Mt. Moosilauke (1914) - Mountain Follies
". . . It is late afternoon of a gloomy day and the wind whistles mournfully as it chases whirls of snow across the broad summit. The old Tip-Top House stands on the highest point. It is a large L-shaped structure built mostly of wood with two stories and attic. It was originally reached by a wagon road up the Warren side of the mountain.
Since daylight is fading fast it must be our shelter for the night. As expected, some persons had previously broken in at one low window. and had not bothered to close it tight when they left so that a big snowdrift had collected inside. In a large inner room they had set up a stove, and left plenty of wood lying around. Unfortunately as soon as a fire is started we discover that the lower lengths of the makeshift stovepipe are bigger than those above; so we choke and wheeze as smoke pours out into the room There seems to be nothing we can do about this, but at least we can feel a feeble warmth.
Light is the most pressing problem, since the shutters are all on and daylight is almost done. We find one short stub of candle, and two lamps almost empty of kerosene with misfit chimneys which fall off at a touch. Having no food or bedding with us, we set off with a lamp to explore the house. No blankets to be found, but up in the attic there are rugs hung over wires to keep them from the mice. Just then the lamp chimney falls off .and the lamp goes out. No matches with us! It is pitch dark and the wind howls and rattles the shutters as we grope our way slowly downward.
The passage seem endless and we get trapped in blind alleys. Eddie is afraid of ghosts, so Tom and I feel our way into side bedrooms where we make weird noises. This is much more fun for us than it seems to be for Eddie, who becomes very irritated. At long last we grope our way down the last stairway leading to our smokey lair. There are some mattresses already on the floor, and back to the attic with the candle we go to drag down a supply of rugs that will serve as blankets.
The next thought is food, since only a few crumbs are left from our trail lunches. Diligent scrounging turns up some frozen potatoes, a package old macaroni, and a bottle labeled "Rye Whiskey" and full of an amber fluid which turns out to be excellent maple syrup. With melted snow in a big iron skillet we boil up the macaroni; it is nourishing but very flat without salt. The frozen potatoes disintegrate to watery mush, which we decide would only appeal in really advanced starvation.
But for dessert - Ah, that good maple syrup stirred into fresh snow from the drift in the next room makes maple ice cream fit for the god. Some of the macaroni but none of the maple syrup is left for the next wayfarers. Meanwhile the dregs of kerosene in the lamps have gone and the candle stub burns low. Again light becomes the main problem. By catching the candle wax in a tin cover and softening it up on the stove, we are able to mold it around a piece of string in the dark to make a new candle, and this can be repeated a couple of times while we are getting ready to bed down for the night.
Lying in the pitch darkness listening to the moan of the wind and the rattling of loose shutters is very romantic but not very comfortable. We discover that rugs are a poor substitute for blankets, giving much more weight than warmth.
So it is no great hardship to be routed out by Eddie at grey dawn to see our first winter mountain sunrise spreading its soft pink all across the pale dawn sky. By all rights our youthful ignorance and disregard of all sensible rules for winter climbing should have been punished, rather than rewarded by one of one of the most glorious winter days in memory.
For a week, freezing clouds had hung low over the high ranges; now they are revealed in gleaming silver splendor against the azure sky. Fringes of icicles on rocks are dripping in the warm sun. We are enchanted; only the pangs of hunger finally drive us floundering and sliding back down to Lost River in the late afternoon. . . ."
From "Moosilauke Follies, 1914" by Richard H. Kimball, Appalachia, 1970. Reprinted by permission of the Appalachian Mountain Club, 5 Joy St., Boston, MA 02018. www.outdoors.org
