Five Decades and the New England 111
Dan Ladue
ADK 46er #2694
New England 111er #
For Michaela
Whoever said that life is more about the journey then the destination was thinking of me and my 49 years journey to become a New England 111er.
It was 1971, and my friend Michaela and I were a few weeks out of college when I called her to see if she’d like to climb a mountain with me. It was June 15th and I was arranging a day off from my college job at a grocery store. The specifics are lost in memory, but our goal was New York’s Whiteface Mountain. There are only a handful of details that I do remember from that hike: the trail was wet, we had terrible footwear, black flies and mosquitoes were monstrous, and, thanks to Michaela’s memory, we made snowballs near the summit.
What I did not know that day was that it would mark mountain #1 in my quest to become an ADK 46er and, ultimately, a New England 111er.
It includes two careers, hiking in four states, countless miles traveling to and from trailheads and equally countless miles on trails in all sorts of weather. The arc of years spans youth, to middle age to senior. To compound the challenge were two joint replacements, lower back surgery and advances Lyme Disease. It has been a journey.
In 1972 I must have been a decision to earn the title of “Adirondack 46er.” A roommate had completed the mountains that summer and his accomplishment motivated me. Teaching provided great opportunities to explore all sorts of summer activities. For me they would be hiking and travel. That summer, over extended trips in the Adirondacks, I knocked off the essential firsts—Cascade and Porter, as well as Giant of the Valley. That fall, I’d leave school and head to Keene Valley, park my car in the Garden Parking lot (yes, there were spaces in those days,) spend the night in a lean-to and climb both Saturday and Sunday. One Saturday saw a completion of the Great Range. Once, in late October using a lean-to at Bushnell Falls, several of us made an ascent of Marcy only to find ourselves in a sudden snow squall, improperly dressed and foolish enough or smart enough, depending on one’s point-of-view, to look for the trail and head down. By the good Grace of God, the hike had an uneventful happy ending. It did, though, hamper any further hikes into the high peaks late in the season. By the end of the year I was an ADK 11er and well on my way.
First love is beautiful and what made it most beautiful was a mutual love for hiking. In the early to mid 1970’s we’d knock off chunks of mountains on day hikes and on overnighters. We would spend delightful days camped at Marcy Dam or John’s Brook Lodge, climbing by day and enjoying the company of other hikers in the evening. Haystack…Blake’s Peak and Colvin…Algonquin. Beautiful memories of sunny blue days, above-tree line peaks and moonlit nights in an around the High Peaks are vivid reminders of those days.
But first loves do not always last, and when it ended so did my hiking. A new love would enter my life, but this new love did not like to hike. And so followed a long stretch where almost no climbing was done at all. The new love introduced me to other things; a return to the mountains waited until 1985, during a sabbatical year from my job as a high school English teacher to study Library Science at SUNY Albany, where I once again returned to the mountains. What followed was an aggressive assault on peaks still unclimbed. In those days, half the mountains were untrailed. Someone had given me a 1962 copy of the Guide to the Adirondack Trails which proved to be an invaluable reference source in orienting myself to those illusive summits. Consider these directions for climbing Allen from the Twin Brook lean-to. “From the lean-to (0 mi.) continue toward Marcy on the yellow trail until it meets the gravel lumber road heading N and S at 0.29 m. Turning R this roads heads S…., crosses several brooks flowing from L and comes to a junction with another gravel road at 1.28 m. (This road to the R heads 250 deg., turns S at two loading stations, then W and SW, finally heading 160 deg. At 2.00 m, crossing Dudley Brook on a bridge at 2.07 mi and joining the main gravel road in the first clearing at 2.14 mi...” Whew! Good orienting skills were absolutely essential.
