The Bette Davis Hike (Bridal Veil Falls) 8/7/09

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The Feathered Hat

Active member
Joined
Sep 13, 2008
Messages
184
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85
Location
Franconia, NH
Trails: Tuckerbrook, Hardwood Heaven, Coppermine
Miles: ~6

Bette_Davis_intro.jpg


The story is well known. In 1939 the great film star Bette Davis, who enjoyed spending time in Sugar Hill, N.H., when she wasn't making movies, was out hiking by herself and managed to get lost on the way to Bridal Veil Falls. An employee of Peckett's, one of the local Sugar Hill inns, named Arthur Farnsworth found her and took her back to the trailhead. Thus began a romance -- not the first love story that's begun this way, I'm sure. On New Year's Eve 1940 Farnsworth and Davis were married, but in the summer of 1943 he died unexpectedly two weeks following a fall that had cracked his skull. Rumors speculated that Davis had pushed her husband down a flight of stairs in a drunken rage, but nothing was ever proven and the death was ruled accidental.

After Farnsworth's burial, Davis had a plaque mounted on a boulder beside Coppermine Brook, near the spot where Farnsworth had found her, and the plaque remains there to this day. Its location isn't really a secret, but many people who hike the popular Coppermine Trail to Bridal Veil Falls miss it because the plaque isn't beside the trail (and it isn't visible at all in winter due to snow cover). Finding the plaque is a treat, though, and worth the short, easy off-trail wander.

Tuckerman and I decided to hike up to Bridal Veil Falls after work on Friday, taking a bit different route than usual. We began not at Coppermine Road but up on Tuckerbrook Road, which spurs off of Wells Road, which itself branches off of State Route 116 a quarter mile south of the Franconia Inn. We followed the lower portion of the Tuckerbrook Trail -- in winter this is one of the old Mittersill ski trails, perhaps a trail that Bette Davis had once skied (at the bottom is one of my favorite trail signs in all of the Whites: "Caution! Alpine Downhill Skiers!" -- even though the nearest ski area is miles away). There's a small parking area at the top of Tuckerbrook Road, just past an old log home. Directly ahead is the Old Mittersill Road Trail, marked by a sign; the Tuckerbrook Trail is 90 degrees to the right, with no sign.

In short order the route passes the "Swiss Border" shortcut, branching right, that's part of the Franconia XC Ski Association network of trails; in four-tenths of a mile from the trailhead the "Von Ryan's Express" XC ski trail also branches right. From here, just up a short, steep pitch, the Hardwood Heaven Trail goes right. (The Tuckerbrook Trail continues to the top of Mittersill, and from there it's an easy walk to the top of Cannon Mountain. This is a fantastic alternative route to Cannon's peak, though somewhat longer than taking Kinsman Ridge Trail from the bottom of the tram.)

Hardwood Heaven indeed: this mile-long trail passes through a beautiful broadleaf woods before dropping down to meet the Coppermine Trail. There's some mud in the flat spots, and since this trail is under-used you'll be picking your own way around the bogs. But overall, this stretch offers gorgeous hiking.

To find the Davis plaque, once you reach the junction with the Coppermine Trail continue straight toward Coppermine Brook. With just a little exploring you'll find it:
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It's intriguing that Miss Davis, one of Hollywood's great divas, did not have her name inscribed on the plaque, referring to herself only obliquely as "a Grateful One" among the "Stray Ladies" that Farnsworth seemed to have a knack for finding. The plaque's wording presents a touching bit of romantic humility from a woman who, in her career, bucked even the most powerful studio executives and who could be, by all accounts, a terror on a film set. Yet in this wedding photograph, she and her Arthur glow with love:
Bette_Davis_husband_02.jpg


Taking the Tuckerbrook/Hardwood Heaven alternative cuts off a mile of the crowded Coppermine Trail (though adds about a half-mile). Five minutes' hiking up the Coppermine Trail brings you to where the trail first nudges Coppermine Brook, the traditional half-way spot on the hike up to Bridal Veil Falls. Tuck and I found a nice stand of Indian Pipe near the brook:
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The trail was wet but surprisingly not very muddy. Fairly quickly, we reached the falls, which look like this from just above the Coppermine shelter:
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There are two ways to climb up to the upper falls, a tricky climb up and over several big, mossy boulders to the left and a muddy, very slippery herd path to the right. We opted for the latter, which I thought would be easier for the dog. It was -- but the open rock faces are quite slick and require focus and attention to negotiate successfully:
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But once you reach the top, the falls are beautiful and really flowing right now from all the summer rain:
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After snacking a bit and taking a few more photos, Tuck and I headed back the way we came. On our way to the falls we had met no one, but on the way down we ran into the expected crowds, though as soon as we got back on the Hardwood Heaven stretch we were hiking by ourselves again. The trip, which is about 6 miles going this way (it's about 5.5 miles following only the Coppermine Trail from the parking area at the bottom of Coppermine Road), took us three hours; we were doing some leash training on the trail that slowed us down a bit.

