“What’s the temperature inside this frigid cabin?”
“What’s the fastest time running up Mount Washington?”*
“What’s the difference between a wet cup and a dry cup?”**
This is what we talk about when we talk inside Doublehead Cabin, an uninsulated hut atop Doublehead Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When you’re huddled around a tiny woodstove, struggling to stay warm against a temperature ambient with the outdoors (so, in the single digits), you find anything to talk about. In the cold silence, the small curiosities of life take on greater dimensions.
“You have to use a dry cup, of course,” Phil Plouffe was saying of his recipe for making granola. “Not a wet cup.”
I nodded. While under normal circumstances the conversation would now have moved on, I paused and asked, “What’s the difference?”
“Different sizes,” Phil said, in his typically curt way.
“Which is bigger?”
“Dry cup’s bigger,” he said.
“Huh. I’d have thought the wet cup is bigger because when something is wet it expands, so you’d want to take that into account.”
By now — when typically anyone getting wind of such banal back-and-forth would have fled the scene — Jenna, her dog Orbit, my cousin Aidan, and his dad Steve Brown were all on the edge of their wooden bench, which also brought them even closer to the whimpering flicker of the Duraflame log inside the cabin’s cast iron woodstove. Amid the struggle to stop shivering, the growingly heated exchange provided some warmth. Who knew where the conversation might go?
Though we ranged in age from 16 to 63, we shared one bond-forming commonality: We were all cold. It was our first of two nights staying in Doublehead Cabin — a doubleheader on Doublehead, if you will. It was March, and officially the final weekend of winter.
We’d met that afternoon at the trailhead in Jackson, NH. Jenna and I, Aidan and Steve, all drove from Connecticut. Phil came from northern Maine, where he’d just finished a three-day cross country skiing trip that had taken him from hut to hut in the wilderness. Rustic as that sounds, those Appalachian Mountain Club huts were heated and his meals were catered, very unlike what he was now getting himself into.
Nearly a century old, Doublehead Cabin was originally meant to be no more than a warming hut. It was built by FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as part of a larger project to develop backcountry ski runs in the region, including the Sherburne Ski Trail down Mount Washington. The cabin is administered by the U.S. Forest Service — meaning they’ll tell the door’s combination lock to anyone willing to pay $40 a night to rent the cabin.
We had all teamed up a year earlier for a weekend at Zealand Falls Hut (a seven-mile cc ski approach), and also (minus Jenna) in 2014 to do the one-day Presidential Traverse. Back in 2013, Phil had introduced me to the White Mountains during a trek into Carter Notch with our friend Steve Fagin. Since then, Phil and I had also gone spring skiing at Tuckerman Ravine in 2013 and in 2015. But this was the first time for all of us at the 3,054-foot-tall Doublehead Mountain.
Photo credit Jenna Cho
From the trailhead, it was an elevation gain of about 1,600 feet over 1.8 miles to the cabin. Phil, Jenna and Aidan snow-shoed up the ski trail, while we Steves skinned on telemark skis up the Old Trail, which is steeper but slightly shorter.
We’d only first tried telemark two months earlier, at Mad River Glen. Since then we’d freed the heel on slopes around Vermont, and also eschewed lift tickets in favor of skinning up a few ski mountains. We’d been to Wachusett Mountain, skinning up twice before getting told to leave or pay for a ticket, and twice to Stratton Mountain, where on one day I skinned up four times, logging 8,000 feet of elevation gain and 24 miles of up-and-down travel.
Only on Doublehead, however, was I hauling a 50-pound backpack that contained a gallon of water and two Duraflame logs in addition to all my winter camping supplies. As I teetered up the mountain, I had a vision of the character from the story Pilgrim’s Progress hauling his burden as he searches for the Promised Land.
Doublehead was my Promised Land…
Photo credit Jenna Cho
Once at the cabin, I realized that I’d forgotten four cans of IPA in my car. Rather than let them freeze, I quickly peeled the skins off my skis and made my inaugural telemark down the Doublehead Ski trail. It was thrilling, even if I was falling often in the narrow, steep chutes and struggling to make more than a knee-bending telemark stop.
Ninety minutes later, I was back at the cabin. The others were already warming by the light of one of five Duraflame logs we’d hauled up. We Steves were soon sipping IPAs. Everyone was munching on a spread of cheese, sausage, and diced apples that began to taste like apple pie as they warmed atop the woodstove, which was huffing smoke into the cabin each time a gust blew overhead. (The max wind speed atop nearby Mt. Washington that day was 111 mph, and the average was 66 mph.)
