Called Again (16 page)

I thought back to my first experience on Mount Washington. It was 2005 and I was toward the end of my first A.T. thru-hike. I was in roughly the same place on a sunny, clear day, when I saw Andrew Thompson, the tall blond trail runner, bounding up the
path. He had a smile on his face that suggested he was having fun. Damn it! Why did he have to make it look so easy?

No wonder his trail record had stood for the past seven years. How on earth did I ever have the gall to think I could break it?! This was no longer about the record. This was about my life. I had to make it safely off this mountain. I couldn't believe Warren had talked me out of carrying my tent and sleeping bag. Where was he?!

I kept putting one foot in front of the other, taking a break every few steps to locate the next cairn and look for Warren's flashlight beam. The fact that we had not met up made me question whether I was even on the right path. The darkness felt endless. The rocks below me were loose, and the clacking they made when I put my weight on them filled the air. I began to pray.

God, please get me off of this mountain. Please help my flashlight to last until I get to safety. I don't care if I make it to the top of the mountain. I don't care ifl made a wrong turn and am headed toward a hut—-justget me off this mountain!

At that moment, my headlamp flickered and dimmed. Up to this point, I had been worried about losing battery power in my flashlight, not in my headlamp! The light on my forehead did not go out completely, but its reduced power made it almost worthless. I turned it off to preserve the remaining energy. Now all I had to guide me to the summit was my flashlight with limited battery power.

I thought about Brew lying sleepless somewhere at the base of this mountain. I knew with certainty that he was worried about me and praying for me. That knowledge only made things worse. How could I do this to him?

I carried my regrets and fear up the mountain, listening to the rocks and the wind for the next hour. Then I finally heard a new sound. It was a voice calling to me through the fog—it was Warren. I kept hiking and heard the call again. Now, when I looked up, I
could see his headlamp. It was stationary. I used his position like a lighthouse to guide my course. When I finally began to make out the outline of his body, I also saw the roof of the building that crowns Mount Washington. I was at the summit.

I felt an immediate sense of relief. My muscles relaxed, and my speed increased as I walked over and placed my hand on the worn wooden sign that marks the top of the mountain. Then, at the exact moment I touched the sign, my flashlight died.

I was momentarily overcome with disbelief and thanksgiving. My flashlight had lasted until the exact instant when I reached the top of the mountain. Thank you, Jesus!

But now that I was safely at the summit, in complete darkness, my amazement quickly transformed to anger. Looking around for Warren, I could no longer see his headlamp.

“Where are you?” I asked at first, but then I quickly rephrased my question before he could answer. “Where
were
you?” I demanded.

He flickered his light on and off to reveal his location. Then, in the flashing strobe of his headlamp, he put a single finger up to his pursed lips.

I was supposed to be quiet? I didn't want to be quiet. I wanted to be angry! What was Warren doing at the top of the mountain?

Now that I was safe, I was also mad. I had spent the past two hours feeling frightened and unsafe, and all of that could have been avoided if Warren had hiked out to meet me.

Obeying his command not to talk, I followed him down some rock steps leading to the basement of the building, then he opened a door that he had left propped open with a rock, and ushered me inside. I followed him into a utility closet. He shut the door and locked it.

“Good job,” he whispered.

“Where were you?!” My voice was quiet but shrill.

“I didn't want to slow you down.”

“But I was going at a crawl, and I was afraid my flashlight was going to die the entire time.”

“Well, at one point, I saw two lights coming up the trail, and I thought maybe you had found someone else to hike with.”

“They were both mine!” The idea that I would find someone on top of Mount Washington in a rainstorm at night was absurd.

“It's late and you're tired,” said Warren. “I don't think it's safe to go down the wet rocks to reach Lake of the Clouds in the dark. Let's sleep here, and you can keep going when the sun comes up.”

