Most winter caretakers have previously worked at AMC’s full-service huts during the summer and fall and clamor for the opportunity to spend the winter in the woods. Typically, AMC receives double the number of applicants for the six winter slots.

Caretakers are in their early 20s and a year or two out of college. About half are men and half women, though years ago caretakers were all men. Like Auclair, most caretakers hail from the Northeast.

The job requires the ability to endure cold—temperatures outside often drop to the single digits—and solitude, with little human interaction for several days at a stretch. But caretakers also act as ambassadors, welcoming guests who come and stay at the hut.

“It’s really a unique job,” says Eric Pedersen, AMC’s hut manager. “You spend a lot of time living in isolation. You have busy weekends with lots of guests passing through and then you won’t see anybody for four or five days. You have to expect to have days when it’s very cold, be independent, and find jobs to do to keep yourself busy and warm.”

For Adam Brown, caretaking offered an opportunity to spend more time in the backcountry. The 27-year-old had just graduated from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania with a master’s degree in park and resource management, and after spending three summers as a backcountry shelter caretaker at Garfield Ridge, in New Hampshire, he still wanted more time in the wilderness. He spent his first season at Zealand Falls and his second, the winter of 2007, at Carter Notch.

“The chance to be out in the wintertime is kind of rare, and to get paid for it,” says Brown, now a trail resource manager in New England for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. “The solitude appealed to me quite a bit—how often can you go several days and not see anybody? And you’re in this beautiful environment. The quiet really adds to the beauty of the place.”

Brown awakened each day to the radio weather report from Mount Washington. He’d rise and immediately write down the weather forecast. Around 8 a.m., he’d check in by radio with AMC staff at Pinkham Notch Visitor Center to find out how many, if any, guests were expected at the hut that day. The radio was his only means of communication with the outside world. Some days, the exchange was just a matter of “things are fine,” and that was it.

Between the morning and afternoon chores, caretakers like Brown hike, snowshoe, or spend a lot of time reading. Brown also had a hand-cranked radio so he could listen to National Public Radio and A Prairie Home Companion on Sundays.

“In the afternoon, I would eat lunch, go for a hike, have some free time for a few hours,” he says. “I would get out as soon as I could and go for a walk or go snowshoeing. I read a lot. I tried to stay warm—that takes a lot of energy, doing pull-ups or push-ups. You figure out ways to entertain yourself and keep your mind occupied.”

That changes on weekends. “When there’s a full house, it can get really hectic in the kitchen,” says Megan Norris, a 24-year-old Connecticut native who was a caretaker at Lonesome Lake Hut this past winter. “When you have 48 people in groups of twos and threes shuffling out of the kitchen, it’s crazy. You have to make a schedule so everyone can cook. You have to make sure they have enough water and that they wash the dishes. “But when you have a slow night with two or three people, it’s fun to cook with them,” she says. “I normally have a ton of food. I missed serving people from my days at the full-service hut. Having people to dine with in the hut makes it an event.”

In the winter, the huts are not full service. Hikers have to carry in their own food and are free to use the kitchen facilities. Hikers carry out all their trash.

The evenings are often passed playing games, with conversation and music. On Saturday evenings, caretakers offer informal talks about a variety of topics, ranging from the surrounding flora and fauna and wildlife to the history of the hut system and mountain weather.

Tom Morgan, an English teacher and head rock climbing coach at Proctor Academy in Andover, N.H., has led several groups of students on overnight excursions to Carter Notch. He says the caretakers often get involved in his trips, such as a March outing that involved nature awareness exercises and outdoor meditation.

“They are cool young folks, and they have some sort of message or moral to get across,” he says. “They’ve done every-thing from turning the tables into makeshift ping-pong tables to using the hut as a classroom to teach about alternative energy. They [also] know a lot about the weather.”

Chores can be more tedious than reading a book or playing games by a fire, but caretakers take pride in maintaining a tidy, organized hut. Splitting and stacking firewood, shoveling snow, and collecting and treating water from a lake or outside manual pump also keeps them warm, and that’s often the real chore when the wind chill drops well below zero, and the wind howls and blows so hard it’s difficult to walk outside.

“Being a caretaker in the winter really comes down to the basic needs of water, heat, and food,” says Kevin “Hawk” Metheny, who was a caretaker at Carter Notch for five winters and is now a backcountry specialist for AMC. “It’s paring life down to the basic essentials. I had to carry food in, chop a hole in the ice to get water, and you have to keep moving to stay warm. You try not to be wasteful. If you’re wasteful with water, that means you have to go back down to the lake and get more.”

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