A.M.C. Hut to Hut traverses

[RoySwkr]

It would be interesting to ask some of these folks if anyone had tried a one-day winter hut traverse, although I suspect that the trails were not generally as packed out in those days as they usually are now.

Dr. D and I are tied with numerous others for the original record for "Staffed High Hut Winter Traverse" at 0 days 0 hours 0 minutes as prior to the '70s the AMC didn't staff high huts in the winter. Hence presumably earlier traverses would have been to all huts as there was no distinction. And as I recall you found somewhere a note about a group that tried a backpack traverse and failed.

Dan Allen and presumably others have hiked the AT through NH in winter but don't know if they went to Greenleaf and their times would have been in days.
Probably the all-hut winter traverse has been done but I don't know by who.

 

[Snowflea]

Winter hut traverses

Roy,

This was discussed over on the AMC boards in January 2004. At that time I posted the following:

************************************************
Turns out Guy Waterman was, indeed, successful at completing the winter H2H... twice! See the Watermans' fascinating accounts in their excellent book Wilderness Ethics, Chapter 17: "Five Winter Trips, The End of Adventure?"

In 1980 Guy, Laura and a friend Mike (Young?) backpacked from Lonesome Lake to Carter Notch Huts in 5 days. In 1989 Guy soloed the same route in 5 days, including a 2-night stay at Zealand Hut.

The WH2H was apparently first attempted in 1962 by Robert Collin (one of the first to complete the winter NH 4000 footers) & friends. They planned on taking 9 days to go from Lonesome to Carter but had to abort the attempt at Crawford Notch due to high winds & cold temps in the Presies. Remember, this was in the days of wooden snowshoes lacking crampons, completely unbroken trails, and no open huts... to say nothing of their other gear! I'm puzzled at their reasons for going west to east, though, as it seems one would want to wait for and take advantage of a good weather forecast and get the Presidentials done early on. (Anyone know the status of weather forecasting in 1962? Perhaps they just had to "wing it.")

You can view the entire thread here.

 

[skiguy]

I'm puzzled at their reasons for going west to east, though, as it seems one would want to wait for and take advantage of a good weather forecast and get the Presidentials done early on. (Anyone know the status of weather forecasting in 1962? Perhaps they just had to "wing it.")

The Predominant Wind Pattern in the Whites is from the West (NW to SW). The wind at your back more often possibly? I believe Guy spent two nights at Zealand on his secound round due to a poke in the eye from a stick that needed to heal. I was fortunate enough to speak with him one time about his summer Bushwack traverse of the huts. Interesting stuff.

 

[Tim Seaver]

Dr. D and I are tied with numerous others for the original record for "Staffed High Hut Winter Traverse" at 0 days 0 hours 0 minutes as prior to the '70s the AMC didn't staff high huts in the winter.

I was aware of this, but thanks for reminding everyone. And congrats on your record, I had no idea!

Although a one day traverse in earlier days would have been nearly impossible in typical snow conditions, it certainly would have been possible in the winter of 1979-1980, and I am sure other odd snow years provided some early/late season windows of opportunity.

From "Wilderness Ethics", "Trip 4":

"The winter of 1979-80 was snowless, something unprecedented in our lifetimes. It meant very fast travel, sometimes faster than summer. Most trails were a sheet of ice, like a frozen sidewalk. That meant strapping on crampons for the whole day and striding along almost like summer. Deep snow was not obscuring the trailway, so trail finding was no problem whatsoever"

So given the amazing summer Hut-To-Hut times of that era, I am a bit surprised that there wasn't at least a few attempts at a one-day traverse during light snow years.

With or without a sack of pipe fittings.

