I dislike New Years Eve like I dislike Valentine’s Day. It’s contrived, sappy, pressured. It’s lonely and crowded at the same depressing time.
After plenty of boozy New Years Eves in crowded cities and towns, this one was going to be perfect: ringing in January 1, 2014, in the White Mountains.
We departed Brooklyn at 3:30am on December 30 and arrived to North Conway at 11am. After a pit stop to refuel and rent snowshoes, we drove the last stretch to Highland Center and embarked on the trail by 1pm in relatively pleasant conditions: low-teens and clear skies.
Only two of us returned…
Our six-person group included two last minute additions who perhaps weren’t as prepped for the trip as they should have been.
Trouble began 2.5 miles into our hike over the Appalachian Trail. Shortly after Mount Tom (4,051 ft) where we should have continued straight on the A-Z Trail, Sarah and I accidentally turned left onto the Willey-Range Trail, which we only realized a mile later once we’d nearly summited the neighboring Mt. Field (4,327 ft).
We regained our bearings and sped back down the trail, passing our four friends about a mile back, as they’d also taken the wrong turn. The two latecomers, David and Eunice, already wanted to quit, especially now that we appeared to be somewhat lost. Eunice was crying. David was angry. They were complaining about the cold, the snow, the mountainous terrain, the snowshoes, the distance, the encroaching dark, all of which was supposed to be part of the fun.
We backtracked and found where we’d missed our turn — a foot of new snow the night before had buried the trail, leaving it almost invisible save for periodic yellow blazes on trail-side trees.
By now it was 3pm. We had more than 3 miles remaining, but only 1 hour of sunlight, and already a mutiny was erupting.
I didn’t want to entertain others’ thoughts of turning back, so I began blazing the A-Z Trail while Sarah and Jeannette grouped together behind me and Jeff (now carrying his bag along with Jeannette’s bag) prodded David/Eunice along. At one point, he later said, the trail was so lost in the snow that he felt forced to use his iPhone to locate their GPS coordinates on a Google Map to ensure that they were proceeding in the correct general direction.
By 5pm it was pitch black and we were still on the trail. All wore our headlamps. For me in the lead, this was pressure-filled and exciting. Tromping through half-frozen bogs and swamps, it would have been easy to wander off the path and break through thin ice, to lose the trail markers and lead everyone into the dark forest for a freezing night outdoors. Finding the yellow trail markers was like a high-stakes game of Where’s Waldo? I often had to guess at the correct path, hoping that I could backtrack if necessary before Sarah and Jeannette realized we were lost.
But it was beautiful. Every half-mile I’d stop and wait for Sarah and Jeannette to catch up, switching off my headlamp and standing in silent darkness until, far off through the trees, I would see their two headlamp lights bobbing toward me.
At 6:30pm, we saw the warm lights and smelled the wood stove of Zealand Falls Hut. Sarah and Jeannette settled inside. I trekked back a mile to where I found our three other companions, eager to hear that the hut awaited up the trail.
Upon finally arriving, Eunice glared at Jeff and said: “I’m never again believing a word you say.”
Apparently Jeff had promised fun in the White Mountains. Apparently, hiking six miles in snowshoes with a hefty backpack to a small cabin isn’t fun for some people.
We all slept soundly, despite the frigid temperature inside the unheated bunk room.
THE NEXT MORNING, Sarah and I were on the trail again by 8:45am and didn’t return until after 5pm. We summited Mt. Zealand (4,265 ft) and Mt. Guyot (4,560 ft).
Then the weather started to turn, so we turned back and detoured down below treeline into the Pemigewasset Wilderness.
We’d dropped several hundred feet on the steep icy Zeacliff Path when the trail blazes suddenly disappeared. And then there in the fresh snow, feet before me, I saw the crisp ovular indentation from a recent slumbering bear, grayish hairs laying on the nearby snow, surrounding trees gnawed thin.
I think we also saw lynx footprints…
New Year’s Eve inside Zealand Falls Hut was not the thoughtful, meditative experience that I’d anticipated. One guy played rock songs on an acoustic guitar while many others sang along, whooping and hollering and toasting with glasses of beer and wine and champagne. I felt obliged to stayed up til midnight, then was kept up much later by drunken people wandering in and out of the bunkroom.
THE THIRD MORNING, I think I was the first person awake. Sarah and I saw more bear prints in the snow as we hiked back alone to the Highland Center, tagging Mt. Field and Mt. Avalon along the way.
Our companions, thoroughly sick of the winter wilderness, rerouted along a flatter access road to the highway and then hitchhiked to their car.
Lessons learned from the trip:
1) When hiking in a group (especially in winter), vet the entire crew.
2) When hiking in a group (especially in winter), everyone must be excited and on board with the itin.
3) Everyone should be mentally prepared for worst-case scenarios (especially in winter).
4) Quitting is an option (especially in winter), especially for those who don’t meet the previous three criteria.
