50 Miles From Nowhere
Piece of Cake The only blemish impeding the pre-dawn silence was the ding of the open car door. I hugged my girlfriend tightly. “Be safe,” she said. “Piece of cake.” Sam liked hiking but she had nothing to prove. I, however, needed another feather in the cap. That’s why we were at the Valley Way Trailhead at 4:00 AM. This was the starting point of the Presidential Traverse. Known as the greatest hike east of the Rockies, the 18+ mile journey in the White Mountains of New Hampshire covers seven peaks above 4,000 feet - including Mt. Washington, the highest point east of the Mississippi.

Upward Pack secure. I tested the Camelbak flow and adjusted my walking poles. With a deep exhale, I entered the forest, my headlamp piercing through the tar of darkness. The two-and-a-half hour, 4,300-foot hike up to Madison Hut (at the foot of Mount Madison) is peaceful, protected, and pretty straightforward. It looked like most wooded-hikes in early summer: Wafts of timber, a river’s murmur and the industrious bug impeding my path at face level. It’s the “I’m reconnected with nature and I feel great” scene. Up and up I went as the sun took over headlamp duties. Slowly, the deciduous turf gave way to its conifer cousin which eventually ceded ground to something even heartier. With a tactile makeup more truss than plant, the shrubs that negotiated their way into existence at the tree line were surely paying the price; hunched low, clinging to whatever earth they could to keep the photosynthetic conveyor belt churning. Approaching this Maginot Line of life, a sign sits reading: “STOP 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.”
