He smiles at me. It’s an honest smile; there’s nothing condescending in his expression. I smile back, then bid him adieu as he returns to his partner.
“What was that about?” Alex asks.
Rats. She was listening. Of course she was.
“That guy wondered why we didn’t hike with Papa, or with another man. He thought it might be dangerous for us to hike by ourselves.”
“Why?”
“In case a bad man saw us and wanted to hurt us.”
“Can’t a bad man hurt another man? Do bad men only hurt women?”
“Well, women are usually smaller than men, so we’re picked on more often.”
Alex looks me up and down, then states, “You’re not smaller than a man.”
She’s right. I’m not exactly petite.
“Don’t worry about it, Alex. All we need to do is be aware of who’s around us. Also, we shouldn’t tell anyone we’re alone.”
A wrinkle crosses my daughter’s forehead. “People can see we’re alone.”
“Yes, but maybe they think we’re with people who are just down the trail. We don’t need to tell them there’s no one behind us.”
Time to begin the descent. Alex is ready; she’s up and reaching for her backpack. I push myself to my feet.
“Just use your pepper spray if a bad guy comes along,” Alex matter-of-factly instructs as she pulls her pack’s straps over her shoulders. “I don’t want to stay home. Just spray the guy in the face and we’ll be fine.” With that, she snaps her buckles and walks off.
That’s my girl.
One mile later, I bring us back to our discussion about the ax-man. Feminist bravado aside, my daughter still needs to learn when to keep her distance from strangers.
I ask her again about the man with the ax, if she had any strange sense when she spoke with him, if she felt funny standing right next to him when she didn’t know who he was. She insists he was a nice guy.
Though I’m a big believer in following your instincts, I explain that the few bad people in this world will sometimes pretend to be nice just to trick you into getting closer to them so that they can grab you.
Alex stops and looks up at me.
“That man was a bad person?”
“No,” I quickly say. Then, “Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
Arg. I’m bungling this.
“Look,” I begin, “we don’t know that man. He was standing right next to you, and I didn’t hear or see him coming. He had a large ax in his hand—it bothered me that he was standing so close to you without me there to protect you. He was probably a good guy—most people are—but the point is that we don’t know him, so we can’t be completely sure. So next time, if someone walks up to you and I’m not standing right there, and especially if I can’t get to you right away, then take a few steps back.”
Alex thinks on this for a while as we continue on our way. I hope I haven’t just made her paranoid of everyone she meets.
We hike the next mile or so with difficulty. Both of us are huffing and puffing; even usually peppy Alex seems to be wearing out. Though it felt like an easy climb on the way up, that side trip to East Osceola was probably more than we should have attempted. It felt much more difficult than our Eisenhower/Pierce trip. My feet begin to drag, and Alex asks for a water break. I happily sit and pull out my Nalgene bottles.
“Most people are good, right?” Alex asks after she drinks her fill.
“Yes, I believe so,” I answer.
We rise, then fall into a long silence as we make our way down the boulder-strewn, slab-filled trail. It’s not easy going; our legs ache, and the rocks are huge. There’s nary a flat surface, and our feet continually bend and twist as we hike over the jagged stones.
“What about all those people at the top?” Alex eventually asks, butt-sliding down a particularly steep granite protuberance and landing lightly on the dirt below. “They were okay, right?”
“Yes,” I respond, following Alex’s lead and lowering myself until the seat of my pants touches rock. I don’t slide as gracefully as my daughter, and my feet shakily hit the ground. I take a few hurried steps forward to keep my balance, then grab the trunk of a tree to bring myself to a halt.
“We were among many other people, and you approached each one of them. Also, I was close by and able to help if needed.”
“What if one of them had grabbed me?”
“I would have jumped up, run over, and made that person let you go. Others would have helped too.”
“What if that didn’t work?”
“Then I would have sprayed the person in the face,” I reply, smiling.
