My AMC White Mountain Guides - audio

The audio story of My AMC White Mountain Guides

Follow the link below to listen to the story.

My AMC White Mountain Guides

Laudizen

The 48 Summits

When it comes to climbing all 48 4000' peaks in the White Mountains, the hiker faces a myriad of ways and styles, and all choices will accomplish the goal, whatever that goal might be.

The 48 Summits

This story is available only in 'The White Mountain Chronicles', a collection of 22 travels, memoirs, and adventures from New Hampshire, the Granite State. The eBook may be purchased and downloaded from Smashwords or Amazon, and at other premium digital stores as well.

Enjoy!

Two hyperlinks appear below; visit Smaswords to download the eBook in any format or visit Amazon to download the eBook to your Kindle.

'The White Mountain Chronicles' at Smashwords

'The White Mountain Chronicles' at Amazon

(approx 53,900 words)

Chapters
My AMC White Mountain Guides
May Camp
Red Flannel Hash
In the Shadow of Monadnock
Carter Notch in Winter, the First Trip
Through the Past Darkly with Sven Saws and Candle Lanterns
Winter Night at Hermit Lake
How Things Come to Pass
Second Sojourn
Camp 16
Ghosts and Summits
Golden Girls
Pilgrimage
Mt Garfield Dream
Closing Galehead
Remembering Ray Evans, 1909-2001
Mountain Pond and Carter Dome
Riddle of New Hampshire
Mt Carrigain Trilogy
On the Garfield Ridge with Jack Kerouac
Out of the Fog
The 48 Summits

The White Mountain Chronicles

'The White Mountain Chronicles' is now available for download at Smashwords and Amazon. These 22 stories celebrate the author’s two decades of adventure in the mountains of New Hampshire. From Monadnock in the south to the White Mountains in the north, these memoirs and stories capture the fleeting moments of a New Hampshire life: from friendships forged on the trail to nights of revelry, from dangerous water crossings to winter storms, and all the strange memories and events that make the experience whole.

The volume begins with 'My AMC White Mountain Guides', the author's homage to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a story that ends with a poignant bit of graffiti found by the author years earlier.

That story is followed by 'May Camp', an appreciation of setting up camp in a driving rain, a task made joyous so long as it means being back in the White Mountains.

Many adventures follow: from wild nights on the trail to hot summer treks, from the humor of the 'Golden Girls' to the discovery of red flannel hash, from frigid winter outings to the camaraderie of the High Huts, from the last motorcycle ride to the shadow of Monadnock.

In 'Mt Garfield Dream', the author and a companion ascend the Garfield Ridge in a May rainstorm, enduring a frigid and dangerous water crossing on the way. After reaching the ridge, they continue their ascent toward Garfield Shelter, negotiating the steep climb up the rocky cone of Mt Garfield as the freezing runoff from the rain cascades down the trail like an icy waterfall. As they climb wet and frozen, the rain turns to a blinding driven snow, yet more wonder awaits them higher up the mountain.

'Out of the Fog' is a collection of strange happenings compiled over eighteen years on the trail in New Hampshire.

In 'The 48 Summits', the author describes the haphazard way in which he came to climb all of the 4000' peaks in New Hampshire, and gives special mention to those awe-inspiring places he visited numerous times over the years, such as Mt Moosilauke, a peak he climbed twenty times.

These unique stories are filled with the author's love and respect for New Hampshire; this collection is unlike anything available on the market today.

Enjoy!

Two hyperlinks appear below; visit Smaswords to download the eBook in any format or visit Amazon to download the eBook to your Kindle.

'The White Mountain Chronicles' at
Smashwords

'The White Mountain Chronicles' at
Amazon

(approx 53,900 words)

Chapters
My AMC White Mountain Guides
May Camp
Red Flannel Hash
In the Shadow of Monadnock
Carter Notch in Winter, the First Trip
Through the Past Darkly with Sven Saws and Candle Lanterns
Winter Night at Hermit Lake
How Things Come to Pass
Second Sojourn
Camp 16
Ghosts and Summits
Golden Girls
Pilgrimage
Mt Garfield Dream
Closing Galehead
Remembering Ray Evans, 1909-2001
Mountain Pond and Carter Dome
Riddle of New Hampshire
Mt Carrigain Trilogy
On the Garfield Ridge with Jack Kerouac
Out of the Fog
The 48 Summits