Warren had brought me some dry clothes and a package of cold rehydrated spaghetti. He had placed my sleeping mat next to a puddle of green slime that was dripping out of a nearby pipe. I changed clothes, choked down some dinner, and then lay down to try to get six hours of sleep. As I was zipping up my sleeping bag, a red light came on in the corner of the room, and then a sound like someone cranking a lawnmower echoed loudly off the walls. I don't know what it was, but it was on a timer that went off every thirty minutes. The disrupted sleep made it the worst, most uncomfortable night since we'd left Katahdin.

The next morning, I was so groggy that I felt sick. The queasi-ness in my stomach made it difficult to get out of my sleeping bag, eat breakfast, and pack up. And it took longer than I wanted to get ready.

At 5:50 a.m., we headed downhill in the fog and rain to Lake of the Clouds Hut. The wind was so strong that it would have carried away our words, so we didn't talk. We just hiked. A little over a mile later, we ducked into the Lake of the Clouds Hut. We were both sopping wet.

As soon as we entered, a staff member said, “Oh you must have been the hikers we heard about.”

Warren froze like a deer in headlights. I knew he was worried that we would be fined or, if nothing else, reprimanded for camping at the observatory on the summit. In that moment, I
didn't care about any penalty or criticism. I just wanted something warm to drink.

The young man continued. “We got a radio call late last night from a man who was really worried about his wife and her friend. Man, I'm glad to see that you two are all right. Help yourself to some coffee. It's on the house.”

A free drink was a far cry from a citation. I filled my cup halfway with sugar then almost to the top with cream before finishing it off with a little bit of coffee. Warren sat down beside me. I looked at my cell phone to see if I had service, but I didn't. I wanted to call Brew as soon as possible and let him know I was okay.

“I am going to take a shorter route down the mountain,” Warren said. “I have a map of the Mount Washington trails. Do you want it?”

I shook my head. “I'll be fine,” I said.

“Well, take your time at the intersections. You only have a few feet of visibility, and the trail isn't very well marked.”

I nodded. Then, after one more gulp of brown sugary sludge, I gathered my pack and headed toward the door.

On my descent down Mount Washington, the trail was no longer on rocks. It followed a thin dirt path. The dirt caused my shins not to hurt quite as much, and it also made route finding much easier. I followed the path down, down, down the mountain. Each time I arrived at a trail junction, I took a deep breath, examined the sign, located the next white blaze, and then went confidently in that direction.

I was making great time. When I arrived at Mizpah Hut, I pulled out my cell phone and texted Brew, letting him know I should be at the car in about two hours. Then I stayed on the path and kept hiking.

I didn't remember every twist and turn of the trail from my previous hikes, but I had a general sense of what the trail should do, and I recalled most of the major landmarks. Past Mizpah Hut,
I knew that the trail should continue descending to reach Webster Cliffs. This time around, the path kept going down, but it was taking much longer than I remembered to reach the rocky ledges. Then I came to a river crossing—I definitely didn't remember a river crossing. I forded it, praying that the falling rain had simply made a small creek swell to look like a river. But on the opposite bank, I still didn't see a white blaze. Was I off the trail? How could that happen? I didn't even pass a trail junction where I could have taken a wrong turn. Or did I?

I didn't know where I was, but I became convinced that I was no longer on the A.T. I had just traveled three miles on a steep downhill grade, and now I would have to turn around and climb back uphill to try to find the trail. In the best-case scenario, this would cost me several extra miles and a few hours of hiking. On a typical thru-hike that would be depressing, but on a record attempt it felt disastrous. The trail changes length from year to year due to reroutes. In 2005, it was 2,175 miles long. This year it was 2,181. That meant I was already going to have to hike six more miles than Andrew, and now that I had gotten lost, I might have to hike twelve more miles than he traveled. Twelve miles! That was at least four hours, and four hours was an eternity on a record hike.

