In the world of endurance events “Last Skier Standing,” run by White Mountain Ski Co., is near the top. Held at Black Mountain in
Maine, participants skin up about 1.5 miles and 1200 vertical feet, then ski back down, once each hour. Skiers continue doing this until all skiers but one have dropped out. AMC’s own Chris Peters, an AMC Ski Committee Co-Chair, was nuts enough to give it a go. Not only did he survive, he did great!
Mountain Passages: The Journal of the New Hampshire Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club
Updated:March 21, 2025
Your source for outdoor adventures and “how to” articles about hiking, skiing, paddling, mountaineering and other outdoor activities, as well as articles about the history and natural environment of the New Hampshire forests and mountains
New From Mountain Passages
Last Skier Standing Competition Is Insane As It Gets and AMC Is Right There – by Lynn Fisher
AMC 150 HISTORY SERIES: Conservation – by Becky Fullerton, AMC Archivist
The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding in 2026. Leading up to this auspicious milestone, we’ll be sharing historical highlights about the founding and development of the club. Everything from trails to trips, conservation to canoeing, lodges to lean-tos, with surprising stories and little-known facts in between. Though not a comprehensive history of AMC, this series is meant to help us connect to our heritage as the country’s oldest conservation and outdoor recreation nonprofit and to better understand our own place in this special community that has been helping people know and love the outdoors since 1876.
TRIP REPORT: Skinning The Pike Glades – Feb 22, 2025 – by Ham Mehlman
The email from Nik Fiore, the AMC ski leader for the day, read “The Pike Glade ski trip is ON for Saturday!” The NH weather gods were finally treating ski enthusiasts to enough snow and cold weather for us to play on our boards in the woods on natural flakes. Nik’s destination was The Pike Glades in Pike, NH.
PEOPLE OF THE WHITES: Stuart Kimball Harris (1906 – 1969) by Frances Woodward Richardson
Stuart Kimball (Slim) Harris was a long-time professor of Biology and Botany at Boston University, an active AMC member and Hutman at the Lake of the Clouds Hut, and the author of many articles and books.
Profile of an AMC Hike Leader: Tim Kennedy – Six Decades of Tramping Through Snow – by John Williams
John Williams, Co-Chair of the AMCNH Hiking and Excusions Committee, interviews a hiking mentor, Tim Kennedy, about his experiences leading AMC winter trips into the New England wilderness. Tim has been an active AMC New Hampshire Chapter member for over 50 years and his hikes span six decades!
TIPS FOR DESCENDING: Your Hike Isn’t Done When You Reach the Summit – by Joe D’Amore
As hikers many of us have set personal goals to climb summits and experience outdoor adventures in various terrains and parts of the country. We proudly claim that we “climbed” a mountain. Descending is simply assumed and, at most, considered a minor aspect of the accomplishment. Yet good down-mountain conditioning and technique is equally important to personal development, safety and enjoyment on many hikes.
The Outdoors is for Everyone; Sexual Assault Awareness is for Everyone – by MJo McCarthy
MJo McCarthy writes a very personal account of sexual assault in the outdoors and suggests appropriate behavior for women and men and best practices to minimize risks while on the trails. She plans to lead a series of four hikes in April as part of Sexual Assault Awareness
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AT AMC: “It’s in our DNA” – by Gabriella Gurney
Did you know that the Appalachian Mountain Club has a research team? The AMC has 6 full-time scientists on staff, studying mountain ecology, the alpine zone, plants along the Appalachian Trail, snow science, and more. They regularly produce academic papers, attend conferences, and give presentations on their work, interfacing with the scientific community and casual audiences alike.
PEOPLE OF THE WHITES: Rodney Dallas Woodard (1905-1976) – by Frances Woodard Richardson
Rodney (“Rod”) Dallas Woodard, born on April 18, 1905, was the second son of Charles Franklin Woodard (1882-1960) and Eva Viola (Reynolds) Woodard (1880-1974) of Brockton, MA.. Rodney would apprentice in the shop where he developed a love for wood. Later, he would design and build the unique “Freighter Backboard” still used by AMC hut staff today to carry in supplies.
TRIP REPORT: Point-to-Point Trek Up and Over Kinsman Ridge is not a “Traverse” – by Ham Mehlman
I referred to my little project as a “traverse”. In common parlance, we/I often use the term to describe “crossing” something. Merriam-Webster seems to agree. So it seemed reasonable to refer to my hike as a “traverse” of the Kinsman Ridge. Unh unh. It turns out that various disciplines of mountaineering have differing ideas of what “crossing”, and therefore “traversing”, might mean and have coopted differing interpretations for their own jargon.
