Fast Times on Mount Washington

   A Friday Welcome from Chairman Joe.

   On this day in 1934, a wind speed record of 231 mph was set at the weather observatory on the summit of Mount Washington in northern New Hampshire. This record held until Cyclone Olivia in Western Australia in 1996 hit 254 mph. But if you don't count cyclones and tornados, Mount Washington still holds the record for regular winds.
   There's a café atop Mount Washington with an observation deck where you can sit on a nice day and enjoy the view with your coffee. There a funny short video loop on a monitor in the café that shows a man trying to have breakfast on the deck while a hurricane force wind is blowing. The cereal gets blown away before it reaches the bowl, same for the milk. The table and chair fold themselves up in a corner.. You can find it on YouTube. Search for "Breakfast of Champions."
   The tribes who lived around the mountain called it "the top is so hidden," or "the place of the Great Spirit," or simply, "white rocks." They didn't climb it because they feared the gods who lived there. A white man who wanted to buy it, climbed it in 1642 to show the Indians the white men were not subject to the gods.
   That man was lucky, Since 1849 almost 150 people have died on the mountain. Some from avalanches or falls, but mostly from poor planning, or, as the author of a book on the mountain fatalities wrote, a lack of understanding "the difference in weather between Boston and the mountains."
   I was one of those naïve climbers who left his home in Boston at an early hour intending to get to the summit later that day. My college buddies and I got to the base of the mountain around nine am. The first half of the ascent is an easy hike thought thick woods. One hiker coming down told me I needed better shoes. About halfway up, the woods end and the rocks begin. There are a couple of open faced huts for campers and a place to fill canteens. You then face a steep amphitheater of rock. Someone advised us to climb the far edge of the ravine to the right.
   After an hour of hand over hand climbing, we reached the Alpine Gardens, a treeless region socked in by cloud. There were cairns to keep us on the trail to the summit. Then we noticed a forestry sign. It read: "The area ahead has the worst weather in America. Many have died there from exposure, even in the summer. Turn back now if the weather is bad." Hmmm. We hadn't thought about exposure. Other than being foggy, the weather wasn't bad, so we pressed on. After another hour, the weather observatory and defunct granite hotel loomed out of the fog. There was nothing to see. The café hadn't been built yet. We asked someone who had driven up the auto road if we could ride down with them. I've always regretted not hiking down.
   We returned to the White Mountains in the 1990s on a cross country trip from Minnesota to Maine with the family. Matt was working for the summer so we just had Joey and Ned. We also had one of those gigantic video cameras to record highlights of the trip. I thought we'd ride the cog railway to the top. This little train runs on the oldest cog railway in the US, built in 1869. When we got to the base of the mountain and I saw the fare, I packed the family back in the car. "We'll drive up ourselves."  It took about an hour to drive around the mountain to the start of the car road. The tariff was more in line with my tightwad nature.
   This is way better than the train I said to myself. I had Teresa run the camera. The change is amazing as you emerge from the woods to a zone of wind blasted scrub fir, and then further up to a treeless alpine area. It was a beautiful sunny day. The boys wanted to get out and scramble on the rocks. Ned had on a pair of  Zubaz which must have been uncomfortable because he kept adjusting them.
   The view from the summit was incredible. The old hotel, held down with heavy chains, has been turned into a museum. The bunkerlike weather observatory also has a museum as well as  the aforementioned café, which we patronized. The coal burning cog railway engine was quietly hissing in the distance, awaiting it's return down the mountain for another batch of tourists.
   A few years later, Ned's fifth grade class was studying the Alps. Always wanting to be helpful, I suggested Ned show the Mount Washington video to his class. "It's the American Alps," I told him. His teacher thought it was such a good idea that she had the video piped into the three other fifth grade classrooms. There was chatter among the kids as the video passed through the lower woods, but once the great panorama of sky and rock came into view, there was an awed silence. That's what Ned's teacher told me later. But a bit later, there was a gale of laughter from all four rooms during the scene of Ned's pants adjustment. I should have edited that bit out. Kids can be so cruel.

Near the summit of Mount Washington.