Highpoint #24: Mt. Wa- JUST KIDDING!

For all their seeming interchangeability, those two tiny states who take up opposite corners of New England's interior, Vermont and New Hampshire, are quite different. And, in the arbitrary-conclusion-jumping spirit of the early novelists--arguably the first social scientists--I attribute this difference to their disparate geography. On one side of the state line, we have rolling farmland, socialist congressmen, and gentle Green Mountains; the other features dark fir forests, license plates emblazoned with "Live Free or Die," and the perilous Whites. I saw this shift in action as I crossed the border that afternoon on I-93. The pastoral meanderings of the Vermont state route from which I'd come gave way to a wide, fast, and empty highway. I zipped past steep hills covered in clinging firs, glancing up every so often towards the cloud-swathed peaks that filled the eastern horizon. Somewhere in that hazy mess was ol' Mt. Washington, the windswept mountain of my nightmares... and here I was, coming back for Round Two.

A raindrop hit my windshield as I entered White Mountain National Forest on US-302, and then another, and then all ten thousand of their closest friends crashed like a waterfall onto my car, as if to welcome me back to the Whites' crazy weather. In the midst of this cloudburst, I passed through Crawford's Notch:

The same place we ice-climbed last February.

and I must say, the hills were just as freakishly stark and intimidating in green as they were in white. I would have wandered up the train tracks in search of the spot where we climbed, but 1. it was raining, 2. they actually run the railroad this time of year, so it probably wasn't a good idea to walk on it, and 3. I had a check-in time to make.

Highpoint #9: Brasstown Bald, GA (4786')

I pulled into the gravel lot at the Jack's Gap trailhead around 10 pm that night. All the way there I'd looked for a campground--well, as long as the sunlight had lasted--but, it being a Saturday night, the only place I'd come across was full. So here I was. My itinerary had me camping a mile downhill from here along the AT, but it also had me arriving before dark, so...

After a brief look outside,

I decided the most prudent course of action was to stay in my car. I made some space in the backseat, then cuddled up beneath a blanket to wait out the night.

Hmm, I thought as I drifted off to sleep. This ain't so comfortable. How can I make the night shorter? Why, by waking up early and making a sunrise hike of the Bald! I set my phone's alarm for 6, figuring that would be more than enough time to hike the mile and a half to the summit before the sun came up, then conked out.

Now, if you've ever been to Brasstown Bald, particularly if you've hiked it, you might have noticed a mistake in that last sentence. You're absolutely right.

Highpoint #5: Black Mountain, KY (4145')

Hoo boy, was it a mistake to skip dinner.

Not only is it amazing how fast you lose heat when you stop moving on a mountain, it’s even more amazing how fast the temperature plummets when the sun goes down. Though I’d stocked my tent for the night below Mt. Rogers with my sleeping bag (rated for comfort at 45 degrees F), my brand-new liner (touted to add an additional 25 degrees to the bag’s capability), a self-inflating ground pad (which had barely had time to inflate in my hasty setup), all the clothes I’d worn on the hike, and my own exhausted, meal-skipping, horrifically naïve body, it was no match for the chill and the winds and the wintry mix  that blasted the gap all night long. I might have drifted off to sleep once or twice… maybe… only to wake again mere minutes later, shivering like a seizure patient. I threw on every stitch of clothing in that tent, pulled the sleeping bag over my head, even covered my face with my down jacket to seal in the heat of my breath, but nothing worked. Either my body couldn’t produce enough heat to stay warm, my gear couldn’t hold in the heat, or both.

I roused myself at last when the light grew strong enough to make out the red of my sleeping-bag liner, and found the forest engulfed in fog:

Side trip: PANIC!

I headed out the next day from Staunton, where my grandmother and her partner had been kind enough to let me spend the night. The drive down I-81, familiar from my Blacksburg days, was uneventful. I exited at Chilhowie, VA (how’s that for a name?), and turned due south towards the high point of Virginia, Mt. Rogers.

I hadn’t driven far through the low, rolling country when a massive cluster of mountains rose up before me, filling the horizon with a wall of green. Patches of sunlight played over the foothills, bringing their color into even sharper contrast with the still-gray peaks behind them. The sight amazed me; I just had to get a picture of this. I pulled over (into the driveway of a confused-looking farmer) and grabbed for my phone and the Lars… only the Lars weren’t there.

Highpoint #3: Spruce Knob, WV (4863')

People these days expect things to be instantaneous, or as nearly so as physically possible. And why not, when all the information of the Internet can be theirs for a few finger-taps, when it’s odd if an online purchase doesn’t show up at one’s door within a few days, when cars shoot in straight lines from city to city at 70 miles per hour. Speed and access is the norm; they want it all, and they want it now.

Well, mountains don’t quite allow for that, especially those as dense and jumbled as West Virginia’s. One can blow a hole through a single ridge, a la Sideling Hill, to put in an interstate, but it would take nukes to flatten West Virginia’s terrain into tractability. A road allowing consistent travel at 40 mph is a feat of engineering there. Similarly, each cell tower’s reach is limited to the valley it overlooks… well, most of it. If the valley’s scant population warrants a tower at all, which it probably doesn’t.

I mention all this to explain why, not long after leaving Seneca Rocks, I found myself stranded with no cell coverage and only a blurry, half-loaded Google Map to point me towards my destination.

That February Ascent of Mt. Washington, or Why I Am a Complete Idiot

So that's where I got the idea. Now you may be wondering, why the blog? Am I just another millenial publicity hog trying to squeeze "likes" out of a distracted world?

No! There is a reason I'm putting all this online, and the reason is that I'm an absolute idiot.

Yup. That one. Right there. Dummkopf.

Allow me to explain.

Last February, to prepare for the rigors of the western peaks, I took a three-day mountaineering class in New Hampshire.

The drive up there was an adventure in itself. I'd planned to split the twelve-to-thirteen hours promised by Google Maps over two days, but I was grounded by freezing rain on the first day, so I ended up driving all the way from Virginia to North Conway, NH in a single push. It didn't help that the freezing rain warmed and intensified into a deluge that followed me up I-84, or that I hit rush hour halfway through and had to take the long way around the urban centers of Connecticut and Massachusetts, or that the entirety of northern New England was covered in near-impenetrable fog (as I later discovered, I could have hit a moose on the highway). By the time I arrived, fifteen hours after setting out (Travel tip #1: Google Maps always underestimates drive time on country roads), I was ready to collapse into my hotel bed and sleep clear into the spring.

Which, of course, is exactly what I didn't do. My class started at 8 AM sharp the next morning, and I needed to get there early to buy a bunch of required cold-weather gear I couldn't find for sale in Virginia... because in three days we were going up Mt. Washington.