Episode 135 - Tobey and Meghan from the Mt. Washington Auto Road

[00:00:03] Here is the latest Higher Summits forecast brought to you by our friends at the Mt. Washington Observatory. Weather above treeline in the White Mountains is often wildly different than at our trailheads. Before you hike, check the Higher Summits forecast at www.mtwashington.org.

[00:00:32] Weather observers working at the non-profit Mt. Washington Observatory write this elevation-based forecast every morning and afternoon. Search and Rescue teams, avalanche experts, and backcountry guides all rely on the Higher Summits forecast to anticipate weather conditions above treeline. You should too.

[00:00:55] And here is your forecast for Friday, January 12th and Saturday, January 13th. Friday, in and out of the clouds trending towards clearing by late morning under partly sunny skies, high in the mid teens with winds west shifting southwest at 60-80 mph with

[00:01:29] gusts up to 90 mph early, 40-55 midday and 15-30 mph later. Friday night, starting in the clear under increasingly cloudy skies, then trending into the clouds. Chance of snow early, then snow after midnight, possibly falling heavy at times.

[00:01:51] Snow accumulations 3-5 inches, with the lowest starting in the mid teens then rising to upper teens. Winds will be southwest shifting southeast at 15-30 mph early, 40-55 mph midnight and then 60-80 mph with gusts up to 100 mph later.

[00:02:12] And then Saturday, in the clouds with snow transitioning to mixed precipitation late morning before transitioning to snow in the afternoon. Though snow and mixed precipitation could fall heavily at times, additional snow accumulations of 3-5 inches, ice accumulations from sleet and freezing rain of a trace to a quarter

[00:02:33] of an inch. Highs will be rising to the mid 20s before rapidly falling to the lower teens by sunset. Winds will be southwest shifting clockwise to the west at 65-85 mph with gusts up to 110 mph, decreasing to 50-70 mph with gusts up to 80 mph.

[00:02:55] The wind chill will be rising to 5 above to 5 below before falling rapidly in the afternoon hours to 15 below to 25 below. Broadcasting from the Woodpecker Studio in the great state of New Hampshire, welcome to

[00:03:47] the Sounds Like A Search And Rescue podcast, where we discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Here are your hosts, Mike and Stomp. We're good to go, Stomp. So welcome back to episode 135.

[00:04:24] For the listeners, Stomp's got me doing like acting stuff and I'm reading off a script and he's got all kinds of crazy stuff organized. Yeah, we're wrapping up the secrets, top secret stuff for 2024 drops. We're working hard to punch up the show for us it sounds like.

[00:04:43] Yeah, I've been spending some time goofing around with it. It's been fun. As usual, Paul, our voiceover guy was more than willing to help out, so thank you, Paul. He's a legend. Yeah, he really is. You'll see as the show goes on.

[00:04:57] All right, so Stomp, welcome to episode 135. This is the first episode of 2024 of the Sounds Like A Search And Rescue podcast. This week we are back from vacation and joined by our friends at the Mount Washington Auto Road.

[00:05:13] So Toby Reichart, the auto road general manager, and Megan Moody Schwartz, the auto road marketing and events director. They're kind enough to sit down with us this week to talk about all things Mount Washington Auto Road.

[00:05:25] So you're going to enjoy this discussion about America's oldest man-made attraction where we'll cover the history of the auto road, the operations behind maintaining the road, all the various events and activities available to do with the Mount Washington Auto Road

[00:05:41] and we'll learn about the Great Glen Trails Outdoor Center and the Glen House Hotel. All this plus we'll do a vacation recap. Stomp has been on fire with his hiking kick, with trips out to the Osceolas, the Tri-Pyramids and Tecumseh over the break.

[00:06:00] And then we'll wrap up with some recent search and rescue news. So I'm Mike. And I'm Stomp. Let's get started. This is Ben Pease from Hiking Buddies. We are a 501c3 nonprofit committed to reducing avoidable tragedies through education, impactful projects and fostering a community of support.

[00:06:43] You can find out more at hikingbuddies.org. We wanted to say thank you to those who have supported our mission and most importantly say thanks to those who speak up, who ask questions and who are willing to provide guidance and assistance on the trails when needed.

[00:06:56] You embody what it means to be a hiking buddy. And now for all my newer hikers out there, here's this episode's Hiking Buddies Quick Tip. We're all friends here, right? Get to know your hiking buddies a little bit through messages or calls so you can best

[00:07:19] plan the hike that suits everyone's abilities. Don't be afraid to say no or redirect an unsafe hiker. All right. Thank you, hiking buddy. So Stomp, you've been out hiking a lot over the vacation. Anything else? Anything good?

[00:07:48] No, we just sort of hung out local and it was really low key. The weather was wacky up here, but yeah, it was nice. Got a lot of hiking in, a lot of family time. It was really, really nice time. That's good. Yeah.

[00:08:01] I was down in Florida for like two weeks. So I went right before Christmas and then I came back on January 5th. I worked a couple days down there and then came back. So we had the whole crew. We had the family, we got the boyfriends hanging around.

[00:08:15] So it was a whole thing down there. That's fantastic. Good weather? Decent. It was like in the mid sixties most days. You get a couple of days up into the seventies and we hit the beach a few times, got out kayaking and- That's great.

