Katie Rizzolo, Graham Rogers, Mike Brown, Paul Michael Richard, and I joined together to form a band of warrior poets and hiked the Presidential Traverse on July 30.
This picture was taken just as our knees were about to shatter. Just a few more miles and a few thousand feet of elevation change left!
And when I say "Presidential Traverse," I of course mean a 21-mile death-hike summiting 8 of the White Mountain peaks, including the 5 highest mountains in New Hampshire. It's the kind of thing that would make a normal person say "I'd rather not destroy every muscle, bone, and joint in my body. I'll just stay over here playing Jenga and wait for you to get back." I don't know why, but apparently this fictional person is playing Jenga. This person is an avid Jengist. But anyway, we beasted that hike in about 15 hours. And that included a decent amount of rest time at the top of Mt. Washington.
We drove up to the Tufts Loj Friday night and basically all we did was make infinity PB&J sammiches and go to bed. The stars were RIDICULOUS, but there wasn't much time to stargaze, because our plan was to get up at 3am to start this monster hike. So we took all the sleep we could get.
The next morning we awoke stoked as fuck, ready to destroy some mountains with our ENERGY LEGS. Katie Rizz was super pumped about a sandwich someone had left her. This is hilarious, because "Katie" was written on it, but there was definitely another Katie staying at the Loj, and I guarantee this other girl was going to wake up, find that some wretched asshole had stolen her delicious sandwich, start plotting vengeance on said sandwich thief. But whatever, it was time to start the adventure, we'll worry about our sandwich issues later. Graham, Mike, and PMR road in one car, and Katie and I road in the other, parking it at the end of the trail. We then packed into one car, drove to the trailhead by Mt. Madison, and rocked that mountain like a hurricane. And by that I mean we hiked with our headlamps on (we started hiking at 4:30am, and the Sun was being a little bitch, so we had about 45 minutes before sunrise) in an intensely humid forest.
We are dinosaurs. Sometimes.
We actually saw a moose near the Madison hut (well, most of us did). We turned a corner, and there it was: a Babe-the-Blue-Ox sized moose staring directly at me in a patch of small trees. No joke, it was probably less than 10 feet away from me. I only had time to utter the words "oh fuck," praying it wouldn't charge at me for interrupting it's breakfast by singing Disney songs, before it decided to leap OVER ENTIRE TREES and back into the forest. Third moose sighting of my life, first in New Hampshire. Win column.
The first summit was a bit of a scramble, but not too difficult. At the top we realized that our day might not provide as many epic views as we initially assumed, because we were literally inside a cloud. The inside of a ping pong ball isn't really the view I signed up for, but what can you do. After some planking, we headed back down to go tackle the next mountain: Mt. Adams, second tallest of the White Mountains. It wasn't too long of a hike, but it was pretty damn steep. Quite a bit of scrambling. My arms were all "hey wait a second, I thought we were hiking. You know, the kind of thing you do with your LEGS. We never signed up for this shit." Too bad, arms. Deal with it. Same as before, not much of a view. The fog was thick, and as a result all our clothes/packs were somewhere between "moist" and "drenched." The rocks were also super slippery, which made the downhill trek slow-going and painful. My knees were not so pleased with their predicament. But hey: 2 peaks down, 6 to go.
Check out that incredible view!
Jefferson was the next. Similar to the first two in fogginess and slipperiness, so not much to tell. Oh, the wind was going nuts, which made urination a fun adventure! But we hit the summit and started on our way toward Mt. Washington. It was a bit strange, because we couldn't see all that far ahead of us, but we could hear the Cog Railroad somewhere in the mist. We crossed the tracks (more planking) and made it to the Mt. Washington summit around noon.
Chris Severino: he died the way he lived. Planking on railroad tracks?
It was great timing, because the only thing I could think about was how much food, measured in metric tons, could I logistically consume. It turns out the answer was a bowl of chili, a PB&J, half a bag of trail mix, some pepperoni, peanuts, and three granola bars. Yum-tastic. We also took our picture by the Mt. Washington summit sign, which is a goddamn zoo, because there are children and old people and other randos who took the train up the mountain. GTFO, I'VE BEEN HIKING FOR SEVEN HOURS.
6288 ft. For all intents and purposes we still consider this "sea level" in the aviation industry. STILL COOL THOUGH.
Next up was Monroe. Nothing spectacular. More of that lovely fog view, and the muscles and knees were starting to get a little sore, but everyone was in good spirits about actually getting close to the end. When we got to Eisenhower, we started coming out of the cloud, and we actually got to see a lot of the surrounding mountains.
You can kind of see some stuff! THINGS ARE MARVELOUS.
It was incredible. The weather was getting nicer, we only had two more mountains, we were in good spirits. What could possibly go wrong?
Not much, really. Sorry to leave you hanging with that "uh oh, is something bad going to happen?" type cliffhanger, but no. Things were pretty great. Pierce was next, and, while there were quite a few trees blocking what could potentially be a really amazing view, we were fine with it. Just one peak to go, so we sat for a bit and nommed on our various trail mixes. It was good to give the legs a little break, because they were starting to get all up in my bidness. My right knee, the one I had ACL surgery for, felt like it was made out of pure jello. That's typically not the feeling you'd like your knee to feel.
We then went downhill for a bit, passed the last lodge, and came up to the last peak: Mt. Jackson. It was the shortest mountain of the 8, but I think we were all fairly tired from the rest of the hike that it felt a bit taller than it actually was.
Ugh I can't BELIEVE I was looking the wrong way in this picture! Stupid stupid stupid!
Great views, great weather: it was an awesome way to end the Traverse. Well, mostly the end. We still had that final downhill. Which is incidentally the most painful part of the entire hike. My knees were held together by nothing more than sinews and good intentions. Paul and I took some ibuprofen, which helped considerably. Instead of "oh my god I don't think I'm going to survive," it was more like "there's only a 90% chance my knees are going to shatter. I like my odds." But we made it down to the car just as the Sun was setting, which was great, because we got to look at the beautiful sunset colors during the entire ride back to pick up the other car.
As is wont, we grabbed some beers at the local brewery for a celebratory "hey guys, we did it! And we're still 40% alive!" I ate as much food as the Loj could provide and literally passed out in a chair with beer in hand as Mike played Metallica songs on acoustic guitar. I can't think of a better way to end the night.
The next day my legs were barely attached to my body and I couldn't really use them for locomoting, but we got an early start and headed back to Boston. Once there, Rizz and I joined up with some friends to bike to Walden Pond (yeah, adding a 30-mile round-trip bike ride was an interesting choice when my body was 80% pain...). I figured the biking and swimming in the pond would be good training for a Triathlon I signed up for in September. After that little endeavor, every step I took was a moment of sheer agony. But it was totally worth it. Who needs to go up and down stairs this week? I climbed MOUNTAINS. But seriously, I wish my apartment had an elevator.
I can haz naps time nao plz?
