by Hannah Palmer

After many sleepless nights, the summer crew of 1980 put an end to it, fixing them to the wall. Since then, the boots have remained high above our heads in the crew room, their walking days over.

Ben Campbell was supposed to be Hutmaster at Lakes of the Clouds the summer of 1980. He was extremely excited, but an unfortunate accident left him dead the summer before, and he was never able to fulfill his childhood dream of being a hut-master at one of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s renowned wilderness huts. Ben’s mother sent his boots to the AMC shortly after his death. It is said that his ghost came to the hut with the boots and continues to haunt the building today.

Ben’s birthday falls sometime during mid-summer, and to commemorate his death, the crew decided to walk to Mt. Monroe, less than half a mile away. They took his boots with them, planning to have a moment of silence at the summit. They set out into the night with their headlamps off. It was a clear night, and they could see far down the trail in the moonlight. As they rounded the bend that took them out of sight of the hut, the wind picked up a little. “Nice breeze,” some people noticed. The wind continued to gain momentum as the crew walked on. A good rule of thumb for weather in the White Mountains is to expect the unexpected. With this in mind, the crew was not alarmed as a thick fog began to envelop them.

Three weather systems collide near the summit of Mt. Washington, about half a mile from Lakes of the Clouds Hut, at the center of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. The Gulf Stream brings wet tropical air from the Caribbean that becomes supercooled as it glides over the North Atlantic. There is also the system that carries warmer, drier air from the Midwest. The Air from over the Atlantic cools the midwestern stream, consolidating the warmer cloud vapor into droplets. These droplets fall over Boston, creating the long, often miserable winters that northern New England is famous for.

A third system comes south from Canada. It brings the icy north wind and the storms that hit Montreal. This additional moisture becomes the heavy rain, fog, and snowfall that the Mt. Washington valley is accustomed to. The collision of three, not two systems creates an unpredictable and windy funnel that is powerful enough to crush buildings and literally blow people away with little warning. The highest wind speeds in the world have been clocked at the Mt. Washington observatory due to this complex weather system.

That said, there was no need to worry as the summer crew walked to Mt. Monroe on Ben Campbell’s birthday. They were prepared for whatever hell the heavens could unleash on them. They knew that though it was clear when they left, the weather could turn at any minute. The fog continued to thicken as they walked on. When the crew reached the summit, they sat down and waited for everyone to arrive. Suddenly, the wind reached gale-force speeds, and the fog was so thick they could not see twenty feet in front of them. It was now impossible to discern the trail from the rocks, as they were high above treeline and the path was marked only by nearly invisible blue blazes painted on the boulders.

Fog and wind alone are not such a problem, but there was something else, a sensation in the air, the kind of thing you can feel, but not describe. There was a thickness in the atmosphere that could not be attributed to the fog. The storm was so sudden, so utterly unpredicted on this clear night; this was unrelated to the three weather systems. There was presence, like when someone stands in front of you in a place with no light. They had left in a group of eleven, but only seven people were present. Those at the summit decide to turn back. With all due respect to the ill-fated Hutmaster, safety is always the first concern.

The group starts off in the direction of the hut, but the wind is blowing them in all directions. They manage to dismount the summit cone of Mt. Monroe, and make their way toward the hut. The presence is still with them, just in front of their faces, sullying their path, disorienting them. There is suddenly something unwelcoming about this night They have not found the others, and the group of seven has now been separated. Each group seems to be wandering away from the others, unable to find their way in the foggy darkness. After over two hours circling, never less than half a mile of hut, everyone finally makes it home safely, if a bit bewildered. There is little discussion as the crew readies for bed; it seems that everyone has the same understanding: there was something on that mountain that did not want them to make it home that night.

This is just one story of mild misadventure near Mt. Washington. There have been hundreds of deaths on the mountain, and there is a list of the names at the summit visitor center. Most are overzealous hikers who go out in adverse weather conditions, never to return. At least one person per year gets killed in icefalls in Tuckerman and Huntington Ravines. These are both clefts in the side of Mt. Washington where snow and ice blow in during the winter.

People ski in the spring once the avalanche danger has subsided, but sometimes several tons of ice will break off, making a loud, cryptic popping noise. Sometimes people aren’t fast enough to get out of the way. Others fall into crevasses, plummeting hundreds of feet down into the ice. They are frozen there, often to remain unfound until the spring melt. Their blue bodies are discovered in rivers, sometimes hundreds of yards or miles downstream, carried by the ice. Many die of exposure, slowly freezing to death, losing their judgment as the cold sets into their bodies. They stumble, fall, and lay down, never to awake again. Some fall into the Dry River, a small stream that winds through thick unsettled wilderness just below treeline. It is said that their spirits live along the trail and sidetrack unwitting hikers when they pass as night falls.

Above treeline, the only accommodation is in the AMC huts. Most of the people that die on the mountain are young and seem to have a long life with many adventures ahead of them. When these people pass, it seems that there is something left unfinished. Most of them weren’t ready to go, and part of them lingers on the mountain. After the body is removed, where does this energy, this life force go? Many believe that the souls of the dead seek refuge in these shelters as the only human habitations in the area. There is company there, young people, much like themselves, enjoying the mountain as they once did before it prematurely took their lives.