My heart was racing. I felt confused, frustrated, and lost, really lost. Instead of immediately turning around and rushing uphill, I did what I always do when I get lost. I sat down, ate a snack, drank some water, and pulled out my guidebook to study where I could have gone wrong. Even though it was still pouring rain, I acted as calm and casual as a dayhiker pausing for a snack on a sunny day. This had become my tradition after one too many wrong turns on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2006. My immediate instinct was to try to fix my mistake without stopping to figure out where I was, and often, this led me farther from the right path. This intentional routine helped me to calm down, collect
my thoughts, and not let one mistake lead to another. It was a Zen moment in an otherwise cataclysmic situation.

After I finished my last cracker, I took a deep breath, packed, and then stood up to begin hiking. As soon as I was vertical, the panic and adrenaline returned. I began fighting the trail, trying to climb uphill as quickly as possible and run in sections that were hardly suitable for scrambling. I was not thinking clearly; I was just conscious that I had to make up time and I had to make it to the next road crossing.

I slipped and fell several times rushing up the mountain, but in a little over an hour, I made it back to Mizpah Hut, and I found where I had made the mistake. There was a trail sign at the hut, but it was positioned in a location where only northbound hikers could see it. I have long believed that the Appalachian Trail is better marked for people going north than it is for those going south. Usually, after one or two southbound thru-hikers makes a wrong turn, they will leave notes or stick arrows to help prevent other hikers from making the same mistake. But I was the first southbound hiker to reach the Whites, and
I
was the one making the mistakes. I paused briefly to send Brew another text. Then I placed a stick arrow on the trail, spat on the south-facing sign, and continued my chaotic run-hike down the mountain.

I was in a frenetic state. My motion wasn't fluid or efficient. I had lost the ability to think rationally, so I was not pacing myself for a thirty-five—correction, now a forty-one-mile—day. Instead, I was racing downhill recklessly. All I knew was that I had been stuck in a rain storm on Mount Washington for the past eighteen hours, I had gotten lost on a trail that I had hiked twice before, and I might have just cost myself the record. At this point, I only wanted to get to my husband and end this ungodly section.

Forcing my way downhill as quickly as possible, through puddles and slick mud, I started to fall—a lot. I wiped out on the
water-saturated wooden bog logs that protect the swampy sections of the trail. I tripped over roots, usually landing on an arm or hip. At one point, my foot got stuck behind a rock and I went sailing off the side of the trail, where my head hit a tree. I thought I might pass out. For a moment, It felt like a gray tunnel was closing in on my vision, but then my normal sight returned, so I stood up, wiped off some of the mud that covered my legs, and kept careening down the mountain.

When I arrived at Webster Cliffs, I threw my body down the rocks like a Plinko chip on
The Price is Right,
with no regard to where I might land. Even in the moment, when I reached the base of the rock scramble, it struck me as a miracle that I was not seriously injured, especially since the scramble looked more like a waterfall in the unrelenting rain.

Past the cliffs, the trail became less technical, and I started to fall less often. And as the hiking improved, so did my attitude. I no longer wanted to think about getting lost in the rain or stuck on Mount Washington, and I
definitely
didn't want to cry, so instead I started singing at the top of my lungs. I don't have a good memory for songs, partly because I am tone deaf. So I repeated the same choruses over and over again until I finally reached the road at Crawford Notch.

I hiked over to the car. Melissa was in the passenger seat and there wasn't any room to sit in the back.

So I opened the passenger door and said, “Out!”

It was still pouring rain but I didn't care if Melissa had to stand outside for a few minutes and get wet. My hands were wrinkled, and my skin was pale and flaky. I needed to be inside a dry vehicle. I needed to be with my husband.

Brew had a look of bewilderment on his face.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Don't ask.”

“I was really worried.”

“Did you get my texts?”

“No, and Warren was supposed to call us last night, but I didn't hear from him then and I haven't heard from him today. I even radioed Lake of the Clouds looking for you! I've been worried sick.”

“Well, we camped out on top of Mount Washington in a utility closet where green sludge dripped near my head and toxic fumes practically poisoned us. Also a loud crank woke us up every half hour. Then I hiked all day in the rain and got lost. I got off the trail by three miles, so it was six miles round-trip.”

“Six miles?!”