I was recently reminded that I left this blog hanging. I thought this might be a great time to give an update: an epic birthday weekend hiking one of the most difficult terrains in the northeast!

First, the update: I am currently in Ithaca NY, working once again as a Resident Engineer complete with steel-toed boots and a hardhat. This is the work that I have done for the last 4 years in various places and it suits me well, but what an odd feeling it was to be back at it.

It didn’t take long for the old feelings and patterns that I had tried to leave behind me creep back in. The toughness crept back in. The thick skin. The frustration and at times bitterness towards bureaucracy and politics. Then the social apathy and exhaustion. At the end of the day I just want to be by myself to try to re-center and shake it all off. And usually, what helps me do that best is to go to the mountains.

August 10 was my 29th birthday and I spent it hiking the Presidential Range with my friend Daisy (who you may remember met me in Thailand!). The “Traverse” is 8 mountain summits (one of them I did twice after I realized I lost my iPod), hiked 20+ miles with 9,000+ feet of ascent (and another 9,000 ft of descent). I knew it would be difficult, but I underestimated just how difficult.

I wanted to symbolize a sort of re-awakening. Since I feel that I am in a bit of a holding pattern right now, spending my time making money to fund the next adventure and getting enough experience under my belt to attempt my Professional Engineer license, I’m trying to open myself to what my next steps will be, and encouraging myself to be excited about what a beautiful future it could be. So on top of each windy summit I took a yoga pose, starting small and unfolding up and out. Don’t gag if that’s too literal or poetic… Sometimes it’s fun to be cheesy.

The first summit was the hardest because we climbed 4,100 feet to get up to the ridge line that the other summits follow. We also took the Watson Path, which we later found out is generally avoided as the hardest way up due to its early break out of tree cover.

It was a relief to make it to the top. We took a long rest, and Daisy even got a quick nap in!

After descending to the Madison Springs Hut for a water bottle refill I realized that the pocket that I kept my iPod in (my iPhone was in my pocket, but I had both in case my batteries ran out) was unzipped and empty. Somehow after carrying the iPod through 30 countries safely, I dropped it on the mountainside. I left my pack with Daisy and ran back up to where we had been sitting and recruited a group of college kids to help me look, but to no avail. It’s still a mystery to me how neither I nor Daisy, who had been behind me, noticed it fall. I’m still rather sad about it for sentimental reasons but I couldn’t let that shadow my weekend.

The next summit, Mt Adams, would be the hardest for me out of all 8, probably because I had just expended my adrenaline and hadn’t fed myself enough. But we made it.

It was starting to get cloudy, as you can see, so we decided to descend to some tent platforms called “The Perch.” By the time we got there  there were already 2/3 tents on each platform, but Daisy managed some tent-tris with a couple other campers, incentivized by the mini-cupcakes that she had packed to surprise me! We had a little snafu with her camp stove, ran out of fuel, and almost burned down the tent platform cooking dinner… but still wouldn’t let it shadow our weekend. The sunset was incredible, although I don’t have pictures since I was busy filtering water from the stream. After a delicious meal of gnocchi and garlic and zucchini from our garden, I shared my cigar and whiskey with 6 carpenters from Boston and Daisy charmed her way into borrowing their stove to cook our breakfast.

The next morning I was tired and sore and at the onset didn’t think I would make it through the ascent. If there isn’t snowpack you can only camp below the treelike so sleeping at the Perch meant another 1,000 feet that we needed to climb back up first thing. But it was a beautiful morning and once my legs got warmed up we started trucking along and summited Jefferson early.

Next was Mt Clay, named for a president but not considered an “official” summit, but instead a shoulder of Mt Washington herself. This photo is Mt Clay and Mt Washington behind (with the weather station), from Jefferson.

 

The summit of Clay:

Next was the long slog up the loose, bouldery sides of the biggest mountain in the Northeast.

And looking back over the four mountains we have summited so far:

The rest came quickly. I ate a snack every hour and felt surprisingly good. We passed Lakes of the Clouds Hut, the highest hut in the system at 5,012 ft.

Over Monroe:

Franklin:

And Eisenhower:

And looking back at Washington:

The last “official” summit is Mt Pierce, at only 4,301 ft. I’m not sure if we would have gone out of our way for it but between Eisenhower and Pierce we were again under the tree line and heard a thunderstorm rolling in behind us so we high-tailed it back to the car. Although that was another 3.5 miles of boring, knee-hammering descent, and we didn’t make it before the sky opened up, and ended our adventure with a sprint through the trees.

So that was my birthday, almost exactly as I wanted it. Daisy was a great companion, up for anything.

As for my next move, I’m not sure. I plan to study for my professional engineering license this winter to take the test next spring, but whether that will be house sitting in the Netherlands, working on a farm in New Zealand, volunteering at a hostel in Peru, or maybe even somewhere closer to home, is still unknown. I will check back in a month or two, as my plan builds.

Thank you all again for your interest and support. I hope this post wasn’t too long. I tried to include a lot of pictures 🙂 Cheers.