 

[RoySwkr]

> The WH2H was apparently first attempted in 1962

At least the first by people involved with the AMC which was probably a
higher percentage of winter hikers then than now

>by Robert Collin (one of the first to complete the winter NH 4000
footers)

Mr Collin is apparently not listed as a NH4k winter completer, one story
is that after Miriam beat him to #1 he didn't care any more although
possibly he was just the first completer not to file if he was doing it
for himself not recognition

In any case he soon moved to NY where he promoted climbing the Adk 100
without discussing routes to make it more of a challenge

>Remember, this was in the days of wooden snowshoes lacking crampons,
> completely unbroken trails, and no open huts

By the end of the decade people were wiring half an army surplus crampon
to the bottom of their army surplus snowshoes but I can't say what Collin
used. And popular trails such as Crawford Path might well have been
broken. Huts were unstaffed but used to leave a refuge room open for
hikers, although if you read Miriam's story of digging into Galehead a
tent might have been easier

> Anyone know the status of weather forecasting in 1962?

My father used to work in AF weather including the 1938 hurricane, he
said that for usual W-to-E weather the East Coast forecasts were pretty
good as other stations could tell them what was coming but they were
sometimes surprised by storms off the ocean although they did get weather
reports from ships

>Although a one day traverse in earlier days would have been nearly
>impossible in typical snow conditions, it certainly would have been possible
>in the winter of 1979-1980, and I am sure other odd snow years provided
>some early/late season windows of opportunity.

Quite true, I certainly remember one winter when I wanted to snowshoe and even joked about going to Labrador but the Whites finally got deep snow in Feb. I think a lot of hutmen were back in college and not thinking about the mtns. These same conditions would have been good for a 4k speed record but nobody was thinking about that either - CG and friends finished in ONE WINTER and people thought that was plenty fast.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

Note from Alex MacPhail

Hi all,

I talked Alex into sharing the summary below about his H2H run in 1963. He is also working on a longer piece for the OH Association's journal Resusitator, which will cover the early history of the H2H leading up to his run, some of which follows. Now in his mid-60s, he has caught the running bug again and clocked some really fast times on classic traverses in the Whites the past two summers and hopes to repeat his H2H route in under 16 hours next summer. Alex is a real inspiration to me as I fight off my own perils of the aging process.

Cheers, Dr. D.

ps. Joe's Snack Bar in Twin is now an antiques shop (still with the same red paint), but at the time was a rendevous point for OH and also for search and rescue operations in the Whites.


Hey Thom,

I guess it's okay if you want to put something on the web at VFTT. I wrote this blurb to fill in a little detail that might be interesting given the time (antiquity) and the resources available then:

I left Madison Hut at 5:30 am on August 16, 1963 (didn't log in), timing myself with two devices, including a stop watch in a cardboard case that I recorded Hut2Hut times and a Movado wrist watch for total elapsed time (12 hrs. 11 mins.). The difference in Hut2Hut time versus elapsed time was 40 minutes accounting for 10 min.-long rests at Pinkham, Lakes , Zool, and Ghoul.

I wore a "fanny pack" containing the stop watch, an ace bandage, a Gerry squeeze tube containing evaporated milk that I replenished at each hut, and 3 to 4 fig newton bars that I also replenished at each hut. At each hut I ate a large bowl of Elberta cling peaches, and at Ghoul I ate a ham and cheese sandwich and drank lots of water and a cup of cocoa.

I wore my black Limmer's from Madison to Carter and then switched to Adidas (Romas named after the Rome Olympics) track shoes for most of the trip. I switched off three pairs of Adidas. One pair fell completely apart on the A-Z Trail. I wore my brown Limmer's from Ghoul to Flea and Adidas from Flea to Lonesome.

My route and times were as follows:

From Mad House I went down the Madison Gulf Tr to the Great Gulf Tr to the Glen House then up the Aqueduct Tr to 19 Mile Brook Tr. to Cata (1 hr. 55 mins.)

From Cata I took the Wildcat Ridge Tr to the gondola station and ran down the Wildcat Ski Tr to Rt. 16 and then ran up the road to Pinkham (1hr. 15 mins [3 hrs. 10 mins.]) arriving there at 8:40 am.