Alex snorts. “What if everyone had grabbed me, all at once?” she asks, her face lit up with silliness.
“Then I would have sprayed everyone in the face.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone. All at once.”
Alex giggles.
We’re very close to the car now, and I’m grateful to be near the end of our hike. I am exhausted and start to inwardly withdraw in an effort to conserve energy. Though my daughter must be at least equally tired, as she must take two or three steps to match every one of mine, she does not withdraw as I do. Instead, she sings, making up lyrics to spontaneous melodies. This is her way of reenergizing. I first noticed this delightful habit while descending Tecumseh, and I will continue to witness it throughout the remainder of our quest for the New Hampshire Forty-eight. Alex’s method of pumping herself up is to talk, sing, hum, chant, or count out loud. During future hikes, I will often tell her to narrate an original story or sing on her own, anything to allow me to carefully measure my own energy expenditure while simultaneously allowing her the expression she so obviously needs.
For now, she is content to softly sing an original and spontaneous song. Her lyrics describe a frightened woman who tries to attack everyone she meets with pepper spray. My daughter happily bounces down the last few tenths of a mile, her chipper soprano ringing through the air.
Hugh Tells a Cautionary Tale, August 2008
After only two months of weekend hiking, Alex and I have ascended nine peaks on the Four Thousand Footer list. We are checking off mountains much faster than I had originally anticipated. When I first envisioned the two of us tackling this quest, I figured it would take us at least four or five years to finish. If we keep to our current pace, however, we may reach our forty-eighth summit before Alex turns seven.
My daughter’s consistent fortitude, determination, and enthusiasm lead me to believe that she will turn into quite the outdoorswoman. Her love for hiking is obvious. She describes her adventures to anyone who will listen, she molds mountains in her sandbox, she draws pictures of smiling stick figures standing on pointed summits.
Unfortunately, her gusto has become coupled with a dangerous sense of invincibility. During our last descent, Alex completely relaxed all her previous standards of caution. To my great concern, she continually skipped over rocks and jumped over slippery roots. She turned her head to talk to me while descending boulders. She twirled her hiking poles through the air with no concern as to who or what was behind her (I got whacked twice). Worst of all, she brushed aside my admonishments with the air of a doctor dismissing a hypochondriac’s imagined symptoms.
I’ve never been one to hover over my children while they play. If they want to jump off rocks in the park, fine. If they want to climb trees and dangle from the branches, fine. If they want to run down a steep sidewalk, fine. I’m of the philosophy that kids need to define their own physical boundaries and develop their own gross motor skills. While at a playground, I allow them to do whatever they want, as long as they’re mindful of the children around them.
In the Whites, however, things are very different. Little skips and jumps that are perfectly acceptable on a sidewalk are absolutely verboten on the trail. If Alex falls and injures herself, I will need to carry her for miles over extremely rough terrain. It will be, at best, a long, painful, and very unhapp
y experience.
Little kids don’t usually have a sense of drastic consequences, especially when they’re feeling strong and powerful. You can say, “Mind what you do or some awful thing might happen,” but their brains won’t really comprehend what you’re telling them. It’s finally beginning to dawn on young Alex that her abilities far surpass those of most others her age, and, unfortunately, she seems to think she must therefore be superhuman.
I’m happy she’s proud of herself, but I want her to understand that she can break a leg just as easily as any other kid. She needs to speak with someone who has been in her position. Someone who was also a strong athlete at an incredibly young age. Someone who, in his youth, also thought he was indestructible—and ended up paying an enormous price for his overconfidence. She needs to see, with her own eyes, the potential consequences of split-second mistakes.
She needs to speak with her father. It’s time for him to explain to his children exactly how he lost his legs.