[00:08:32] Posted a few things on the Instagram. I posted up one of the... We saw three rocket launches. So there was three SpaceX rocket launches for Starlink satellites that were going up. I think one of the launches was with like a Swedish company partnership, but they all

[00:08:49] went up out of Cape Canaveral. We're about 50 miles south. We stayed down in Vero Beach. You can see on the video that I put up, you can see the rockets, like unbelievable. So it goes up and then basically splits off and then the delivery rocket goes back down

[00:09:04] to Port Canaveral and then you can just watch the rocket go up into space. It's crazy. Yeah. That's a great vantage. Can you feel it like rumbling the earth? My father-in-law told me that there is like, sometimes you can feel the...

[00:09:21] What does that thing when the airplanes make the sonic boom? My father-in-law said that when the delivery rocket comes back down, sometimes you can hear a sonic boom, but we didn't hear anything this time around. So I don't know if it got muffled, but it was pretty cloudy.

[00:09:37] So I don't know if it got muffled or something. Right, right. Oh, cool. I'm glad you had a good time. Yeah. I remember getting out of that one with that sunken boat, like a sense dump. My boat sank. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was weird.

[00:09:51] We went kayaking and I guess the thing down there, so they have these marinas. So the way it's set up is it's like the Outer Banks. You have like the barrier island and then you've got the Indian River and the Indian

[00:10:02] River is pretty mellow and they've got these marinas and then there's certain sections where you can set up a mooring. So essentially you set up like an anchor and then you put a floating ball on the anchor and then you can tie your boat up to that.

[00:10:16] And outside the marina, you can basically just moor your boat for free. So if you have a sailboat, you can just moor it there. But what ends up happening is that sometimes people just either for whatever reason, storms

[00:10:30] come in and they can't prep their boat or they just like abandon the boat. So there's like three or four sunken sailboats that were on the river right by like the sort of bridge area that we went kayaking.

[00:10:40] So it's kind of cool to just, you know, kayak around the sunken ships. Yeah. Are they recent sinks like from hurricanes and stuff? They are. So I did some research and apparently they have like a service that will go and pick

[00:10:58] off the sunken sailboats that are sitting in the river. And most of these things, when I say sunk, they're sunken like six, eight feet of water and they're just listing over because the keel is like stuck in the bottom.

[00:11:11] So I guess apparently like once a year they'll go and collect all these boats and they have to do this formal process where they notify the owners and they have to take salvage ownership I think of the boat.

[00:11:24] So there's a certain amount of time they have to wait. And then once they've gone through that process, they can salvage the boats and get them out of there. But I think it costs about 50 or $60,000 to the county for every recovery they do. Right. Yeah. That's a lot.

[00:11:41] Yeah. It's pretty interesting. And then I also posted, stop, I've got a new collection of key chains here from National Parks. That's a good size bag. You're going to start your own collection? So my dad has one of the world's largest collections of key chains. That's great.

[00:12:02] He's a bit of a character. So he lives down in the villages. So he's got like, I think he estimates he's got about eight to 10,000. There's a guy in Singapore or Malaysia that's got like 65,000 key chains or something like that.

[00:12:14] But my dad's got like eight or 10,000 I think. So he finally took the collection down. He had everything hanging in his garage, but now he's going to sell them. My brother is going to sell them on eBay by box. So we have these like boxes.

[00:12:33] This is like a box of Disney key chains. So then we found one in here that's like a closed hotel. So it's worth like $75. So we're picking through the key chains and seeing. So is Mrs. Mike on board with this new hobby? Absolutely not.

[00:12:51] She's like, don't take those things home. So I ended up taking like, I took three boxes home through the airport and immediately I got pulled away. Like they grabbed my bag and they were like, there's a lot of metal in here. What's going on?

[00:13:04] And I was like, oh, that's right. Yeah. So I said to the security lady, I was like, oh, my dad has a huge collection of keys. She could care less. She's just like looking me up and down, like thinking I was going to do something shady.

[00:13:15] So anyway, made it through security, but Mrs. Mike was like shaking her head. You get your TSA pat down for the year. Yeah. And the thing is, the thing that bothers me is like my daughter and my wife have the TSA

[00:13:33] clear or whatever it is, the TSA rapid. They just walk through. But then me and my other daughters, we have to like go through the heavy line because I was too lazy to go to Staples to get the TSA pre-check. Right, right. Interesting.

[00:13:47] I didn't know they did that. It's fun stuff. There's nothing. There's nothing more humbling than being around a bunch of women. So although the boyfriends picked up a little shrapnel, I like that. Really? Oh yeah.

[00:14:04] I mean, they, they, they, instead of the daughters giving me a hard time, they give the boyfriends a hard time. Flack. Yes. Yep. All right, Stomp. So we've got a, so anything besides the hiking, anything you wanted to cover before we get into our script here?

[00:14:21] Not really yet. Well, it's more or less the same thing. I'm actually back to full-time PT. That's sort of cool. Starting a new, a new third PT position. So that starts up this Monday, but no, it's great. I love it. Mitigate the risk.

[00:14:35] Healthcare has been wild the last few years. So yeah, yeah. So back to full-time PT, five days a week. All right. Well, hopefully neither one of us needs your services. Yeah, right. No kidding. All right.

[00:14:48] So you've got an article here, Stomp, about first day hikes happening in Massachusetts and across the nation. What is this all about? Yeah. How cool is that? So I didn't know it was national, but I saw this story come out of mass.gov and it was

[00:14:59] a new year, it's a new year celebration where they have first day hikes throughout the state parks, the city parks. And this one here was for the Blue Hills Reservation. So that's a pretty cool thing for getting people outdoors and enjoying their recreational facilities around the area.