Despite this dark vein, the huts see thousands and thousands visitors per season. Most people go for weekend trips, and some extend the Sabbath so they can stay an extra night or two. Families with young children stay at the huts for the warmth and. There are running water and clean toilets. There are long picnic tables in the dining room on which dinner and breakfast are served family-style. Five courses are presented in large bowls and platters from which everyone feeds. “Take what you want, but eat what you take. Make sure everyone gets some before taking more for yourself,” the crew warns in the pre-dinner talk.

Soup comes first, followed by fresh salad and home-baked bread. After this, the main course is served, usually something high in carbohydrates, making a mockery of the Atkins Diet. There is a weekly menu that is followed so that guests hiking from hut to hut don’t get the same meal multiple nights in a row. After all the food is served, the crew stands in front of the crowd and gives a little background about the hut and themselves.

Mason Herring is Hutmaster at Madison Spring Hut this fall. He is tall with broad shoulders, and an untamable mop of curly black hair that flows seamlessly into a beard. He is telling the guests about his karaoke fetish. “I’m really into the old country songs,” he starts, breaking into the chorus from Alan Jackson’s 'Chatahoochie.’ “Way down yonder on the Chatahoochie/never knew how much that muddy water meant to me. . .” Twenty-eight Boy Scouts, over half of tonight’s crowd, are laughing.

At 7:30, the night is young. The guests are finished with their meals, and the rest of the croo and I are working on the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. Scott, the hut naturalist, is giving a program to the people in the dining room. Tonight’s seminar is on lichen. Scott is telling them it is both an algae and a fungus, living symbiotically to form an entirely new organism. I am thinking that it is pretty amazing as I scrub away at the dishes. I am pondering the implications of this symbiotic union. I am thinking of the Middle East. The Israelis and Palestinians could learn a lot from algae and fungi.

Living deep in the mountains as hut crews do, there is a lot of time to think. Everything here seems simple: you cook, you eat, you hike and make trips to the valley to pack up food and beer. Dave Herring, Huts Manager for the AMC, says to new crewmembers during training, “It’s the hardest job you’ll ever love,” and he is right. It is hard work, but somehow it seems easy. There are small rounded mountains to climb, and the twisted evergreen krummholz whisper as you pass.

One cloudy afternoon, Neal Stracken (another of my crew this year) and I spend hours on a rock, watching the fog roll over the knotted treetops. They look ghostly in the White Mountain fog. It is almost time to start preparing for dinner. The cook of the day has been slaving since before breakfast, cooking four courses for the morning meal, and then five for dinner. The rest of the crew returns at 5:00 to get the dining room ready for the evening meal and help the cook with any last minute details. There is always work to do.

As Neal and I leave our fog-watching post, it continues to thicken and we can no longer see the hut below us. We know it is there, though, hosting the guests that are arriving as dusk settles into the forest. Our friends are waiting for our help, and we rush down the mountain to meet them. We linger for a moment, watching the fog condense around us. Though Neal has never heard the story about the midnight trip to Monroe, he speaks my thoughts, “Isn’t there some legendary presence in these mountains that lures people to their death in the fog,” he asks.

“That’s only on Washington, where all the people die every year,” I say. We are safe here, a day’s walk from Lakes of the Clouds. Neal agrees, but asks me about a man who died on this very trail last fall. He was an elderly man. He was hiking the Appalachian Trail as a kind of closing journey. His old body was tired, starting to crumble after hiking nearly two thousand miles. He still had over 500 left. “I guess he just laid down beside the trail and let himself go,” I tell him. “It was his time, I suppose.”

“What did they do with him?” He asks.

“They put him in the freezer house.” The freezer house is about twenty feet the hut. It is holds the super energy-efficient cooler that keeps our vegetables frozen. It is just large enough to fit a person in if their knees are buckled.

“Oh.” Neal is thoughtful. “Do you think his ghost is still there?”

I think about the question. We spend a bit of time in the freezer house picking the vegetables for dinner, but I have never felt anything awry. “I don’t think so,” I say. The man was in his late seventies; I don’t think he ever expected to finish. When they found his body at the crest of the ridge, he had been sitting. He could see the hut from where he died, looking down on it from on high. It seemed as though he wanted to greet the coming night from the ridge, watching the glow of the hut from above, rather than making the descent that would take him into it.

I think he is probably still here, not in the freezer house, not seeking company in the hut, but still walking along these trails, drifting through the fog. He is living through those who stop to watch, enchanting us as he swirls over the trees.

“We gotta go!” Neal grabs my arm, snapping me out of my daze. We take off running down the trail, past the small stone building that kept the old man’s body for a night before they took him out in the helicopter. I watch as the old door swings open in the wind, and pause to close it. Some part of me senses the man’s presence, and it welcomes me as I rush into the kitchen.