Appalachia, Summer/Fall 2010

The techniques of two early map-makers for the White Mountain Guide
Loren Johnston

Clad in wool clothing and work boots, sandwiches stuffed in their coat pockets and a rudimentary map they had picked up in Pinkham Notch in hand, four young men from Maine started up Mount Washington 54 years ago, hoping to win first place in a photography contest. Although none of them had ever hiked a mountain before, they were confident that they would be able to capture contest-winning images from the summit. They had made a spur-of-the-moment decision at work in the coastal mill town of Saco. Little planning or discussion went in to it, but lots of enthusiasm.

As they crested the lip of Tuckerman Ravine, they encountered snow and wind that had not been anticipated, their progress slowed, and they began having difficulty picking up the trail. One member of the group began to struggle and sat down, refusing to go any further. He only began moving after shouts of encouragement from the others. They reached the parking lot at the summit as the weather turned into a bona fide snowstorm and were relieved when they learned that they would be able to hitch a ride down the mountain with one of the staff from the observatory.

Their adventure did not end there, as the defroster could not clear the windshield and the intrepid mountaineers resorted to sticking their heads out the windows and, as the wind pelted their faces with freezing sleet, they relayed critical directions to the driver as he crept down the winding mountain road. According to a log one of them kept, when they finally got below the storm, the driver stopped the car and said, “Now that I can see something, I guess I’ll put my glasses on.” Understandably, two of the group never hiked again, but for the other two this was the beginning of seven years of weekends and holidays spent in the mountains of New Hampshire and Maine, gathering firsthand information to make maps and contribute to the trail descriptions that generations of hikers, including myself, found in the Appalachian Mountain Club guides for both states.

Loren Johnston is a teacher in the Bonny Eagle school district in Maine.

 

This excerpt is from the Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Appalachia.  To order this issue, visit the AMC Online Store.