[00:15:18] And so they have it all mapped out where to park, what to expect for times, they have trail maps. So very cool in your neck of the woods. Yeah. We'll include that in the show notes and good for Massachusetts.

[00:15:31] Next up, Stomp, you and Mrs. Stomp were doing some research on wearable devices, like basically like watches. So what did you end up doing? Well, she panicked because she got an Apple watch and I did some research on it and it's pretty cool.

[00:15:47] After a little bit of, do you have one of these first of all? Mrs. Mike has one and all of my daughters have them, but my friend Camilla, who I hike with Camilla and Lance, we just had a whole long conversation in our last hike when we

[00:16:01] did that Langdon traverse about her. So she's got an Apple watch and she's switching over to a Garmin. So I might have something to add. Okay. Gotcha. All right. So here are the top things that you can do with this related to hiking.

[00:16:14] So with the Apple, you can do waypoints and backtrack. So waypoints are basically points that you can plot into a typical GPS unit if you're using a GPS unit on trail, but this will do that as well.

[00:16:25] Say for instance, you want to mark a location and go back to it or get to it. That's what that can do. And backtrack, backtrack is just allows you to follow your track back to where you started.

[00:16:37] Improve topographical maps so she can access topographical map features on the watch, which I suppose is fantastic if you have good vision. I don't know if I could ever do it. Trail data in the maps app, which includes user submitted photos, which can be handy

[00:16:56] for determining whether a route with elevation gain is worth the burn, et cetera, et cetera. Let's see number four, what's walkable feature? I'm assuming that tells you what is in the region and what is close nearby. Walking radius tools, essentially.

[00:17:18] So it'll show you various landmarks, points of curiosity, things of that nature. Oh, nice. Yes. And then Siri works offline. You'll never get Mrs. Stomp to use Siri, but that is another feature as well. Yeah, honestly, I don't use it either. I'm on Mrs. Stomp's team there. Gotcha.

[00:17:35] Just to be fair for the folks that use Samsung, I did some digging on the Samsung watches, which are the nearest equivalent, I suppose, for the Android users and whatnot. So they have built-in GPS. They also have track back feature, improved battery life.

[00:17:53] They have a heart rate monitor and automatic workout tracker. I'm not sure what that's going to tell you when you use it. I don't think it's as robust as the Apple, looking at it. It's water resistant and it's sturdy. So I guess you have basic GPS features.

[00:18:12] There you go. Yeah. And I think, so what I will tell listeners is if you're trying to decide, you have to, I think the big thing about the Apple Watch is I don't know if the battery life on it

[00:18:26] is as good as you'll get with the dedicated Garmin's or the Suntos. But I think more fashionable gives you basically everything you need around heart rate and sleep and all the bells and whistles, and you can basically use all those apps.

[00:18:46] So I think for shorter hikes or if you prefer the aesthetics over the functionality and the battery life, then the Apple Watch, it'll definitely get you what you need. But I think for me personally, the Garmin, I like just because it's got that really long battery life. Yeah.

[00:19:04] Sounds good. That's good. And did she get a special color Mrs. Stomp wristband with it? Well, yeah, it's like white. It's like Stanley Kubrick white, which is pretty artsy, but she's happy with it. She did buy a new band, but she hasn't swapped it over yet.

[00:19:21] So she's all fancy. Good for her. She's so fashionable. Yeah, that's right. Just a quick shout out to this cool IG account that I tripped across. It's a trail sign love at trail sign love on Instagram, and they just highlight and

[00:19:38] post trail signs and you can scroll through hundreds of trail signs. So it's pretty cool. I'm not sure if they take submissions if you want to add to them, but you might want to check it out and ask. I'm going to definitely check that out.

[00:19:51] I am a trail sign photo taker. I like to take photos of trail signs in the forefront and then try to position it so I get a good photo. I do that with Cairns too, like anything in the forefront that I can compare against like a landscape.

[00:20:06] I like that. A little contrast or some sunset going down in the background, that type of thing. Correct. We all know that hiking a mountain can be hard at times. So here's a corny dad joke to help you get over it. Ba-dum-bum. All right, Stomp.

[00:20:28] So this is the part of the show where I do a dad joke and I think you have a drop, but I forgot my book. I got to go run and get my book. You can't think of a dad joke on the fly? Oh no, absolutely not.

[00:20:38] So just I'll entertain the listeners for a minute. We'll just edit this out. But hold on. Okay. What can I do for a minute to entertain people? I could do the robot voice. This is you breathing backwards. So you breathe in backwards and talk. Ready?

[00:20:56] I am a robot. I am a robot. How's that? That's not original. That's Casey Rocket, a new comic that's just blowing up. He's so funny. You got your book? I got the book. Did you entertain the listeners or are we editing this out? I did. No, it's-

[00:21:14] You did? Yeah. It's like top tier world-class comic relief. What did you do to entertain them? I did a robot voice. All right, let's edit this out. All right. So dad joke of the day. And thanks to Camilla and Lance for giving me this book.

[00:21:30] I was driving past a playground the other day. You know, slides I can get on with, but I go back and forth on swings. You know what I mean? It's like slides I can get on with, but I go back and forth on swings. So all right.

[00:21:46] Not the greatest. That's good. I like it. I like it. It's good. All right, I got to mark that one down as being done. Yeah. Cross it out. All right. So that's the bad joke. Dad joke. Yeah. Not the bad joke. The dad joke. The bad dad joke.