This is a pretty great, pretty easy hike for stretching your legs and touching a bit of cool local history.

A few more photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99682097@N00/sets/72157621978935316/

Steve B
The Feathered Hat
[email protected]
________________________________

Tuckerman's report for dogs:

Lots of water. Good mud. A couple of frogs. People. Dogs.

Slippery rocks!

Who's Bette Davis? A breeder?

*** Three sniffs (out of four). T-Dog says check it out.
 
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Shhh! Don't make it too easy for people to find the plaque, lest it disappear.

Beautiful pics and a great writeup!
 
Sweet stuff. I was up there Memorial Day last year, and the water was flowing more on your hike than it was on mine, lucky! Thanks for sharing those!

grouseking
 
That was a great read. Thanks!
 
Very interesting TR! Nice touch with the Bette Davis pictures.

I always enjoy reading your reports, they are consistently informative in more ways than one.
 
quite the interesting story

thanks for posting on this bit of history..and intrigue

in the White mountains..

have to try that route to Cannon
 
Thank you for the kind words. Touching a bit of history on a hike always adds a sweetness to the day for me.

After reading Amicus's discussion on VFTT of the "Thoreau 16" (the 16 peaks in Mass., Maine, N.H., and N.Y. that Henry David Thoreau is known to have climbed), I wonder if, say, a "Hollywood 20" (or whatever number) could be compiled by researching biographies and autobiographies. Besides Bette Davis, who grew up in Lowell, Mass., other classic-era film stars with a New England connection include Katherine Hepburn (Connecticut), Spencer Tracy (he had a farm in Maine), and Claude Rains (who lived for many years in Center Harbor, N.H.; he's buried in the town cemetery, in fact). Doubtless there are more, and perhaps some of these gods of the screen climbed their local Olympuses in the Whites, Greens and in Maine. It'd be interesting to find out who (if anyone) climbed what, and then compile a list and repeat the climbs.

Coincidentally, the Turner Classic Movie channel (my favorite TV cable channel) devoted all of yesterday to films starring Bette Davis. If you only know this great actress from the bizarre, disturbing character she played in 1962's "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (opposite her real-life rival, Joan Crawford), it's very much worth your time to check out her classic films from the 1930s and '40s, including "Now, Voyager," "Of Human Bondage" and the wild "Jezebel."

I think it's totally cool that we have a direct connection to her amazing life right here in our mountains.
 
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We caught the TCM Bette Davis flicks last night too.

Nice timing for your Bette Davis hike and TR. We caught the TCM Bette Davis flicks last night too. We watched her in flick called Deception which happened to feature Claude Rains and Paul Henried. Claude Rains had a great role in this flic. The films featured last night all dated to the early forties when Bette Davis lived and was married to Farnsworth. I hope they were venturing out on the trails when they were summering here. Have to check out and see if there's any biographies of Bette Davis or Claude Rains at the library. Early forms of downhill skiing appears to have been "The thing to do" in those days.
 
Wow, lots of great information at that Heart of New Hampshire site. Thank you for posting the link, Jazzbo.

There are a few artifacts from Bette Davis's connection to Sugar Hill in the back of the Sugar Hill Sampler store near Polly's Pancakes. And the fellow who owns Franconia Notch Vacation Rentals is a friend; I'll have to ask him about the Butternut house.

Here's a photo from a 1941 edition of LIFE magazine that was taken, I believe, inside Butternut -- Bette Davis as proto-EMS model:
viewcelebfemale108.jpeg
 
Bette Davis and Claude Rains were a great pair on film, so it seems appropriate that they shared a love of the mountains of New Hampshire. In addition to the famous Now Voyager, they appeared in Deception, in which he plays a temperamental composer whom Bette murders when he threatens to expose their affair to her husband, and Mr. Skeffington, for which he received one of his four Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor (but he never won). In the latter, he manages to survive marriage to Bette, but she has a couple of dozen affairs.

You can find pictures of the interesting gravestone of Rains, in Red Hill Cemetery, at this website. I have wondered about the quote:

"All things once are things forever, Soul, once living, lives forever."

It seems to be by Robert Collyer, a Unitarian minister and author of the 19th Century who was once famous.

TCM has long been my favorite cable network too.
 
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