My buddy Roger and I headed up from Washington DC to the Pemigewasset wilderness in the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire. We Parked off of the Kancamagus Hwy at the Pemigewasset river. It was the middle of January with about five to six feet of snow cover. We had snow shoes and skis. I was pulling a sled with a hip belt attachment because I had recently broken my right clavicle - shoulder - and could not carry a pack. Roger carried a big old winter pack. The advantage was that I could carry a shit load of stuff but the disadvantage was that Roger had to traipse behind me and re-right it when it toppled over - the sled did fine except for on transverse slopes and there were plenty of those where we went, up the east branch of the Pemigewasset river. It was 5F degrees and snowing lightly as we made our way up the trail easily since it had been packed for us by countless others - at least for the first few miles. About three miles in we were crossing a frozen side branch. I went first on my skis and made it fine but when Roger crossed with his snow shoes and pack weight overtop him instead of behind him as with my sled, he broke through with his right leg up to his crotch. He had a difficult time getting out with his snow shoe below the ice resting upon the rocky bottom of the creek. He crawled the rest of the way, not easy on ice with a heavy pack, snowshoes and poles.
Once he made it across he took off his pack and then removed his soaked socks to replace them, dumping icy water onto the snow laughing. He set the socks from his right foot on a stone next to him and then by the time he could dig out fresh socks and get them on, the wet sock had frozen solid. Roger picked it up and waved it, frozen solid. That impressed us both. He said his foot was freezing even in his fresh socks and I said fuck this we’re camping. I told him to put on another pair of dry socks and change into dry pants while I went up ahead and found a suitable campsite. I would have to pack one down most likely anyway we’d have to wait 30 minutes or so for it to harden before putting the tent on it. We seldom made fires in the wilderness but I knew a fire was in our near future on this late afternoon. I didn’t want to go further into this wilderness on deep snow except with all of our strength - I already had a broken shoulder to hold us back.
I found a spot only a few hundred feet up the Wilderness trail but in order to get to it I had to go up a very steep if small embankment and I had to take off my skis and post hole up the embankment, hauling my sled up behind me by holding onto its hip strap with my right hand. About half way up the embankment I heard and felt something pop. It was my right hand. The pain was so bad that I let go of the sled and it slipped back down the embankment and across the trail. I took off my glove and there was a big lump on the top of the back of my hand. I had been trying to keep the weight from pulling on my shoulder and evidently did a pretty good job of this, transferring the weight to my arm and hand instead. I learned later that a tendon had popped out of the sheath holding it, a kind of hernia in my hand. Upon the advice of a physical therapist, I put two quarters over the lump and then slammed my hand with a large book - took a couple of very painful efforts but the third slam was a charm and popped the tendon back in where it belonged and I had to no further problems from it - but that was well after we got home over a week later. For the rest of our trip I avoided using my right hand whenever possible, along with my right shoulder.
Roger came up as I was descending to fetch my sled.
“You haven’t made much progress there, Dave” he commented.
I told him what happened and we both pulled the sled up this time, Roger still in his pack and snowshoes. It was a typical camp along the small river under large pine. After we packed down a tent site, we kicked in steps down to the water and packed them also, packing down a path from the tent site to the water and another in the other direction to a suitable bathroom site. This way once we settled in we could move around without putting snowshoes on. Next we set about gathering wood while the tent base hardened. Even though I had a good bit of experience on snow, this was the first time that I collected wood on snowshoes, which presented it’s own challenges.
I had my traditional hot chocolate with half a stick of butter melted in just before retiring and it kept me warm all night. Ah, rich, creamery butter, the winter campers friend!
It continued to snow lightly but steadily all along. Normally in the winter I’ll hunker down inside the tent but since we had a fire we both hung out at the fire pit enjoying the fire and the continuing snowfall. It was still about 5 degrees above zero. Roger had more experience with fires and handled the fire and the drying of his clothes and much to his credit, he didn’t burn anything. That night it went down to about 20 below zero and it snowed about six to eight inches. Roger insisted on sleeping outside the tent on the ground next to the fire. In the morning when I peeked out of the tent there was just a big, white lump where Roger was laying - the lump was almost imperceptibly moving with his breath and I was glad to see that he didn’t suffocate under his tarp. He reminded me of the sled dogs that I had seen on television burying themselves into the snow for the night. Since he was outside it was easy to set my stove in the vestibule and start water for coffee. A short while later, the sled dog arose from under his blanket of snow no worse for the wear except some condensation on the top of his bag. Roger is hard core.