I sit the girls down on the living room couch one evening and ask Hugh to tell them the story of his 1982 accident on Mount Washington. The same story he has told numerous times to journalists, nightly news reporters, and TV/film directors. The story that is well documented in Alison Osius’s book, Second Ascent. He has told this story so many times and relived this tragedy for so many people … but tonight, the recounting will be unique. His audience won’t be some stranger from NBC News, NPR, or ESPN. Instead, it will be his own beloved and adoring daughters.
The girls, being very young, have never inquired about the artificial limbs they sometimes help their father attach each morning. I suppose they’ve viewed his residual limbs as completely normal—some people have biological legs, and some don’t. I’m not sure they’ve ever even realized that their father used to have human legs. They’ve just accepted what they’ve seen as the way things are and the way things always have been.
But now it’s time. It will be upsetting, sure. But it’s time. Alex needs to understand that she must take these mountains very, very seriously.
The girls sit on either side of Hugh and listen as he begins to talk in a quiet and gentle tone.
“When I was seventeen years old—” he begins.
“How old is that?” Alex interrupts.
“The girl across the street is seventeen,” I say.
Alex thinks for a moment, apparently trying to visualize her father as young as our neighbor, then says, “Okay.”
“When I was seventeen, a friend and I climbed Mount Washington in the wintertime.”
“What month?” Alex asks.
“January,” Hugh patiently answers. Neither of us discourages her interruptions, as we know she is only trying to create a more complete mental picture so that she might better understand.
“Why did you climb Mount Washington in January? Weren’t you cold?” Alex asks.
“I did a lot of ice climbing back then. I started climbing ice when I was just a bit older than you are right now. I spent most of my childhood climbing mountains and ice.”
Hugh is drastically understating his experience, but for the sake of our kids, it doesn’t matter. They won’t be able to comprehend the number of climbs and hikes he did before the age of seventeen. Hugh was considered a child prodigy in the rock and ice climbing community. He had his first set of crampons at age seven, and by age eight he had hiked 11,624-foot Mount Temple in the Canadian Rockies and attempted 14,411-foot Mount Rainier with his father and two older brothers. The weather on Mount Rainier forced them to turn back, but Hugh returned to the peak when he was eleven and reached the summit. During his childhood summer vacations to various mountain ranges, he pioneered climbs that precious few adults could handle. By the time he was sixteen, Hugh was the first to ascend some of the most difficult routes on the East Coast. The climbing community assumed he would go on to have a very famous and fruitful mountaineering career.
Then came the fateful trip up 6,288-foot Mount Washington. In January 1982, at the age of seventeen, Hugh and a friend, Jeff Batzer, decided to do an ice climb up O’Dell’s Gully in Huntington Ravine. To minimize the risk of being struck by an avalanche, they dropped their packs at the base of the climb so they could ascend lightly and quickly. Their intent was to reach the top of the ice climb and then immediately descend.
“After my friend and I climbed the ice, we decided to walk a short distance toward the summit. It was windy and snowy, but we figured we’d just go a few hundred feet.”
Hugh continues to speak in a measured voice, but I know this can’t be easy for him. The decision to head toward Mount Washington’s summit was a spontaneous one. Hugh is not and never has been a peakbagger. He’s a climber. He likes to get to the top of a particular rock or ice climbing route, but he doesn’t care all that much about touching the actual summit. It was such a casual decision on that cold and fateful day in 1982. So what if they didn’t have all their gear? What could possibly happen? Why not walk for just a bit, even if the wind was starting to really blow?
Unfortunately, both boys failed to remember that they were not carrying compasses. Since their original plan was to ascend an ice gulley, they had left their compasses at home. After all, to turn back during a vertical climb, one simply goes down. Navigation isn’t much of an issue. Once a person tops out from a climb and starts walking above tree line, however, the importance of a compass becomes paramount. The choices for movement now extend well beyond the simple up-down dichotomy. There are too many flat or moderately graded surfaces, and without clear visibility, it’s easy to lose one’s sense of direction. Up above the ice climb, in the region known as Mount Washington’s Alpine Garden, they had only their eyesight to depend on. In the moment, this didn’t seem like too much of a problem. They weren’t trying to go all the way to the top, after all. Just a few minutes of hiking, maybe a few tenths of a mile at most. The risk appeared minimal.