Laudizen King

The 48 peaks over 4000' in New Hampshire

We seem to be a country of ‘lists’ and that trend made its way to the hiking community of the northeast as well. The White Mountains of New Hampshire have 48 peaks above 4000’ of elevation as compiled by the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Four Thousand Footer Committee (FTFC), a group formed in 1957 to establish the official criteria and maintain the list of peaks. In addition to the 4000’ of elevation requirement, each official peak must be at least 200’ above the low point of a connecting ridge leading to a higher neighbor. A hiker must climb all the peaks on the official list to request membership in the ‘club’. There are many other lists and clubs associated with the mountains of the northeast: the New England 4000 footers and the Northeast 111 to name two. The Northeast 111 includes the 4000 foot peaks of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, as well as the 46 peaks over 4000’ in the Adirondacks and the 2 peaks over 4000’ in the Catskills (there are 115 peaks in this list but they have kept the original name). There are also those clubs that, by the very nature of their lists, will always have just a few select members. There is the 4000 footer grid club, whose members have climbed all 48 four thousand foot peaks once in each month of the year (a total of 576 climbs), and there is the 48 in 1 winter club, where membership is gained by climbing all 48 four thousand foot peaks in one winter season.

My personal history of hiking in New Hampshire covered eighteen years, from 1972 through 1990, and it took me the first fifteen of those years to climb all of the 48 peaks over 4000’ in the White Mountains. The summits vary greatly both in elevation and terrain; the lowest peak is the wooded summit of Mt Tecumseh at 4002' and the highest point is the rocky summit cone of Mt Washington at 6288', a place famous for the highest wind ever recorded and home to the world's worst weather. When my days of hiking in the White Mountains were over, Mt Moosilauke stood as the one 4000’ summit most visited by me, having climbed that peak 20 times.

So begins my personal history with the 48 peaks over 4000'in New Hampshire. To read the complete story, follow the link below.

The 48 Summits

Laudizen

The Riddle of New Hampshire

New Hampshire's own Sphinx, the great stone face of The Old Man of the Mountain, once gazed out at the state from his perch on the side of Cannon Mountain, high above the floor of Franconia Notch.

For years, I struggled to answer the riddle posed by the granite face of the Old Man and hidden in the 1972 AMC White Mountain Guide, but to no avail. The riddle, as originally posed, involved Mt Moosilauke and Mt Carrigain.

If you are an experienced hiker, and familiar with the many summits of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, you may have your own answer to this vexing conundrum; yet this is a riddle for a very few.

Follow this link: Riddle of New Hampshire

Laudizen King

Spring, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire

Spring is here in Los Angeles, but I am thinking back to those years in New Hampshire when spring came late to the White Mountains. I'm haunted by the names still: the AMC, Crawford Notch, Franconia Notch, Franconia Ridge, Mt Bond, Mt Washington, New Hampshire, North Twin, South Twin, Pinkham Notch, Presidential Range, White Mountains, and all the other places I visited and the ghosts I traveled with. For eighteen years I plied the trails of New Hampshire, and I cherish the memories of it all.

The link below takes you to a story describing those years.

AMC White Mountain Guide

Laudizen King

Closing Galehead Hut, 1986

In 1986, I was at Galehead Hut on the Appalachian Trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire when it closed for the season. That year Columbus Day fell on Monday, October 13, and the hut was scheduled to close that day, weather permitting. I made that outing into a three-day adventure, staying at the hut for the last two nights it was open. Late in the afternoon of Sunday, October 12, I returned from a memorable day of hiking up on North Twin and South Twin Mountains to find a group of people, along with the hut master, listening to a baseball game on a small radio that was set by a window in the kitchen of the hut, the only place where the radio could receive that channel. It was the Red Sox and Angels as they met in Game 5 of the ALCS playoffs. Losing to the Angels, and down to their final strike, the Red Sox rallied as Dave Henderson hit a dramatic home run to put the Bosox ahead in the top of the ninth. In a flash, a variety of liquors and wines, cheeses and appetizers appeared on the kitchen counter, a veritable bounty pulled from the backpacks of the assembled guests. Incredibly, the Angels tied it in the bottom of the ninth, and the game went into extra innings. There were no scout groups with kids present, no families with fussy children to contend with or cater to, just the right group of adults thrown together at the right time. Although we were in a high hut in the White Mountains, for a brief while, we were as loud and raucous (men and women alike) as any sports bar in the city of Boston, and that mood continued into the night after Boston finally sealed the victory.

This story appears at:


Link to Closing Galehead

Laudizen