[00:22:02] Yep. All right. Moving on here, Stomp. So we've got New England Healing Sports Associates. You want to put a plug in for them? Yes. Yes. They wanted us to remind folks that there is a fundraiser coming up. It's the 39th Annual Ski and Ride-a-thon.

[00:22:18] And this is February 3rd, so it's an exhilarating day of snow slopes and fundraising. And this will take place at Mount Sunapee in Newberry, New Hampshire. And of course they provide gear and all kinds of great adventures for folks. So great outfit, great organization.

[00:22:36] There is a registration fee and we will provide links so that you can check it out and get involved if you'd like. And there's also a donation page too. Very good. And then we want to remind the listeners, we've got the folks from the Mount Washington

[00:22:53] Auto Road coming up soon, but the Mount Washington Road Race registration is coming soon here. Yeah, it sure is. Yeah, we just went right by the charity event one. I tried to get on, but it was already sold out by the time I had a chance. Really?

[00:23:10] All right. 200 slots, gone. Boom. All right. And if I'm reading this correctly, then on February 12th at 8 a.m. random selection registration opens. It closes on February 26th. I feel like they've compressed the window now, Stomp.

[00:23:28] I feel like it used to be like a month long or something. But then on February 29th, selection rejection emails will be sent to registrants. So that's good. It's a quick one.

[00:23:38] So all the way, you know, it's two weeks and then three days later you get your information. So me and Stomp are going to be registering and putting our names in and hopefully I won't break my toe this time and I can run. Yeah, yeah, no doubt.

[00:23:53] Can't wait. Can't wait to start training again. We'll see. It's like I love it because it just keeps you honest. It's like you have to sort of worry about your fitness and health through that winter. The shoulder season. It's so tempting to just sit at home.

[00:24:07] Yeah, it's just so tempting to sit at home and eat pretzels and cheeses. Yeah, no doubt about it. And it's the worst time to get back on the roads and the hills. I remember last year I was literally hitting, if you remember, I was hitting snowmobile

[00:24:21] trails in my sneakers and it was just like mud and slop and just to find the hills because I wasn't hitting the roads necessarily, but it was just crazy. Yeah, I'm kind of in that mode right now.

[00:24:36] Like I have these local trails that I run on close to my house and I love them. Now that there's snow, I got to kind of stay on the road and I hate it. You got to be careful for sure. This is like a little deviation.

[00:24:48] We're supposed to stay on the clock, but I'm doing bad. My wife and my father-in-law down in Florida, they go for walks every morning. So I was like, I'll go for a walk with you. They go for like five, six miles. My father-in-law takes us through this.

[00:25:01] I called it like I was like, I just feel like I went to a Grand Theft Auto video game because he takes us on the other side. Everything's really nice by the ocean, but he took us to like, we had to go across these railroad tracks.

[00:25:13] I call it the juice train, although like produce just goes on this train up and down the coast. But we had to go the other side of these railroad tracks. And then he takes me through this like construction zone where like construction where they're building houses.

[00:25:24] Like they don't want people walking around there. He doesn't care. Then we had to like navigate away from like a little pond that was like flooded and we had to step over like quicksand to get there.

[00:25:35] And we're like walking on the street with like 65 mile an hour cars driving. So I survived, but I was like, I'm never going for a walk with you again, Papa. Oh my God, that's crazy. Yeah.

[00:25:46] Anyway, but so, but it'll be good motivation for us to train for the Mount Washington Road Race Stomp. Yeah. Well, I have a better foundation than I did last year before the race. That's for sure. Yeah. Especially with all the hiking you're doing. All right, Stomp.

[00:26:01] So moving on, we got one new story we wanted to cover. So Arizona prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a hiker's murder. So this was a case we talked about probably a couple of months ago. Oh no, actually this is probably like early last year.

[00:26:15] So this guy's name is Zion Teasley. He was hiding and he ambushed and repeatedly stabbed a lady by the name of Lauren Heike who was on like a hiking walking trail. I don't really know if this is like a hiker, like we would think about.

[00:26:34] Like this is more like that case in Concord where they were on like a walking trail. Sure. But this was a random attack. This guy like lived in the apartment building near this place and I think they were able

[00:26:46] to identify him through cell phone data in proximity to the way the crime occurred. And then I think some eyewitness statements and then did they matched up the DNA and then this guy is basically all done.

[00:27:00] So they're going to put him on trial and seek the death penalty. I didn't know that was an option in Arizona, but that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think generally most of those Southern states have the death penalty. So if he did it, then consequences. Oh, for sure.

[00:27:17] I mean, hopefully that type of thing is a deterrent. You never know what some of these folks that commit these murders. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like it's just more like just for the family to get the punishment because I don't

[00:27:31] think that there is somebody that's that level of evil. They're probably not thinking they're going to get caught. They're just like a crime of opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Sad stuff. But moving on. All right, moving on to a better story here, Stomp.

[00:27:44] We got a heartening story from a listener. Is that what's going on here? Yeah. Let me just read what we received here from a listener. So hey, Mike and Stomp, my girlfriend introduced me to your podcast about six weeks ago.

[00:27:57] I have since listened from about episode 40 to 77, obviously hooked. So forgive me if this is not a Mike thing anymore. Today we went up to Pierce with my girlfriend Sarah, her sister Becker and three of Becca's friends. We went up Crawford Path and descended by Misfit Hut.

[00:28:12] On the way down, one of the female hikers slipped on an ice covered rock, went slightly off trail into the soft snow and fell twisting her ankle. She was very hesitant to stand after this.

