AMC Action Plan for 2025-30

[sierra]

I think that the above-treeline huts are the most important of all for consolidating human waste that is transported out by helicopter to a sewage treatment plant. This service alone was incredibly important during the onslaught multitude of temporary hikers during the first year of the pandemic, a time when the huts were otherwise closed for lodging and meals, which was a huge financial hit for the AMC, as the huts are the cash cow that supports other services like education programs, trail construction, and the MWI.

In reply to TomK’s comment about buying baked goods at the huts, please keep doing that one and all, as all that cash goes directly to the not so highly paid hut croos.

If the huts were not there, there would not be a need to helicopter out barrels of human waste. A few years ago, the barrels left outside Madison hut leaked fecal matter for sometime before they were able to get them out of there. I find it interesting that the AMC supporters have zero issue justifying the hut system, yet when Presby wanted to build a hotel up on the cone next to HIS train tracks, it was travesty that could never be let to happen, hypocrisy at the highest level.

 

[pwsull]

2023 they had ~$60 million in revenue, ~$40 million in expenses, and over $200 million in assets.

I grew up in a non-outdoors family and back in the 1960’s back pack trips with my camp to Lakes of the Clouds was my introduction to a lifelong love of the White Mountain National Forest and its peaks. Later the huts offered the opportunity to introduce my children to that same love and awe until they were old enough to rough it in the wilderness without a roof and prepared meals. The huts are an invaluable resource to introduce people to an awesome natural wilderness gently. Without them, not sure my kids or I would be lifelong participants in and advocates for the WMNF.

As for the money aspect of the AMC, we can all complain about “The Appalachian Money Club” but for anyone involved in non profit organizations those numbers quoted above are actually pretty modest including the CEO’s $300K salary. You just wouldn’t find someone qualified to do that job for less.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

If the huts were not there, there would not be a need to helicopter out barrels of human waste. A few years ago, the barrels left outside Madison hut leaked fecal matter for sometime before they were able to get them out of there. I find it interesting that the AMC supporters have zero issue justifying the hut system, yet when Presby wanted to build a hotel up on the cone next to HIS train tracks, it was travesty that could never be let to happen, hypocrisy at the highest level.

Maybe true on the need for helicopters, but if not for the huts, the human waste would be strewn all over the alpine zone, under every little and large stone and krummholz bush. Human waste is much easier to manage below tree line if care is taken to use a trowel to dig a cat hole along with burning the tissue before backfilling.

When I first began my glacial geological field research in Pangnirtung Pass on Baffin Island in the 1970s, the area was becoming a destination for big wall climbers, and then backpackers, and the floor and sidewalls of the entire length of the spectacular 30-mile-long stretch of the southern end of the Pass became strewn with human turds capped with toilet paper and a couple little stones, like mini cairns. Simply disgusting sacrilege of a beautiful place.

The Canadian Government recognized the problem and established Auyuittuq National Park, which included Pangnirtung Pass where outhouses and small A-frame huts for emergency bivouacs were build every few miles. Human waste was disposed in heavy-duty plastic bags lining “honey buckets,” which were then carried out when frozen in winter by snow machine to a sewage lagoon outside the hamlet of Pangnirtung. I think that the alpine of northern New England is just as fragile as, if not more spectacular than, Pangnirtung Pass and needs the protection from human waste.

 

[TomK]

2023 they had ~$60 million in revenue, ~$40 million in expenses, and over $200 million in assets.

They say they are non-profit, I never believed that, the CEO makes over 300,000 dollars in salary.

If they want to actually not make a profit, paying the CEO $300K a year would be a step in the direction of not making a profit.

TomK

 

[DayTrip]

The organization is anything but diverse if you ask me, it's mostly affluent white people from Boston,

I would concur with this. I find a lot of people in the hut crowd to be pretty obnoxious actually and hardly there to experience the outdoors. More like going up there to say they went to their friends back home.

I remember cutting past the Mizpah Hut late in the day several Summers back on way to Jackson and stopping to pull out a fleece. There was a group of 8-10 "hikers", all particularly clean and sporting curiously new looking clothing and smelling of cologne talking in front of the door. While they talked one of the croo girls emerged from the woods sweating and muddy with their traditionally huge backpacks, no doubt dinner for these guys for the night. As she walked up to the group blocking the door not a single person moved out of her way. After an uncomfortably long time I finally sternly suggested "Hey fellas. Get out of the way" and pointed to her waiting patiently. They slowly made an opening for her to pass and there was very little in the way of an apology or even acknowledgement of what they had done. They certainly seemed to think of it as an intrusion on their fun. It must take a special kind of person to be a croo member and tolerate that kind of entitlement all day. In my experience being around the huts this demographic of people is pretty typical, not the exception.

I get what the supposed stated goal of the AMC is but I don't feel it is in any way accomplishing that, at least in the hut system I see in NH. Maybe back in the "flatlands" of Southern New England there are such programs getting underprivileged people out in nature and gaining experience. In the Whites, I think the huts are merely a crutch for people who want to experience the outdoors, just not the hard parts. They want to skimp on gear so the hiking is easier and be pampered for the night. Not what I equate to a wilderness experience. But, to each his own as they say. It's not for me.

 

[sierra]

I grew up in a non-outdoors family and back in the 1960’s back pack trips with my camp to Lakes of the Clouds was my introduction to a lifelong love of the White Mountain National Forest and its peaks. Later the huts offered the opportunity to introduce my children to that same love and awe until they were old enough to rough it in the wilderness without a roof and prepared meals. The huts are an invaluable resource to introduce people to an awesome natural wilderness gently. Without them, not sure my kids or I would be lifelong participants in and advocates for the WMNF.

As for the money aspect of the AMC, we can all complain about “The Appalachian Money Club” but for anyone involved in non profit organizations those numbers quoted above are actually pretty modest including the CEO’s $300K salary. You just wouldn’t find someone qualified to do that job for less.

I appreciate that the huts got you and your family outside, but to say you never would have gone outside without them is not the best argument. I grew up camping in the Whites with my family in tents, so it is possible to be outside without having a hut available. The back and forth on the merits of the AMC are typically a waste of time, kind of like Republicans and Democrats going back and forth, rarely any ground is made. To each his own in the end, I am used to them being there and it hasn't affected me much in the long run. I just have to be stern on the trail because AMC groups will never get out of the way for faster hikers, they plod along like they own the place.