I rested/ate at Pinkham for 10 mins and then climbed to Lakes via Tuckerman's (47 mins. [4 hrs. 7 mins.]) arriving at 9:37 am and rested at Lakes for 10 mins.

From Lakes I took the Crawford Path, Webster Cliff Tr (To Mizpah
Shelter) and Mizpah Cut-off, and the A-Z Tr to Zealand (Zool) arriving there a few minutes after noon (2 hrs. 15 mins. [6 hrs. 32 mins.]) .

I took a quick bath in the river at Zool before proceeding on to Galehead (Ghoul) arriving there at 2:04 pm (1 hr. 52 mins. [8 hrs. 34 mins.]) I was getting cramps in my thighs and calves and I rested at Ghoul for 20 mins. and rehydrated.

Ghoul to the Flea was the most difficult part of the trip. The rest at Ghoul was not long enough but I was trying for a time of under 12 hours or an average speed of 4-5 mph and needed to keep moving. I left Ghoul at 2:25 pm and arrived at the Flea at 4:40 pm. I rested less than 5 minutes, just long enough to change shoes again.

I made it from Flea to Lone (the old hut on the north side of the lake) in 57 minutes arriving there at 5:41 pm for a total elapsed time of 12 hrs 11 mins, 15 minutes longer than my target time.

I then went to Jo's Snack Bar in Twin Mountain and ate/drank two cheeseburgers and two or three milkshakes and was back at Pinkham by 8 pm.


My earlier communication from Alex:

Two years ago I was planing to write a definitive story for the Resusitator on the Hut Traverse from 1936 to 2007. There is a story in the 1936 December Appalachia titled "On Breaking One's Own Record" by an H.L. Malcolm who crystalized the Traverse in my mind when I read his article in 1953 at my summer home on Lake Winnespesaukee. He begins that article by exclaiming that his interest in 24 hour mountain marathons "was aroused in 1931 by the Marshall brothers, and other hikers in the Adirondack Mountains." Malcolm next heard that two AMC croo, Batchelder and Loomis, completed the AMC hut traverse in 1933 in 23 hours, 15 minutes.

Malcolm set out on his own attempt on July 7, 1936. He left Carter at
12:04 am and finished at Lonesome at 10:07 pm, or 22 hours and 3 minutes. Two weeks later on July 22, 1936, he repeated his traverse, leaving Carter at 6 am and hiking first to Pinkham via the Wildcats and then to Madison via Osgood Ridge. He also went over all the summits. He arrived at Lonesome in 21 hours and 43 minutes, hiking 55 miles with a vertical rise of 19,000 feet.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's there were several new records set on the Traverse by some well known hikers including Tom Deans and Chris Goetz. Chris, I believe, did the traverse west to east in just over 16 hours. Tom Deans did not complete his traverse because of jock rash. I have some other names as well.

I completed a traverse on August 16th, 1963, after training for two weeks. I started at Madison at 5:30 am (first light) on that day and ran down Madison Gulf to 19 Mile Brook, up to Carter, over the Wildcats and down the Wildcat Ski Trail to Route 16. I ran to Pinkham on the road and then up to Lakes via the Tuck Trail. I made it from Pinkham to Lakes in 47 minutes but stopped to vomit twice after eating too fast at Pinkham. From Lakes the run was pretty easy. I went via the Mizpah shelter so that my Traverse would include Mizpah after it was built. I got to Lonesome, the old hut, in 12 hours, 11 minutes. I hardly mentioned it to anyone as I was using the traverse pretty much as a training exercise. I have all my hut to hut times documented in a notebook that I kept.

I've heard of others completing the traverse in good times but I think Malcolm and the others before and after him included Pinkham in the Traverse.