On a flawlessly blue, 1st of October 1989, I finished on Seymour. “Done at last”” I wrote Grace Hudowlski somewhat uncreatively. “Done at last! Thank God I’m done at last!” On October 21st, Grace wrote me a personal, multi-paragraph letter. “Seymour ‘on a spectacularly gorgeous, sunny, first of October’ must have been incredible.’ It’s an added blessing to have such a day in the mountains although nothing takes away the special feeling one has on his 46th. Welcome to Adirondack Forty-Sixer membership.” What a lady!
As was the pattern from the very beginning, there would be long gaps between spurts of hiking. Thus was the case with New Hampshire. Perhaps it was the sheer “OMG—there are 48 of them” that kept me away, but once I began, it took less time to finish than either New York or Maine.
My first foray into the Whites was in late August 1995 which started a tradition that went on for several years. The last week in summer, before my teaching job brought me back to school, was a perfect time to get away, spend a chunk of time off the Kankamangus or in the Franconia Notch area of the White Mountains, and peak-bag my days away until the start of the Labor Day weekend. More than once I hiked hut to hut, starting on one side of the White Mountains and relying on the kindness of hiking strangers on the other side to bring me back to my car. My New Hampshire journal records serendipitous encounters with other hikers, our common passion for mountains the linkage that bonded us. Most of those hikes were done alone, but I did avail myself on some of the more difficult climbs with AMC sponsored hikes.
It was during those years that I fell in love with the Presidentials. If I saw a stretch of particularly good weather, I’d drop whatever plans I had, drive to Twin Mountain, bunk in at my favorite, now non-existent, cabin complex, gather up firewood and enjoy a bonfire before settling in for an early night. Ridge walking high above tree line on those mountains, always on dazzling mid-summer days, remains one of the highlights of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
Vermont’s peaks were easily accessible from home and were always done when late summer or full peak autumn days were blue and vistas spectacular. The descent off Mansfield’s Sunset Trail is one of the more memorable hikes as the sun began its slow descent over the Adirondacks and the Lake Champlain Islands. My hiking journal records Ellen as the last of the five Vermont peaks on a “gorgeous, clear, warm” October 1, 2001. What made the hike unforgettable, however, was a swim I took in Plattsburgh Bay later that afternoon. “Snow geese and a swan shared the water with me” I wrote later that evening. It wasn’t only mountains that made an impression.
In August of 2005 it was time to tackle Maine. That spring/summer had been emotionally demanding. I’d walked the journey with my oldest friend from her diagnosis with pancreatic cancer in April to her death less than two months later. I gave the eulogy at her funeral. I was still emotionally drained two months later, and could not bear to attend the dispersal of her ashes on her birthday later that summer. On August 24th, I opted out and chose to climb Old Speck—my first peak in Maine. Little did I know that Maine would raise the ante on how I viewed hiking. It would take thirteen years to finish.
A year later I retired from my job and, apparently, from hiking as well. It would take another six years to get back on track.
Summer of 2011 saw magical hikes up Abraham and the Saddlebacks. The climb down a ski trail is the only time I ever saw a moose in all the trips to New Hampshire and Maine. It is more remembered, though, for hiking paths off the summit through entire slopes covered in mountain lupine that reached the top of my head.
In mid-September of 2012 I misjudged the time it would take to reach the summit of Crocker Mountain. I foolishly started too late in the morning for the grueling five-hour hike. Any plans to do South Crocker ended when I realized that even my fifteen-minute turn-around time was insufficient. Descending the mountain on that late summer’s day changed the way I viewed Maine’s wilderness. I’d seen no one all day. Coming down I heard animal noises that were not birds. People at home, of course, thought it was funny, but I couldn’t get off that mountain fast enough. I got to my car in almost pitch darkness. I privately vowed that I’d never do this sort of thing again.
Two weeks later I tripped on badly placed curbing in my hometown and broke the patella of my right knee. It was all downhill from there. By mid-2013 I had two choices: live with the pain or have the knee replaced. For me there was only one option. I wanted my life back and I would do whatever it took to get back into the game.