“It was a cold and snowy day, and while we were walking, the wind became so strong that it almost knocked us over.”
Sage and Alex’s eyes grow wide.
“We decided to turn around—”
“Good thinking, Papa,” Alex interrupts. She and Sage both look relieved. Odd, how the minds of children work. It’s as though they expect him to tell us that all turned out well, that they came back down, went to a coffee shop, and drank some hot tea. Even as Hugh sits there with the bottom part of his sweatpants empty and dangling toward the floor.
“But we got into trouble,” Hugh begins, and his voice becomes even more measured. “When we turned around, the wind was so bad that it blew snow all around us. We couldn’t see where we were going. We almost couldn’t see each other, even though we were walking side by side. We thought we went the right way, but we didn’t. We ended up going down the wrong side of the mountain by accident.”
Sage looks horrified. Tears well up in her eyes, and she asks in a very shaky voice, “Did you die, Papa?”
Hugh smiles reassuringly at her and answers, “No, honey.”
Both girls relax a bit as they look their father over and verify that yes, he is right in front of them, and no, he did not die on that miserable winter day.
“How did you get back?” Alex asks.
“We didn’t,” Hugh says. “My friend and I were lost for three and a half days out in the cold woods. The temperatures were below zero—”
“Is that cold?” Alex asks.
“Yes, it’s very cold. When it’s that cold out, we don’t let you play outside.”
The girls look amazed. We almost never keep them indoors. On the contrary, they’re usually the only kids in the neighborhood playing in the yard when the temperature dips below the freezing point.
“The snow went up to our waists and we didn’t have any food or water with us.”
“What about a tent?” Alex asks.
“No. We had left our backpacks at the bottom of the ice climb, since we thought we would come right back down. We didn’t have anything with us.”
“Were you scared?” Sage asks in a small voice.
“Yes,” Hugh answers. “We were both terrified.”
Hugh and Jeff had turned around within minutes of trying to walk toward the summit. However, in the very short amount of time it took for them to walk a couple of tenths of a mile, the wind speed had increased enough to create whiteout conditions. They could not see more than five feet in front of them, and they had to keep hold of each other so as not to become separated in the blinding, blowing snow. In Hugh’s decade-plus of experience, he had never been on such a flat expanse while ascending a mountain. The whiteout conditions were impossible to navigate. Without the aid of a map or compass, the two boys did what most lost hikers tend to do: they turned their backs to the wind and began walking downward, toward where they thought they had ascended.
Their path of descent felt right at first, for the immediate gulley seemed similar in shape to the one they had climbed earlier. However, once below tree line, it was obvious they had gone the wrong way. Going back up was out of the question, however—they would most likely have ended up wandering about blindly in the whiteout with no idea of which direction to go, and the windchill would have quickly brought on frostbite and hypothermia. No, they had to keep descending through the trees. It was much safer this way, as the trees blocked most of the wind and therefore at least enabled the boys to see where they were headed. They were just going to have to try to walk out from where they were—which was, unfortunately, Mount Washington’s extremely remote Great Gulf region.
“There was so much snow on the ground that we couldn’t tell whether we were walking over a river or over land. Twice, I walked over a river by accident and my legs broke through the snow and sank into the water. My legs and feet got wet, and I didn’t have any dry clothing to change into. Jeff helped me out of the river, and then we both tried to keep moving on.”
Hugh is sugarcoating this a bit for the girls, and I don’t blame him. Sage already looks aghast, and Alex’s eyes are very wide indeed. The truth is, when Hugh punched through the river, he sank into fast-flowing, ice-cold water and barely avoided being swept under the ice by the river’s current. Jeff extended his ice ax and saved Hugh, gradually pulling him out and away from the water.
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