 

[RoySwkr]

>From Cata I took the Wildcat Ridge Tr to the gondola station and ran
>down the Wildcat Ski Tr to Rt. 16 and then ran up the road to Pinkham

Like the guy he mentions who went over all the summits, he is apparently
trying for a "sporting" route as I assume Aqueduct Path to Rte 16 would
be faster

>Ghoul to the Flea was the most difficult part of the trip.

The other hut names seem to be based on their official names while this
one is different, was there an infestation?

> Chris, I believe, did the traverse west to east in just over 16 hours.

This one is in the Appalachia article by his father referenced somewhere
and did not include summits but he did go to Pinkham

> I went via the Mizpah shelter so that my Traverse would include Mizpah
> after it was built.

Good forward thinking. Of course if the Sphinx Col Hut had been built,
the Madison-first route would not have worked.

>I've heard of others completing the traverse in good times but I think
>Malcolm and the others before and after him included Pinkham in the
>Traverse.

That was certainly the way I've heard it. Recent hut crew seem to skip
it, I've always wondered if this is a philosphical thing that high huts
are different than convention centers or just a way to shorten the route
(and your time).

 

[Snowflea]

Thom(/Alex),

Thank you so much for posting this. As someone who does care about records I really appreciate it.

So Timmus was correct then?

In the late 1950's and early 1960's there were several new records set on the Traverse by some well known hikers including... I have some other names as well

I'd be interested in the other names, and their approximate times (and stories if they're willing).

Also, FWIW, I know a few people, both men and women, in their 60s and 70s who are still running ultras (i.e. 50 & 100 milers) if Alex has any interest. There's this really cool 100 miler in the San Juans of Colorado...

Anyway, thanks again for the post!

Stinkyfeet
runsuerun.blogspot.com

 

[dr_wu002]

Yeah, this was a good read. I stand corrected! Very interesting too.

-Dr. Wu

 

[ColdRiverRun]

Two years ago I was planing to write a definitive story for the Resusitator on the Hut Traverse from 1936 to 2007. There is a story in the 1936 December Appalachia titled "On Breaking One's Own Record" by an H.L. Malcolm who crystalized the Traverse in my mind when I read his article in 1953 at my summer home on Lake Winnespesaukee. He begins that article by exclaiming that his interest in 24 hour mountain marathons "was aroused in 1931 by the Marshall brothers, and other hikers in the Adirondack Mountains." Malcolm next heard that two AMC croo, Batchelder and Loomis, completed the AMC hut traverse in 1933 in 23 hours, 15 minutes.

Malcolm set out on his own attempt on July 7, 1936. He left Carter at
12:04 am and finished at Lonesome at 10:07 pm, or 22 hours and 3 minutes. Two weeks later on July 22, 1936, he repeated his traverse, leaving Carter at 6 am and hiking first to Pinkham via the Wildcats and then to Madison via Osgood Ridge. He also went over all the summits. He arrived at Lonesome in 21 hours and 43 minutes, hiking 55 miles with a vertical rise of 19,000 feet.

Here is more on M.L. Malcolm from a Adirondack book that some of you NEers might not have picked up.

From the Burnside book "Exploring the 46 Adirondack High Peaks": I wonder if he's fired up by the feat of Adirondack Mountain Club member H.L. Malcolm, who in 1933 at the age of 49 set a record for that era. Starting from the Adirondack Loj at one minute after midnight on October seven, Malcolm traversed Giant, Noonmark and the two Wolfjaws, then Armstrong, Gothics, Saddleback, Basin, Haystack, Marcy, Skylight, Colden and Algonquin, returning over Mt. Jo to the Loj. Since it was still an hour before midnight - of the same day, that is -he climbed Mt Jo a second time to rack up a total ascent of more than 20,000 ft., covering a distance of just over 40 miles.

So when Malcolm did his traverse in '36 he was about 52! Keep in mind that in the thirties the average 52 year was dead already. So during the Great Depression imagine the gear available for this, if Alex used crappy sneaks in '63 Malcolm must have use wooden sandals! There has been amazing individuals at all points in time with the ability to sustain suffering and push themselves beyond what people think is possible. I imagine in the 30's these guys helped push the levels of human spirit too when many where pushing themselves to just keep there families feed.