A year later I was ready to climb again, but the combination of the hike off Crocker with its spooky serenade of animal sounds and a skittishness to get really aggressive in the mountains, led me to hire the terrific team of Melissa Shea and Jim Albert of Mountain Guide Services in New Vineyard, Maine. I was upfront with them, but they took me on as clients. On a blazing hot September 4th, a year to the date I’d had my knee replaced, we scored South Crocker. A day later we tackled the Bigelows. I was back in the game, but only briefly. Three years later my other knee was replaced which led to more delays.
I once again hired Melissa and Jim. My goal was North Brother and the Khatadin twins of Baxter and Hamlin in Baxter State Park. It had only been a year since the second replacement and I was physically unable to finish all three. Hamlin was a monster of a climb done on the first day of autumn. Melissa almost called a turn-around but saw how motivated I was to finish. We ate a quick lunch on the summit, but the descent was slow and by the time we reached the junction of the Chimney Pond and Hamlin Ridge Trail dusk had settled in. For more than three miles we walked out in the dark, glad to have followed the Park’s requirements that all hikers have a flashlight.
I was determined to finish in 2018. The day for the ascent was perfect—hot and sunny with a stiff wind on the summit to cool us down. It was the summer of our 40th anniversary and my partner, who’s idea of a good time is not climbing mountains like Baxter, agreed to come along. I could not have been happier.
The hike was surprisingly easy, as compared to Hamlin or the Bigelows. With the exception of the .2 mile stretch up a scree-studded slide, we were at the summit by early afternoon. At 1:38, on July 10th, my hands touched the signage atop the mountain. I was a bit overwhelmed. It had taken a long, long time to reach this goal.
Decades change the way we live…and hike. When I started on Whiteface Mt. that June day in 1971 I was paying $100.00 a month for a nice one-bedroom apartment. Ten dollars more got me a garage. In 2017 the bunkhouse at Roaring Brook Campground in Baxter State Park cost $110.00. The bunkhouse. Two nights. No electricity. No showers. In 1971, I borrowed my father’s state-of-the art Kodak Instamatic for the rare time I took snapshots. On July 10, 2018, when I finished on Baxter, I posted triumphant photographs via Facebook and Whatsapp to friends on five continents. In 1971, 23 people hiked end to end on the Appalachian Trail. On an uneventful, eight hour, nine-mile return hike on Spaulding in late August 2017, I counted 24 through-hikers—18 heading north and 6 going south.
Times had certainly changed.
But what had not changed, despite mountain and trail congestion at all locations, was the dazzling beauty of our beautiful corner of the world. Mountain lupine still grace trails; sunsets still sparkle. The smell of wood smoke to hurtle me back decades. The sound of a loon on a lake or pond can still send goosebumps up and down my arm. Our mountains are more than precious. I know it would be difficult for me to live in a place where the earth didn’t rise to meet the sky or where lakes, ponds and rivers did not exist.
A month after I finished, my friend Michaela returned to Plattsburgh. It was the 50th anniversary of our friendship. On our day together we headed to Whiteface, this time driving to the summit. Unlike that June day in 1971 when our entire future lay ahead of us, we acknowledged how finite time was. While we had certainly changed, what lay below us had not. To the west, Lake Placid glistened in the late afternoon sun and to the east lay Vermont’s Green Mountains Forever wild! New York led the way in the Northeast. Let us hope that future generations will enjoy the same that we have come to love.
The remarkable trek from Whiteface to Baxter had taken 47 years, 14 days. It had been an extraordinary, five-decade, long walk in the woods.
Epilogue:
Two months after completing Baxter, and after a late summer of deepening depression and confusion, I was diagnosed with advanced psychiatric Lyme Disease. Today, after eleven days in the hospital, ten months of antibiotics and six months of herbs, there is still a residue of Lyme in my body, but I am in full remission. I lost almost a year of my life. Please take Lyme Disease seriously.