“Warm night”, he commented, shaking some snow out of his hair.
This day the easy railroad grade trail shifted higher up away from the river and onto a narrow hiking trail rising up and down with lay of the land and incoming creeks. Would have been a piece of cake were it not for the sled. Neither of us had been up this trail before but it looked okay on the topo map. The devil really is in the details! I tried as best I could but transverse slopes are the sleds greatest weakness and especially since we were breaking trail and the sled had no track to follow in, it would slide down slope, sometimes the two bars attaching the sled to my hip belt twisting in the process and then the whole thing getting caught in the trunks of the small trees that lined the trail. This meant that I had to break trail all day and Roger had to constantly shove and lift this hundred pound sled and beside becoming exhausted, he hurt his back at one point and we had to take a long break.
“Your sled is killing me,” he said, laughing.
His back was hurting pretty good but he could still carry his pack. Like I said, Roger is hardcore. The normal concerns with pain and comfort that the rest of us tend to focus on mean nothing to Roger. As soon as we made it through the rough stuff and back down along the river, we found a camp and called it a day - maybe managed three miles. I didn’t say anything to Roger but pretty much cancelled our circuit and figured we would hike straight through to RT302 and then hitch back to the car. There was a fairly easy route straight through that should afford the easiest exit in terms of following mostly old railroad grades along the valleys. Finishing our circuit would definitely put us back into sled pulling hell and I knew Roger would never say nay, I figured that was pushing it just too far. If his back went out completely that would leave me with my broken shoulder and broken hand to haul him out on the sled. After spending six hours to go three miles, I had no illusions about this - it just wasn’t going to happen. Roger pretty much left route finding to me. He’s really into The Now and staring at a map is just not his thing, I think.
The next day the going was easier and the temperature rose almost to freezing, the high of our trip so far. I don’t think it had gotten above 10 degrees above zero since we arrived. We ended up in only T shirts. We entered an inner valley area where the land flattened out into a broad almost level area. I had the sense then of really being “in the wilderness” especially since this was the deepest in that we could go, no roads for many, many miles. On the east coast this was as wilderness as you could get. We were actually technically on the border of the official wilderness but the surrounding White Mountain national forest afforded plenty of wilderness even without the official designation. The bad thing was that there were no signs and no topography to navigate by so we had a hard time finding our way through a maze of trails and old roads crisscrossing the valley. We were looking for a shelter that was on the map just across the border of the wilderness area where shelters are allowed. We finally muddled our way through and when we broke out into an open meadow with the shelter sitting on the other side, under a bright sun, we cheered. That shelter was like the Hilton to us and there was no one in it as might be found during the summer months around here. In fact, we never saw anyone else on the whole trip except the first two miles in from the parking area. It was only about one in the afternoon and we didn’t need a fire to dry anything, just stretching everything out under the sun, including our sleeping bags. My God the luxury one feels when finding a shelter like this in the wilderness. Even in the shade of the shelter where I set up with stove and sleeping pad, spreading out across “our” shelter luxuriously, I was plenty warm with only a light jacket. It felt like summer to us. Someone had left the largest can of Dinty-Moore beef stew that I had ever seen on a shelf in the shelter. It must have been half a gallons worth which we polished off, sorry I know that to anyone not out in the wilderness a half gallon of Dinty Moore Beef Stew sounds nauseating even to think about.
We felt like we had found and Eden in the Pemigewasset wilderness of New Hampshire.
That night I had a nightmare involving my wife needing help back in Virginia and I woke up really spooked by it. That feeling that something was wrong and that she needed me was strong. All that guilt from years of leaving her alone while I go adventuring. I knew she was a strong and totally independent woman but still … that damn nightmare. It followed me the rest of the trip really until I hit a phone and called my wife days later. I told myself it was foolish to overreact to a nightmare. On one of the coldest days on record, my wife had broken down in Roger’s truck and had to wait hours for help, nothing too serious but probably made her so pissed at me for pawning off Roger’s truck on her - I had wanted 4 wheel drive for where we were going up in New England - that her pissed off vibes were enough to give me a nightmare. Her psychic pay back was my spending those days with that little uncertainty. She laughed about it when I told her. She was from south Texas and literally had never experienced this kind of cold before and spoke about the cold more with extreme dislike than anything else. When I told her that it had hit 25 below zero where we were, she gasped in horror.
