) up to each hut several times a week, there was a time—before awareness of knee cartilage and ligaments—when each trip to the hut was a chance to prove "quien es mas macho?" A look back into the record books, kept proudly by the crews at each hut over the years, reveals some staggering statistics: In 1940, the aptly named Bud Hefti hefted 224 pounds to Madison Spring Hut. During the rebuilding of Lakes of the Clouds in 1969, Sid Havely hauled 331 pounds of plumbing equipment to Lakes from the summit of Mount Washington, one and a half miles away. And in 1922, a gang of 20 French-Canadians hauled up several loads of construction materials, each weighing 150 to 175 pounds, to Madison every day all summer—receiving three cents a pound for their efforts.

In the fall of 1938, a group of AMC members presented a petition to the club president "concerning the effect of backpacking upon the hutmen stationed at the various club huts," specifically upon their hearts. At that time, loads weighing up to 200 pounds were not uncommon. The hut committee surveyed 109 former hutmen to determine whether they showed "effects of excessive exertion." Finding no significant evidence, but heeding the concerns, the committee decreed that all hutmen should cease "stunt" packing and have physicals before and after every season.

More recently, though "you occasionally hear about a century [100-pound] load," says AMC's Public Affairs Director Rob Burbank, the upper limit to pack weight is a more reasonable 85 pounds.

The preferred method of lugging these loads through the years has been the packboard. Packboards in use today resemble the one White described 60 years ago:

The packframe is nothing but a wooden corset for the back, all set about with hooks. It accommodates itself nicely to the carrying of boxes, stoves, kerosene tins, and wheelbarrows. To fit a load onto it, you heap the boxes or what you will on its back and lash them securely with a rope to the many hooks.

From the 1930s until 1965, pack donkeys—originally shipped from Roswell, New Mexico—supplemented the hut and construction crews. Said Joe Dodge of the early days of mule-packing, "The real problems with the donks began when [you] tried to get them to do something." Dodge hired a muleskinner who soon had the donkeys hauling like pros—when they weren't being mistaken for deer by city folk and shot at. This "White Mountain Jackass Company" once landed six tons of supplies at Madison in one week. Today, helicopters have replaced the donkey trains, flying in food staples and materials to the huts twice each season.

When hut crews don't have to pack in, many of them focus on speed, a source of much rivalry and vigilant record-keeping. AMC board member and 1946 Greenleaf Hutmaster Malcolm McLane still holds the records between Franconia Notch and Greenleaf Hut on the Old Bridle Path: up two and a half miles in 42 minutes and down in 17. In the '30s, when Pinkham Notch was still considered a hut, H. L. Malcolm, a hotel owner from Florida, was known for hiking all the huts, starting at Carter Notch and ending at Lonesome Lake—a distance of 56 miles whose aggregate elevation gain is roughly equivalent to climbing to the summit of Mount Everest—in 21 hours and 41 minutes. According to AMC Trails Supervisor Tim Levesque, members of the AMC Trail Crew, who historically rival the hut crews and are arguably the fittest folks in the Whites, have been known to complete the hut-to-hut traverse in less than 18 hours.

 Huts and Glory, main article  | A considerable undertaking  | Pack it in, pack it in  | 
Mountain hospitality in the Whites  | Years of connection and change