Dinner of ramen with tuna was followed by meandering chit-chat about wet cups vs dry cups, racing times up Mount Washington, and how cold we each were. Insulated sleeping bags beckoned — and Orbit seemed very miffed that we hadn’t brought one for him. He shivered through the night, from both the chill and his fright of the howling wind as it whooshed through the trees and rattled the cabin frame. At one point, I heard uncle Steve heating water so he could bring a hot bottle into his bag.
In the morning, frost on all the windows attested to the chill…
Photo credit Jenna Cho
After breakfast, we Steves telemarked down the ski trail, while Jenna cruised on snow-blades, and — fastest of all — Orbit came whizzing on his four legs. Phil and Aidan tromped down on their snowshoes. Back at the cars, Phil departed for Connecticut. He said he was tired of living in the woods and warned us that it’d be getting windier. We all think he really just wanted to get home for his ritual of a Sunday morning matinee at Mystic Luxury Cinemas.
While Phil drove south, we all headed north into Pinkham Notch to the John Sherburne Ski Trail. I immediately got out my skis and started skinning 2.4 miles (gaining 1,800 feet) up to the Hermit Lake Shelters, which is where the Sherburne begins. Meanwhile, Aidan was lacing up his sneakers for a blustery running workout along Rt. 16 — he had outdoor track to train for. Jenna and uncle Steve took a coffee break inside the Visitor Center.
The Sherburne was packed with powder — incredible conditions, thanks to more than three feet of snow that fell over the previous two weeks. One local skier said it was the best conditions he’d seen all winter. After one ski down, I regrouped with the others — Aidan by now done with his workout — and we all trekked up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail to ski the Sherburne together. Orbit was most excited.
The wind was screaming when we arrived at the Hermit Lake Shelter — we were feeling the whiplash of 122 mph gusts atop the summit. Taking off my gloves to remove the skins, my hands immediately cried, so I had to repeatedly pause to warm them inside my gloves (which contained hot packs). The wind chill was around -30 degrees F.
Once we were finally skiing, it was an absolute joy. Orbit was happier than I’d ever seen him as he raced over the snow, diving face-first into the powder, rolling down the mountain, and speeding as fast as I was going on skis. He’d run with me, then run with Jenna, nipping at her legs as if this were a game of cat and mouse (a dog being a cat in this analogy). At the bottom of the mountain Jenna looked at me with a big grin and said, “That was life-affirming for Orbit.” His snout was coated in snow.
We drove back to the Doublehead Trailhead and began a final slog up the mountain to our cabin. Once there, with previous day’s clouds lifted, we had an incredible view toward Mount Washington as its snowy peak reflected the setting sun…
Photo credit Steve Brown
This being St. Patrick’s Day, Uncle Steve broke out the Jameson whiskey. Dinner was macaroni and cheese with tuna, which was followed with communal chocolate and caramels as a new card game began.
While the second night at Doublehead was less windy, it was chillier. As the temperature dropped into the single digits, I started cutting logs that had been collected by previous tenants. They burned poorly, and I got more heat from the exercise than from the fire, but it was something. Everyone, including Orbit in the photo below, was eager for me to cut quickly.
The following morning held a beautiful sunrise that only Uncle Steve was awake to see…
Photo credit Steve Brown
I skipped breakfast for an early morning ski down the mountain so I could drop supplies at the car. Orbit joined me. On the return hike, Orbit exchanged snarls (and snaps) with another dog that had dared intrude on his mountain.
Back at the cabin a final time, Uncle Steve and Aidan were packed and heading out the door on their snowshoes. After a quick coffee with Jenna, I skied a final run down Doublehead. In total from Friday to Sunday, I’d logged 24 miles of uphill and downhill travel between Doublehead and Tuckerman, including 10,000 feet of elevation gain.
In North Conway, we ate a hot breakfast at a diner that, in its menu, asked all patrons to turn their cellphones onto vibrate mode — lucky for us, we hadn’t had to hear a phone ring all weekend. I imagine the mice of Doublehead Cabin were also happy for this.
*For the curious: The fastest running time up Mount Washington’s 7.6-mile auto road is 56 minutes, 41 seconds. The fastest bicycling time is 49 minutes, 24 seconds.
**And there’s no difference in volume between a dry cup and a wet cup, they’re just shaped different.