There were no chocolates or turned down pillows but the little, three sided shelter was the Hilton that night. Plus we got to both dry the tent out and then in the morning to skip the ordeal of taking the tent down. In the morning it was warm and I began to worry if it might not get a little too warm. Nothing worse than six feet of wet, melting snow. Sure enough the warm front stuck for a few days and under a close winter’s sun the snow softened up, especially later in the day. Since we were in the shelter it was easy to break camp early and we did hoping to get off the snow by mid day. About a mile up the trail we came across tracks on the trail that looked like two people had post holed right down the trail. We followed these tracks all day and I kept commenting on them, thinking how tired I was even on skis.
“Roger, these poor people post holed for miles in this snow,” I would say to him with amazement.
Finally we saw the Moose who had made them and boy did I feel stupid. But even for a Moose that has to be a lot of work. Roger had a good laugh at that one.
The worst was crossing a wide wetland where my skis and Roger’s snowshoes kept punching through into water. When I took my skis out of the water and pushed into the snow, snow packed up under it in huge amounts that made it impossible to move. I had to take off my skis and clean them about a million times and we sloshed our way to another three sided shelter. I just screamed out loud at one point after sinking into the water for the one millionth time. The good thing for me was how perfect this trail was for my sled. It also had to be cleaned after sinking in the water but it did not sink as much as did my skis - lot more weight on them. Roger broke trail all day since he didn’t have to constantly right the sled and I couldn’t complain about that. The shelter was on a large pond and again we had it to ourselves. Temperatures were in the 20s when we finally settled into the shelter and we hoped the next day, our last, would bring us a little firmer snow. No Dinty Moore. Even after crushing the humongous can as best we could, it still seemed to take up half my sled. We had to settle on mountain house this night. Roger still was having a lot of pain with his back but it sure didn’t slow him down much. I had spent most of the day following his tracks. I told him to save himself, I was going to need help with the descent down to RT 302. It was only the last mile after an easy grade from here to the descent.
Roger groaned. He didn’t seem encouraged.
The temperature dipped only in the low teens and when we left the shelter it was around freezing and uncomfortably windy. Sure enough we found it easy on a railroad grade again until the descent. It was rough. One of the poles connecting the sled to my hip belt snapped and I ended up lowering the pack in front of my using the one remaining pole. Roger had a hard enough time with his pack and snowshoes on the narrow, path down through virgin snow. Fortunately it was extremely steep all the way down to the road and all I had to do guide the sled as I slipped down the mountain. We really had a hard time with it and were glad it was only a mile. Between his back and my broken sled, we limped into the parking area along RT302. I had a plan for hitching but Roger was reluctant to play along. I finally convinced him to simply lay down next to his pack and make himself comfortable and read while I hitched. I wanted him to stay here with the packs. He resisted the idea of playing disabled but I knew how hard it was going to be to get a ride. I was counting on some sympathy. Of course, it turned out to be a state trouper who was the first sympathetic soul.
“No I’m not hurt,” Roger insisted. I told the officer how brave Roger was but that he really had hurt his back pretty badly and we were trying to hitch a ride back to the trailhead, having limped down to this road in duress. Hey, I’m not proud. Maybe the trooper would help - I already knew that hitch hiking wasn’t illegal. The officer said good luck and a couple people stopped also inquiring whether or not Roger was okay. Roger found this to be very annoying but I saw it as success - my plan was working perfectly. But finally we got a ride and the guy said that he would take me back to the Kancamagus trailhead to my car. He was out for the day downhill skiing and did some backpacking himself in the summer. Just the kind of guy I was looking for! We chatted on the ride over which was pretty long and I found out that he had worked for over 20 years for the same corporation and intended to stay there until retirement. I was amazed that someone could be happy but he was. He liked his work, it paid well and offered a lot a vacation time as well as good benefits. Although I was inspired, I was not that guy. I thought of that guy for years afterwards. I held him up as an example for myself but It was not my destiny to be happy with the corporate life.
Not too long after I got in I pulled down the zipper on my gore Tec jacket and he started waving his hand and simultaneously rolling down the winders - “please, zip that back up!” he begged. I immediately zipped it up tight to my neck.
Besides being chagrined for both stinking so much and not being aware of it, I didn’t want to get thrown out!
After I picked up Roger we only got in one fight all the way back to Virginia. Roger wanted to go into a sit down restaurant but I wanted to go thru a drive thru and keep getting up - I knew how bad we smelled, he didn’t! Fuck ‘em, he said. But he didn’t understand how bad it was - we might well get thrown out!