 

[timmus]

I then went to Jo's Snack Bar in Twin Mountain and ate/drank two cheeseburgers and two or three milkshakes and was back at Pinkham by 8 pm.

Some things don't change, eh cbcbd ? (I always enjoy your link to the big burger image )

... And thanks Dr. D, that was a very good thread.

 

[skiguy]

Gotta get me some of them Elberta cling peaches and a pair of Adidas

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

Hi all,

Alex checked out this thread and emailed me that my term "lots," as in lots of runners were clocking really fast times in the H2H in the 1960s, could be misinterpreted, and that probably a "handful" would be a better term. In 1968, I only actually met two runners who were going for a fast time on the H2H, that day I was cooking at Zealand hut. But, anyone can read the registers/journals archived at each hut for those years, so it might be interesting to see what other references might be available. Ditto for the packing records that I mentioned earlier.

Cheers, Dr. D.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

So, it has been 3+ years....

Alex has recently posted on his wonderful White Mountain Sojourn blog a nice little history of the early to most recent H2H traverses that have involved primarily AMC "croo".

http://whitemountainsojourn.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

[Edit: whoops, not quite 3 years....]

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

I am posting on VftT for only the second time in over a decade, the last time to reflect on the passing of long-time, winter hiking friend Al Dwyer in a thread initiated by Cath Goodwin about four years ago. I post here to inform of the passing of Alex MacPhail on 19 January 2022, at the age of 78. A link to an obituary appears below. Although details of Alex’s passing are not provided in the obit, I am told that during his last few weeks he was hospitalized with pneumonia and anaplasmosis (typically a tick-borne bacterial infection) on top of dementia, following which he contracted Covid-19 in a nursing home. He survived the first nearly two years of the pandemic at home.

Since 2007 when I initiated this thread, I have felt somewhat badly about making public Alex’s 1963 H2H run in August of 1963. Alex forgave me for this indiscretion, which led eventually to his long post in 2010 on the history of H2H traverses in his White Mountain Sojourn blog (see link below). There remain a few discrepancies, for example some confusion between his White Mountains training run of 40 miles on 16 August 1963 and his full H2H run of about 54 miles at the end of the month, probably during his next set of days off (known as “daze”). OH croo work 11 days on, 3 days off, but it is really 12 days on, 2 days off, as croo members cannot leave the hut until after breakfast and hut clean up on Daze 1, and must return in time to help serve supper on Daze 3. Yet, most OH croo reflect that their time in the huts was the best job that they ever had, but also the hardest; I know that I do. Also, Alex left off his 12 hr 11 min finish time on his H2H run, although he wrote that he arrived at the summit of Lafayette in 10 hours 45 minutes about an hour behind his goal from Madison via Carter, the Wildcats, and Pinkham, so I and other OH folks have no reason to doubt that he reached the old Lonesome hut in 12 hr 11 min (he noted that his goal was to finish in under 12 hours). I still need to do the research of hut journals from August 1963 to confirm these details, but I am usually in a rush when passing through the huts these days, although I did check the Zool hut journal from 1968 when I worked fill-in croo during mid-August 2018, the 50-year anniversary for my last year of work in the huts.

During the OH fall reunion in 2010 at the Highland Center, after my last post on this thread, Alex and I spent a wonderful afternoon before supper hiking Caps Ridge Trail to Mount Jefferson for examination of patterned ground and other periglacial features in the alpine. I feel good about finding him a copy of Linc Washburn’s 1973 long out-of-print book “Periglacial Processes and Environments,” which he lists at the end of his White Mountains bibliography on the home page of his blog, in which his last entries are from 2016 and 2017.