[00:28:24] Immediately I thought of Mike and how he talks about hiking poles, hiking with poles not for himself, but so that he can be the hero quote unquote and help somebody be able to walk out on their own with this in this situation.

[00:28:37] So Sarah and I and two other hikers had poles with us. None of us were using them at the time. I had Sarah ask the fallen hiker if she would like to try to stand up with the assist of the poles.

[00:28:47] She said yes and was grateful for the offer. We spent a few minutes getting her comfortable and then we all walked out. The trip down took about 60 to 90 minutes longer than it would have otherwise.

[00:28:56] I suspect she may have been able to walk on her own without the poles, but I'm sure it would have taken much longer and we'd be hiking out in the dark. We had headlamps, bivy and essential gear. My girlfriend Sarah got to be the hiking pole hero.

[00:29:09] It all ended well. So hope you both have a wonderful New Year's. Cheers, M. O'Brien. So that's pretty neat. That's great. I'm still waiting for mine. Well you just got your credit though. That's true. That's true. But it's a good point.

[00:29:27] Like I feel like especially maybe you have an opinion on this Stump, but I feel like especially when you had these foot injuries, like when I hit my toe, I was like, I'm going to keep going even though it hurt like hell.

[00:29:37] And I do feel like there's something around like don't linger around and focus on it. And like if you get whatever you need to do to get the person moving, the pain is never going to get any better by waiting, I don't think if they've seriously injured it.

[00:29:51] So maybe like just offering up those hiking poles is enough of a nudge to get them moving. Absolutely. Yeah. The more you sit, the worse it'll swell, the pain will settle in and you'll be in worse off condition.

[00:30:03] But if you're moving, the adrenaline keeps you going in most cases that I've seen. And you don't notice it until you get out to the trailhead. Then all of a sudden you get whacked by whatever you've been holding back to get out. Yeah.

[00:30:15] Take advantage of the adrenaline and just keep moving because it's not going to get better by sitting there. Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, to a point, sometimes she's so injured, you're just screwed. But this is a good story. Congratulations to Sarah and Michael.

[00:30:30] That was a great story. Yeah, for sure. This is interesting. I just saw this briefly. We won't have to dive into it heavy duty, but there's a new bill in the New Hampshire House that's actually dealing with pollutants in the air and just some of these companies

[00:30:45] that may be trying new technologies and dispersing whatever, seeding chemicals to change the weather and whatnot. Geoengineering. This is very fascinating. So there was apparently enough of a movement to get a bill into the house.

[00:30:59] And you know, New Hampshire's fairly agrarian and they're claiming that their seasons are getting messed up. So keep an eye on this one. I think the bill, I forget what bill number it is. 1700 FN. So yeah, very interesting story.

[00:31:16] Sounds wacky to me, Stomp, but I'll let New Hampshire be New Hampshire. And finally, I saw this story and I think you might like it. I wonder what you would do in this situation. A Florida man files a lawsuit after toilet explosion at Dunkin's allegedly caused severe

[00:31:35] and long-term injuries. How sad is it that I thought of you when I read this story? How did the Dunkin's toilet explode? That's a good question. It sounds fishy to me, doesn't it? A little suspicious. It's probably going to smell fishy too. So two things about this.

[00:31:54] Number one, I saw another story about a Dunkin Donuts that was like the toilet had no water in it, but they kept it open. This guy was like in doing an investigation. He's like, why is there no water in the toilet in the Dunkin Donuts?

[00:32:09] But the other thing is the Dunkin Donuts down, so this is a Dunkin Donuts in Florida. The Dunkin Donuts in Florida is different than the Dunkin Donuts up here in New England. They don't know how to make their ice coffee.

[00:32:22] They don't put enough ice in the ice coffee. I don't know what it is, but they don't. Apparently, they don't know how to do plumbing either. Yeah, they don't know plumbing or ice coffee. I don't know what's going on.

[00:32:33] But anyway, I was just thinking of you because I know you like to make your Dunkin stop on the way to the hike. True, true. It's tough. But yeah, but the Dunks up here hits different. And now a word from our sponsor. Do you have a sweat problem?

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[00:33:55] Use promo code SLASHER to enjoy a $5 discount and let them know that Mike and Stomp sent you. Mmm, mmm, mmm. We're about to serve up some tasty hiking drama. Moving on. Here's a good one. Didn't we talk about this before, Stomp? I don't think so.

[00:34:28] Maybe we touched upon it? I think you and I may have talked in the background, but we never covered it on a show. It's about a recent trip online with a bunch of folks dropping packs. Oh, that's right. That's right.

[00:34:41] So when you should or should not ever, or should you even ever think about dropping your backpack anywhere? Exactly. So that's sort of the background on this. There was a group of people that posted pictures and they had no packs and they were going to a summit.

[00:34:59] And there was some commentary off by third parties and without any context or maybe no context. I don't know. Who knows? But it's a good question. Do you do that or not? Is it safe to do it ever?

[00:35:11] Is there a good time to do it? Are there seasons you should do that? I don't, yeah. So, I mean, people are going to know who we're talking about, I think here. But I don't, um, I have dropped my pack.

[00:35:23] I dropped my pack in North Kinsman and went over to South Kinsman, which is a bit of a haul. I was like biking over there the other a couple of weeks ago.

[00:35:29] I was like, wow, I dropped my pack the first time I came here. It was a long haul. And what's the distance though? Like half a mile? I think it's like a half a mile and then a half. So about a mile total.

[00:35:39] All right. Which I would never do again. That's the thing, because I was like tired. Like what was the weather? Blue sky, bluebird day or? It was like cloud cover. There was no risk there with the weather, but I think I was just like tired.

