Mountain Passages: The Journal of the New Hampshire Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club

Updated:

May 5, 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

A New White Mountain 4,000-Footer Challenge? The White Mountain “4k x 4k” List – by Ham Mehlman

How about adding some integrity to a 4,000 footer list? Call out the sophistry. Anoint the real knarly dudes or dudesses. Formulate a 4,000 footer list that credits actually scaling 4,000 ft. of vertical relief (summit elevation minus lowest trail elevation), not just tagging summits – “peak-bagging” in the parlance.

THE WHITE MOUNTAIN 4k x 4k LIST CHALLENGE:

Scale the 20 distinct “aspects” (think sides) of White Mountain peaks with 4,000 feet of vertical relief and a one-way trail length less than 10 miles. These ascents total approximately 87,600 feet of vertical relief (the summit elevation minus the lowest elevation of a trail).

PEOPLE OF THE WHITES: Franklin Leavitt (1824-1898) – by Frances Woodard Richardson

Over the past several years Frances Woodard Richardson has profiled many New Hampshirites who have contributed to the development of outdoor life in New Hampshire. Mountain Passages has published these profiles in a Series called ‘PEOPLE OF THE WHITES:.’ Earlier bios of Louis Fayerweather Cutter (1864-1945), Laban Merril Watson (1850-1936) and Leroy Woodard (1903-1985) can be found in the Mountain Passages Archives. More recently we posted her portrayals of Rodney Dallas Woodard (1905-1976) and Stuart Kimball Harris (1906-1969) which you can find further down in this post.

Responsible Hiking Practices During Mud Season – by Diana Moore

The mountains of New Hampshire attract hikers from all over the world all year around. Trails of all sorts offer a unique, if often messy, experience during the transitional period between winter and spring known affectionally as, “mud season.” This period, typically spanning early to late April to late May or even early June, presents hikers with a challenging landscape as the winter snowpack melts combined with spring rain to create a mixed bag of adventure for those willing to embrace the slop.

Dousing ‘The Inferno’ as a Racer and as a First Responder – by Chris Peter

‘The Inferno’ is an endurance race in a category all of its own… The highlight is a harrowing ski descent down the mind-numbing, leg-shaking and bowel-moving steep glacial cirque known as The Tuckerman Ravine (‘Tux’ or ‘Tucks’ more familiarly) on Mt. Washington. In the latest two editions of this race, I had the good fortune to wear multiple helmets – last year as a racer and this year as a ski patroller.

Last Skier Standing Competition Is Insane As It Gets and AMC Is Right There – by Lynn Fisher

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!

AMC 150 HISTORY SERIES: Chapter 2 – Conservation; Chapter 1 – 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. 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.

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.

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.

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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

We post a new challenge and results of the previous quarter challenge on the first day of each season.

Early Winners:

Keith Enman
Loretta Boyne

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
Alan Stein

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. 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!

MOUNTAIN PASSAGES

Editor: Ham Mehlman

Editorial Staff: Diana Moore and Robert McLaughlin

email: newsletternh@amcnh.org

Mountain Passages generally posts new material on this website at the beginning of each astronomical season

“PEAKS” INTO THE ARCHIVES:

TRAIL 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