For a couple of decades or longer (maybe even begun when he worked in the huts?), Alex carried out a botanical revegetation study of the landslide scar on the west side of the Gale River Trail (above the large rectangular landslide block that rests on the trail about 2.5 miles up), with many of his observations recorded in his White Mountain Sojourn blog. His plan was to expand this effort into a book titled “Ecology of the White Mountains,” which sadly never happened.

I feel good about Alex having been an inspiration to many H2H runners, especially over the past decade (see the comments section of the FKT website link below). On the KFT site, Pseltzer announced on 8/15/20 that he planned an attempt to better the 12 hr 11 min FKT time on the “MacPhail variation” of the H2H the next day, but there is no follow up. FKT protocols are now to announce publicly one’s running plans and to provide a a follow up, time-stamped, GPS-recorded route link. The MacPhail route from Madison to Carter and over the Wildcats to Pinkham to Lakes and across to Lonesome is about five miles longer and about 3000 vertical feet greater gain than the standard H2H route typically followed today.

Former OH Hillary Gerardi, Katie Schide, and Jeff Colt provided an after-dinner H2H slide show during our OH fall reunion at the Highland Center a few years ago (see their names in FKT lists below). Hillary and Katie moved to Europe for continuation of their mountain running and xc skiing exploits. Hillary (from St. Johnsbury, VT) has the FKT for the winter Haute Route between Chamonix and Zermatt (on xc skis), in 26 hours 21 minutes, during early April 2021 (106.4 km, 8100 meters elevation gain; see link below). Katie has focused on mountain trail running while working on her PhD in geology at ETH in Zurich, but made time for return to the Whites in 2019 to set the women's FKT for the H2H.


I have tried to proof-read this entire post in a Word doc on my screen, but apologize up front for any typos and/or misstatements.


Male self-supported fastest known times for the modern (skipping Wildcats and Pinkham) H2H:
1) Jack Kuenzle, 9 hr 58 min 3 sec, 9/01/21
2) Jordan Fields,10 hr 24min 44 sec, 9/20/20
3) Jeffrey Colt, 10 hr 57 min 47 sec, 8/17/18
4) Liam Davis, 11 hr 46 min 14 sec, 7/19/18
5) George Heinrichs, 12 hr 38 min 0 sec, 7/21/11
6) Peter Howe, 12 hr 49 min 33 sec, 9/25/15
7) Matthew Cull, 13 hr 8 min 0 sec, 5/9/93

Female self-supported fastest known times for the modern (skipping Wildcats and Pinkham) H2H:
1) Katie Schide, 12 hr 23 min 6 sec, 7/25/19
2) Kristina Folcik, 14 hr 28 min 6 sec, 8/25/18
3) Megan Farrell, 15 hr 12 min 0 sec, 8/25/17
4) Hillary Gerardi, 15 hr 59 min 3 sec, 8/7/15
5) Larisa Dannis, 17 hr 3 min 13 sec, 7/1/12
6) Sue Johnston, 18 hr 15 min 0 sec, 6/1/99

Male self-supported fastest known times for the modern (skipping Wildcats and Pinkham) winter H2H (all huts):
1) Ryan Mitchell, 18 hr 29 min 10 sec, 1/1/21
2) Will Peterson, 19 hr 29 min 0 sec, 3/8/21

(only three open huts, shorter distance)
1) Tim Seaver, 18 hr 25 min, 2/29/04
2) Cath Goodwin, 23 hr 41 min, 3/11/04


R.I.P., Alexander MacPhail


https://www.ricefuneralhome.com/obituary/Alexander-MacPhail

https://fastestknowntime.com/route/white-mountains-hut-traverse-nh

http://whitemountainsojourn.blogspot.com/2010/08/famous-or-infamous-hut-traverse.html

https://runthealps.com/something-truly-badass-just-happened-in-the-alps/

http://whitemountainsojourn.blogspot.com/2010/11/11-19-10-galehead-gale-river-research.html