[00:35:52] I was carrying too much gear and I was doing a backpacking trip and I just left my stuff. And I shouldn't have. And I think my advice to people is I would say just bring your pack with you.

[00:36:02] You know, West Bond, the spur trail there. People leave their packs all the time. People leave them at Lakes of the Cloud to go up Monroe, which I think this is the case we're talking about. I mean, I'm not going to judge anybody for it.

[00:36:14] I just feel like, you know, you just never know what's going to happen when it can happen. And I think it's just safer to just have your pack with you.

[00:36:22] I mean, God forbid. The thing about West Bond that freaks me out when people do that is I'm like, well, what if a bear does come along and grab your stuff? Oh, you know, it's probably not likely, but it could happen. So yeah, that's just my thought.

[00:36:36] Yeah, I think if you're a solo hiker, don't do that. Don't leave your pack in the winter. If it's warmer weather, yeah, it's probably all right. No big deal. If you're with a ton of people like this group was,

[00:36:47] I don't think doing a quarter mile stretch without your pack is going to hurt anybody. But the things you got to think about would be like that random squall that comes in,

[00:36:54] which can be unpredictable and those squalls can be life-threatening whether you're in a solo or with a group. So just be careful when you're thinking about doing that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's it. That was an interesting one. I don't pay much attention to the Facebook group drama anymore,

[00:37:13] but I did catch one of those. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about it so I could put the hiking drama drop there. Yes. Yeah. No, that's good. That was a good drama for sure.

[00:37:22] Right. Hey, what's that sound? It must be time for the pop culture segment with Mike and Stomp. All right, Stomp. And then we don't have too many topics for pop culture at this point,

[00:37:47] but we did want to talk about Cameo. So I talked about, yeah, I've talked about Walter and Gus. So I'm a fan of these two Bernice Mountain dogs that do like this thing on TikTok and their names are Walter and Gus and Walter's like the older brother

[00:38:03] and they got Walter a puppy named Gus and Walter just like can't stand Gus because Gus is never, although he is starting to get to like him now,

[00:38:12] but like so they do this thing called Cameo where you can pay to get like a celebrity to do a video for you. And my daughter Megan got me a Walter and Gus Cameo where they, you know, they do this voice.

[00:38:27] So it's not actually the dogs talking. It's the dog's owner, but I think it's the dog. So they just said like, hey, Merry Christmas to me. And it was like the best Christmas present. So that got Stomp thinking, right?

[00:38:39] Yeah. Well, this is what happens when I have downtime. I get into trouble. So I decided to sign us up under Slasher thinking, yeah, right. They're never going to do this and put the logo up there, submitted it.

[00:38:53] It said we'll contact you if you're selected. Literally 10 minutes later, they sent an email back saying you've been selected to be on Cameo. So anybody basically than any, I mean, I don't know. Great, but like they're not like, you know, I think any schmuck can get on Cameo.

[00:39:09] So I'll do it. If someone would pay me like some money to send him a video. I'll do that. I don't know. I don't know if it's some schmuck or I mean, I gave them stats. I'm like, hey, listen. Yeah, we're Northeast podcast.

[00:39:21] We did X amount of downloads and sent them the links to the site. So I think they do some level of review, but I was shocked. Wow. Yeah, so we're out there. You're a legit D-list celebrity now.

[00:39:36] Oh, I think both of us are. Well, you can if people I set it up so that people can request for either of us. Obviously, we can't do two together because we're in two different locations.

[00:39:47] So if that happens, you'll have to log in and I'll have to send you the login code. Okay. All right. So if anyone wants to oh my God, what if they would have people just request you and don't request me?

[00:39:59] I'll split the revenue with you. All right. All right. I just I don't even care about that. I just I'll be sad about like I'll be jealous actually. I don't even be sad.

[00:40:11] It's so goofy. All right. Anyway, so we'll put that in the show notes and that will like that. I can't imagine anyone's going to care but we'll see. Yeah, I know. All right. So moving on to Fieldstone. All right. Sponsor break here.

[00:40:24] I've been enjoying them at the Med River Coffeehouse. It's good kombucha. So Fieldstone Kombucha is New England's premium craft kombucha company. If you're in the heart of New England, you need to drink a New England style kombucha softer less acidic and truly enjoyable our kombucha is naturally effervescent

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[00:41:35] Thank you. These are the last two coffee donations from 23, I believe so Kelly donated five coffees. Thank you Kelly so much and we got five coffees donated by Kansas City milkman and I think we know who that is and thank you very much.

[00:41:55] If I'm correct, it's a very it's a person that's really really into by favorite band level 42. Let's put it that way. Okay. I don't know who that is, but you'll have to tell me after yeah, we share the passion for this 80s pop funk band.

[00:42:11] It's just amazing. But thank you again for the donation really appreciate it. Hey hold my beer. It's time to find out what Mike and Stomper drinking on this week's beer talk. Very good Stompson now is the part of the show. We're talking about beer. Yummy.

[00:42:38] Have you been drinking beer lately on vacation? I did. Yeah, my father only got me some local. It's I don't know. I haven't really been able to find like a beer place where you go in and there's a bunch of like craft beers.

[00:42:50] You have to go to Publix and essentially just like most of the beer section is just regular like commercial beer and then they have like a small section of like craft brewery places, but I don't even know if they're that you know,

[00:43:03] they don't sell the cans like we have up here in the four packs. It's mostly six packs with 12 ounce cans. Yeah versus what we get but it was good. It was fine. I had had some beers and then my dad gave us Coors lights to bring home.