AMC 150 HISTORY SERIES: The Beginning – by Becky Fullerton, AMC Archivist
The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding in 2026. Leading up to this auspicious milestone, we’ll be sharing historical highlights about the founding and development of the club. Everything from trails to trips, conservation to canoeing, lodges to lean-tos, with surprising stories and little-known...
Sawed or Saved – The Village that created Franconia Notch State Park – by Ham Mehlman
On August 3, 1923, an inferno, culminating with the explosion of 800 gallons of fuel, leveled Profile House, a grand hotel located under the gaze of the “Old Man”, between Profile Lake and Echo Lakes at the top of the Notch. The fire burned for only four hours, but that fire set in motion a remarkable five-year campaign to preserve under public ownership one of the most sublime and featured landscapes in the Northeast, Franconia Notch.
Where In The Whites Challenge
SPRING 2025 CHALLENGE
Diana Moore snapped this photograph. Presumably the main peak in familiar to most AMCNH members. The SPRING CHALLENGE is to identify where Diana is standing to capture this wintery scene. (Hint: she is atop a summit.)
Please send your answer to WitWamcnh@gmail.com . By the way, Wit and W are not names. They are something of an acronym for Where In The Whites. We post a new challenge and results of the previous quarter challenge on the first day of each season.
Results of the WINTER 2025 CHALLENGE
Evidently the location of this photo stumped loyal Where in the Whites participants. Only 3 winners this quarter:
- Loretta Boyne
- Kathy Roseen
- Scott Silun
The reply from Scott Silum was more comprehensive than anything we could come up with: “This photo is taken from a viewpoint just north of the summit of East Osceola, on a 25 yard side path. The major ridge is the Tripyramids (North, Middle, and South, left to right), with Blue Mountain, the Three Sisters and Chocorua on the last ridge before the horizon to the left and Mt Shaw on the last ridge before the horizon to the right. On the ridge to the right of the Tripyramids is Lost Pass and below Shaw and closer to the camera than the ridge connected to Lost Pass is Flat Mountain. Flume Peak is the mound in the center foreground closer to the camera.”
NOTES:
- Effective with Fall 2024 issue we DISCONTINUED DELIVERY BY REGULAR MAIL. Mountain Passages is available as a blog on this page of the AMCNH.ORG website. We update the page with new material regularly as we receive and edit new posts. At the start of each quarter we email AMCNH members with links to new articles to all members/subscribers. Members should check with AMC Member Services ((603) 466 2727) to see if they are signed up for email distribution and/or to update their email address.
- Articles and “Letters to the Editor” welcome! Mountain Passages is an AMC-NH member-volunteer managed and produced publication. We welcome (and need!) articles and “Letters to the Editor” from members interested in writing on topics they think relevant to the missions, activities and interests of AMC-NH members. (All submissions subject to editorial review.) Please send Word or Google Doc file to newsletterNH@amcnh.com. Be a published author!
“PEAKS” INTO THE ARCHIVES:
Includes an excerpt from Keith Gentili’s book White Mountains State about his journey to scale all 48 NH 4,000 footersTRAIL SIGNS
MOUNTAIN POETRY
The Old Man in the
Mountain Wants a Wife….
I’ve lived a cold and stony life
Above earth’s bickerings and strife,
But now I want a bonny wife
To cheer my lonely hours.
I want a maiden young and fair,
With sunny eyes and silken hair,
The grandeur of my throne to share
Queen of these woodland bowers.
A low voiced maid, whose lightest word
Is sweet as note of early bird,
That I with rapture oft have heard
Among these granite hills.
A heart from artifice as free
As heart of woman e’er can be;
Smiling on all – yet true to me –
The thought my bosom thrills.
Now is such maiden can you find
And she to wed me is inclined,
My fate with her’s I’ll gladly fbind
Forever and forever.
And if to her I prove untrue
May heaven withold it’s rain and dew,
And naugth but ill my path pursue
Till death these ties shall sever.
But if this maiden young and fair
With sunny eyes and silken hair
To scale this mountain should not dare
Not even for my sake;
Then when the winds of evening sigh
Look not for me on mountain high;
You’ll find me where the shadows lie
Deep down in Profile Lake.
– Mrs. J. W. Gray, Easton NH – date unknown
A Contemplation Of Pebbles
My feet glide off the watery floor,
With an emerald patina that restores.
The cascades voicings define the gorge,
Where tumbling boulders once went forth
The roots of trees embrace the scape,
Which primeval forces did once shape.
In a million years the rocks in pools,
Were churned and smoothed to pebbled hues.
Resting at Gem Pool and cascades on the descent from Monroe
Joe D’Amore August 16, 2024