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Trail of Years: Life After Ethan AMC Outdoors, April 2000 The passage of the Weeks Act in 1911 and subsequent creation of the White Mountain National Forest guaranteed the trail would be maintained by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). While portions of it have been logged over the years, "at about a quarter-mile in, the trail is the rough equivalent of a pre-settlement forest," says Dave Govatski, a USFS forest safety officer at the Ammonoosuc Ranger Station. This means that as you walk along the trail into the Gibbs Brook Scenic Area, you're basically seeing the same forest Ethan Crawford hacked through in 1819. Look for the hallmarks of old growth: a wide variety of ages, kinds, and sizes of trees; large-diameter trees; deep moss; and fallen trunks rotting back into the soil. In the woods where Crawford encountered (and shot) bears, fishers, and sables, Govatski — who hikes the path a dozen or more times a year — more commonly spots boreal chickadees, black-backed woodpeckers, and spruce grouse. "It's the easiest place in the Whites to see birdlife," he says. But fauna isn't all you'll see on Crawford Path. More than a decade ago, thanks in part to the work of the AMC, the alpine flower Robbins cinquefoil (Potentilla robbinsiana) was listed on the Endangered Species List. As there was a large community of Potentilla on the Crawford Path on the back side of Mount Monroe, the U.S. Forest Service put up screewalls to keep people on the trail. But due to heavy use, they ended up rerouting less than a quarter mile of trail around the fragile flora in 1986. Other than this section, and another short section near Lakes of the Clouds Hut rerouted at the time the hut was built, the trail unfolds just as Ethan dreamed it. So what would Ethan think of my friend and me, jumping out of our car in a near-blizzard to hike, or of the winter campers, geared up in their Gore-Tex® to spend a bitter night just below the summit? I like to think he'd understand. For, beyond the business it meant to him, he loved this mountain. Ethan's description of spending his first night on the summit after hiking the trail he built echoes what so many of us have felt standing up there in the wind, and what brings us back time and again: We spread our blankets on this elevated spot . . . now prostrate on the ground, so much nearer Heaven than we had ever been accustomed.
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