[00:43:15] So me and the the boyfriends had some Coors light. That's yeah. Well, what do you guys do? I think last time I had a beer on the show. I was drinking the same thing. It's provisions which is an India peel eel from zero gravity brewing. Oh nice. Okay.

[00:43:33] Yep. So I'm still working my way through that. I was tempted to get a stout just to mix it up tonight, but I didn't so I went with the Baxter. So this is yeah, it's really good. So Baxter is a beer that's made from a cow's milk.

[00:43:46] So it's a cow's milk. A Baxter. So this is yeah, it's really good. So Baxter ice storm of 98. It's in New England India pale ale at 5.8%. It's very tasty and it's it says distinctly Maine.

[00:44:03] I don't recall. I don't know what storm they're talking about but ice storm of 98. Do you recall any ice storms of 98 the 90s were a bit of a blur particularly The second half of the 90s was a lot of like drinking in Boston for me.

[00:44:18] So I don't really I can't help you there. All right. Oh, there it is. Yes. All right. Stop moving on to the part of the show where we talk about recent hikes. I got nothing I am going out to Owl's Head on Sunday

[00:44:31] and you made up some lame excuse because you just not to get out of it, but okay. I have I actually think I have to snowmobile. I keep on saying that but they canceled me for this Saturday and sun they're getting four inches on Saturday.

[00:44:46] Yeah, you're going to get some snow. It's I think but but Sunday. There's only one for our tour and it's a rental. So I may be off the hook. I'll let you know for sure. Oh, so you may you could last minute jump in literally last minute.

[00:45:03] I yeah depends what happens Saturday. So I'm off the schedule Saturday, but Sunday is wide open. I don't I don't know what to expect sort of crazy, but it is what it is with this weather. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what's going to go on

[00:45:15] but I was going to kick you off the group chat, but I'll keep you on the group chat. Oh, yeah, but come on I'm dropping so many funny jokes. I didn't know if you're going to be annoyed you get the word we're all planning

[00:45:26] and no, I don't mind. I knew we should have gone left back there stop. Don't worry. I know it's this way. I've got a feeling in my gut. Are you sure you're not about to have a bowel emergency?

[00:45:45] Totally we got this but I just blew out my hip fell down that gully with my 40 year old micro spikes suck it up. Stomp. It's 4 p.m. We're at 3,500 feet. We got nine miles back to the parking lot your leg may be broken.

[00:45:59] We got no cell connection and we can't feel our fingers, but we're finishing all of my list tonight. By the way, I need some water. I'm empty. I would if I could see what I'm doing, but my headlamp batteries are dead. You gotta be kidding me.

[00:46:12] What a chump. This is the last time I hike with you. Whatever mister, you know me. I have a podcast. Whatever. Let's find out what Mike and stomp have been hiking. But stop you've been you so what happened like you were,

[00:46:36] you know doing your weird esoteric like bushwhack hikes around Waterville and all of a sudden you're doing all these 4,000 footers. So what's going on? I think Mrs. Stomp and I had an evening where we were reminiscing about the 48

[00:46:52] and we broke out our lists and said, hey, let's check it out. Let's see what's left and then we printed out the lists and she and I are officially list sluts again. I mean, I never thought I'd say it honestly,

[00:47:04] but I've got the fever to get the winter 48 done. So I've been hitting it. It's been fun. I don't know. I don't know what's going on, but it's been nice getting up on the 4ks again. I really missed had missed the sensation of being up that high.

[00:47:21] So you'd yeah good for you. I mean, I'm going to be wrapping mine up in the next couple of weeks. I think here my 4,000 footer winter list, but so you did East Osceola and Osceola. Did you come in from the Waterville side?

[00:47:34] You come in from the kink over in Lincoln Waterville. So I flat line that really flat gradual Livermore approach through grilly ponds both of the ponds and then I went up the trail that you had taken up to East Osceola,

[00:47:52] which you at the time had said was super steep and I think you did that in warmer weather, correct? I mean it was like I mean it was winter for sure, but I don't think it wasn't super cold.

[00:48:05] But no it was like it was snow packed and I saw okay. All right. So those the last quarter mile up to the flat before you hit East Osceola sneaky steep, right? Oh super steep, but it was glare ice. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

[00:48:19] There were like maybe two or three people I saw coming down that without spikes. I was actually shocked but that was a really gnarly trip and then I made a loop out of it. So I went over to Osceola.

[00:48:31] So from the call I saw three gentlemen sitting there without spikes on and they were going back because they had jelly legs and they made the right call. I felt bad for them thinking about going back down what I just come up back towards the kink,

[00:48:44] but I got over to Osceola not a sight of anybody anywhere. It was that day where it was that momentous inversion that undercast and everybody was taking yeah, it was unbelievable. So from the 4,000 foot height, it was somewhat obscured.

[00:49:02] You can see that you know being at 5,000 to 6,000 like Mount Washington. You would have really seen it but I was at that sort of hazy level of the inversion but it was beautiful and then I came down the Osceola Trail

[00:49:14] and then the three miles down Tripoli Road back. So it was a giant loop like 12 miles. Wait were you solo or was Mrs. Stomp with you? Solo. I've been doing these solo because she's she just got out of that whole post office nightmare for December.

[00:49:28] So she needs a little bit of a wind down. Yeah, she's she's freeing up now. So she's going to be kicking in for some of these. Okay, so you might be going back to some of these. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no doubt about it.

