By mid-morning on a Sunday in late March 2007, most of the hikers had packed their snowshoes, poles, and other gear and abandoned Carter Notch Hut, leaving caretaker Sean Auclair with the usual end-of-weekend duties: stacking dishes, cleaning bathrooms, and tidying the hut, the oldest building in the Appalachian Mountain Club’s system. But the lanky, scruffy-bearded Auclair, a 24-year-old with a degree in natural resources management from Cornell University, decided to steal a few minutes in his bunk to read before diving into his chores. It had been a busy weekend. Carter Notch Hut and the bunkhouses, which can host 40 people overnight, had been crowded with about 30 hikers cooking breakfast and dinner, washing dishes, and playing Scrabble.

Shortly after the last of the hikers headed out, Auclair’s reading was interrupted by a breathless Boy Scout. The Scout had rushed back to report that a young man had accidentally cut his hand, just a few tenths of a mile down the trail. The man’s pant leg had kept catching on his crampon, and when he tried to trim his trousers with a knife, he slit his hand.

Auclair sprang to action, grabbing bandages, his radio, and hiking gear, and heading for the trail. Within minutes he found the young man, whose hand had been examined and bandaged by a doctor in the group. Auclair escorted the group to the trailhead, where they left for a nearby hospital.

 “It was just a typical weekend until that happened,” says Auclair, who, like all winter caretakers, has Wilderness First Aid training. “I spent the better part of the day hiking them down and making my way back up. I wanted to make sure he was OK. But my role really ended at the trailhead.”

The young man was indeed OK, and emergencies such as this tend to be rare for Auclair and his fellow winter hut caretakers, a small group who work at three self-service AMC huts in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. While fewer hikers are out in the winter, the huts at Lonesome Lake, Zealand Falls, and Carter Notch draw their fair share of weekenders and occasional weekday visitors. The huts are also destinations for school groups, Scouts, and AMC excursions. These rustic cabins are usually booked full on Saturday nights.

Each hut has two bunkhouses with nothing more than mattresses and pillows for overnight guests. They sleep from 36 to 48 people total in separate bunkrooms. Each hut also has kitchen facilities and a wood-burning stove in the main building to ease the evening cold, but guests still need their winter bags in the unheated bunk rooms.

Perhaps the most noteworthy hut is Carter Notch, originally a log cabin shelter built in 1904 and reconstructed as a hut a decade later (its stone design was modeled after Madison Spring Hut). The easternmost stop in the hut system, Carter Notch sits beneath 4,832-foot Carter Dome on a slight rise above a lake. Some AMC caretakers say it is haunted by the ghost of a former hut manager, “Red Mac” MacGregor, who reportedly pulls pranks on the hut crew.

Carter and its sister huts are each staffed by two caretakers working alternating shifts—several days on, a few days off. For the most part, their job is to maintain the hut, bunkhouses, and bathrooms. They’re also there to check guests in and out and oversee use of the kitchen. Getting to work means a winter hike to the hut, carrying a pack that can weigh 60 pounds when filled with clothing and a week’s supply or more of food and other necessities.

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