When I left the US for Japan, I came with three books: The Neverending Story, Good Omens and this one. I had this book because it was a departure gift from Chris Soule who, with his folks, had come out to Logan airport to see me off at the gate. It was a more innocent time.... We had both hiked up Mount Washington and along some of the more beginner-friendly trails (for my benefit, not his) and had, in retrospect, enjoyed it immensely. I do believe that, during the actual hiking, I was in favor of flattening the entire range and enclosing the trail in a nice climate-controlled pathway.
I knew that the Presidentials were dangerous. While we were in college, Chris kept a map of them on his wall, and would add newspaper clippings every time someone died. A tad morbid, but you do get a certain satisfaction knowing that you went up there and, by dint of good preparation,...more
When I left the US for Japan, I came with three books: The Neverending Story, Good Omens and this one. I had this book because it was a departure gift from Chris Soule who, with his folks, had come out to Logan airport to see me off at the gate. It was a more innocent time.... We had both hiked up Mount Washington and along some of the more beginner-friendly trails (for my benefit, not his) and had, in retrospect, enjoyed it immensely. I do believe that, during the actual hiking, I was in favor of flattening the entire range and enclosing the trail in a nice climate-controlled pathway.
I knew that the Presidentials were dangerous. While we were in college, Chris kept a map of them on his wall, and would add newspaper clippings every time someone died. A tad morbid, but you do get a certain satisfaction knowing that you went up there and, by dint of good preparation, sense and luck, made it down in one piece.
It's tempting to say something at this point like, "And we were the lucky ones." But in fact, thousands of people visit the Presidentials every year. They either hike or drive or take the Cog Railway (the last two types are, by the way, pussies) and the vast majority of them don't die. And the reason they don't die is, in some small part, because 135 people already have. And it is by their examples that hikers learn never, never to underestimate these mountains.
Nicholas Howe is a son of the mountains. His family and all their friends have intimate ties to the White Mountains and the Presidentials in particular, and he's grown up on their slopes. If anyone knows the mountains, their promises and threats, Howe does, and in this book he tells of a small sampling of lives that the mountains have claimed. Some of them were just bad luck, like 15 year-old Sewall Faunce, who had the misfortune to be standing beneath the Tuckerman Ravine ice arch when it collapsed. Others were done in by their own overconfidence, like Frederick Strickland who was the first to die on their slopes (and who, to be fair, had NO idea what he was getting himself into). Still others died trying to save their friends (Monroe Cooper and Erik Lattey) or died while their friends saved their own skins (Derek Tinkham). They died in water and ice, of cold and injury. Experts and amateurs, the mountain didn't discriminate.
The counterpoint to all this senseless death is a history of hiking on the mountains and its occupation by the AMC, the Appalachian Mountain Club. From the earliest days of New England mountaineering, the AMC has kept and maintained the trails and done everything in its power to make sure that hikers in the mountains are safe. Barring that, they do everything they can to make sure that they can be rescued. They do not always succeed, but they work by the motto, "Not dead until warm and dead." Howe has a great deal of love for the volunteers and state workers who risk their lives at the drop of a hat for hikers in danger, and as you read you can't help but share his enthusiasm. Without this dedicated corps of people, the deaths on the mountains would be of a staggering number instead of a simply unfortunate one.
This is a very enjoyable book, and a good history of the White Mountains for the last 150 years or so. Howe treats a delicate subject with compassion, but also is more than willing to point out when a death could have been prevented. Check it out.
Also, for even greater entertainment, here is my write-up of the trip from back in '99: The Mountain Doesn't Want Us Here....less
Not Without Peril: 150 Years of Misadventure on the Presedential Range 
