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Climbing The Four-Thousand-Footers In Winter
It did seem to us, my husband Robert and me, Charter
Members of the
Four-thousand-footers Club, that climbing the New
Hampshire
Four-thousand-footers in winter would present an even
more sporting
challenge than ambling up the well-trodden trails in
summer. In winter
there is no footpath visible under the snow and,
particularly in open
hardwoods, finding the route may be a puzzle. Winter
is colder; you can take
only the briefest of rests, no more of those sybaritic
siestas, stretched
out on the warm, soft ground. Days are shorter. The
rucksack is heavier with
all those extra clothes, not to mention the crampons
clanking away and the
ice-axe. Then there's the business of finding water,
which is more of a
problem than in summer, with the rills trickling
around here and there. At
first it may seem strange but dehydration is a more
serious concern in
winter. Every breath you exhale carries away a lot of
good moisture which
the inhaled air, cold and so dry, cannot replace. Add
to this the fact that
the water in your canteen, as well as the sandwiches
in your pack, are all
too likely to be frozen rock-hard. Unless, that is,
you have been careful to
carry them under your outer garments, close to your
body, where they will be
tangled up with your camera and films. And these do
not like to get too
cold either. Most of all, the real work of breaking
trail in deep or heavy
snow, or kicking steps up steep slopes, is often
considerable.
All these may sound like splendid arguments for
staying home, but not to
us.
We were old winter climbers from way back, thanks to
the good old Bemis
Crew.
The Bemis Crew, initiated in 1923 (I joined in
1926), was a group of
tough and experienced mountaineers who met for a week
of climbing in
February. Many of them were veterans of the Alps, and
in a later year we
found, upon a check, that more than half the members
had climbed the
Matterhorn. They knew how to handle snowshoes,
snowshoe creepers, crampons,
ice-axes, compasses and maps. Tough jaunts some of
those jokers led. On that
first year of my acquaintance with them we ranged over
the Presidentials and
Carters unaware, as we reached the summits of
four-thousand-foot peaks, that
more than thirty years later these ascents would give
us points in a game,
the game of Climbing the Four-thousanders in Winter.
This game was an offshoot, of course, of that very
popular game of the
Appalachian Mountain Club, Climbing the
Four-thousanders, which was set in
motion, and such vigorous and enthusiastic motion in
1958. Our game -
"ours" because we were the first to play it - followed
right along. As the
initiators we set the rules, which concerned the
definition of "winter".
"Snow on the ground" and other namby-pamby criteria
definitely did not
count. "Winter" was to be measured exclusively by the
calendar. In 1960, for instance, winter began at 3:27pm on Wednesday, December 21, too late to get to Crag Camp by daylight.
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