[00:49:39] Next I did the North and Middle Tri-Pyramids and I did not take the slide. I went up the Scour Trail. So I walked out three miles to the end on Livermore again and up Scour Trail which was an absolute gem.

[00:49:53] It's very gradual brings you up to just north of North Tri-Pyramid. Ascended North Tri-Pyramid and that's where I had to put on my shitty little spikes that I've been making jokes about for the last few weeks and then over to mid and then back.

[00:50:10] So you got that far with just bare booting. It's that that's that that I could have I mean to be honest with you then I could have done the whole trip bare booting because you can skirt around the glare ice.

[00:50:22] It was so bare. The ice was so obvious. It wasn't covered and hidden. So yeah, I mean I've been poking people about my spikes but they were fine for the conditions. On the way back I went towards what is it Pine Bend Brook?

[00:50:39] Is that the trail? Yeah, and then I hit a 500 highest which is Scour Peak and that was really a joy because you hit this 90-degree curve that heads down Pine Bend and it literally it's a high point before it drops

[00:50:52] and at that high point you can walk the quarter mile up to this 500 highest peak Scour which is 3,600 feet and it was a moose. It was like a herd path with moose sign everywhere moose prints.

[00:51:04] Took me about 15 minutes to get to the top and then I was out and back and then I was out. Yeah, it's easy peasy. Wow, and then last but not least couple days ago. Oh, yeah, by the way, I just want to say hi to Trisha.

[00:51:19] I was coming down North Tri-Pyramid and a big group of AMC, an AMC crew was coming up with a lead. His name was Ian. Hi Ian, nice to meet you. And then as I'm walking past him this one hiker said,

[00:51:32] hey are you Stomp? So that's that was pretty cool. So that was Trisha. So hello Trisha and thanks for listening. That was a big crew too that I think they had at least 10 or 12 people in that crew. That's awesome. Yeah, definitely.

[00:51:48] And then finally you went and did Tecumseh. Yeah, so this was for the listeners Stomp was convinced that he did Tecumseh with me in the winter and I had to like just basically pull the, you know, kill the, pop the air out of his balloon

[00:52:02] because I was like no we did that on September 1st. Yeah, right. How funny is that? I couldn't believe it. So yeah, I just zipped up this past, it was either Saturday or Sunday morning after that snowstorm we had

[00:52:14] so it was like four to six inches of fresh powder. I put the snowshoes on the whole way up and I actually went up to the summit by the northeast side as opposed to going left at that Junction when you're heading up the west side to the summit.

[00:52:30] It was gnarly going up that east side because you know, I wanted more snow for the snowshoes which I got but I forgot how steep that section was with these areas that were just really challenging. It's a little scrambles that I had to manage

[00:52:49] and then on the way down I took them off because they were just getting chewed up. By that point it was just too much for the snowshoes. So I went down and just used my crampons. So yeah, I've been out.

[00:52:59] All right Stomp, well, I appreciate you carrying on the hiking stuff for the show. So you're at 27 for your winter and you'll definitely chip away. So I would think by like next winter you might be done. I think so. Yeah, it's not going to...

[00:53:14] I'll reduce my forecast of 15 down to like maybe 8 or 9. I was thinking because the snowmobile thing wasn't happening that I'd be able to sneak some in but if I get cut off by Sunday then I don't know when I'll be able to get out anymore.

[00:53:27] So I was sort of pressured to get some in before I disappear. I'm personally like rooting for a rainstorm on Saturday so you can get out with us on Sunday. But I do think I want the snowmobile and stuff to happen for the snowmobiling company.

[00:53:42] So hopefully it'll be good. Oh, yeah. It's time for Slasher's Notable Hike of the Week. If you want to be considered for the hike of the week simply tag Slasher on your social media post. We have Dave Schitt's again. So that's Hitchcock. He did Hitchcock and Hitchcock South

[00:54:06] which are two peaks that are buried in the Pemme and they're accessible by the Hancock approach or heading into the Pemme on the opposite side of Lincoln Woods Road, I believe. But they're deep and that's a nice trip there. Nick Hikes and plays guitar.

[00:54:23] Did 23 and 24 out of the 48 for winter, Lincoln and Lafayette. Brady Girl One. Did Carter Mariah Trail to Mariah. Go Ask Brian. 52 hikes a year. Challenge done on Harvard and Georgiana Falls. So that's a new thing that I had not heard of.

[00:54:41] So you commit to doing 52 hikes a year and I'm not sure if there's a patch or anything involved with that, but that's very cool. Nice work there. Jake and Julie along with Cindy Chess and others, I believe Lynn was there as well. Did Womback and Star King.

[00:55:00] And for Jake and Julie, it was 32 out of 48 for the winter 48. Or was it? They're plugging away. Yeah. And Cindy, this is her. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure what this number was for Cindy, but that was 32 out of 48 for Jake and Julie.

[00:55:15] Marliesu Two. Cold pizza on Kearsage North. And we also tagged, got that tag for Kearsage by that friggin hiker. Yeah, I think Marley knows what's up. Cold pizza is the way to go. Yeah, that's for sure. For that friggin it's 15 out of 40,

[00:55:34] 15 out of 52 with a view. Gingerbeard did the Kinsman's. Brady girl one hit Jefferson with the intense New Year's Eve inversion. That's right. That's when I did that Osceola. It was New Year's Eve. Super cool. Easy Banks hikes, New Hampshire,

[00:55:52] New Year's Eve on Carraghan. Now that's a hell of a commitment for New Year's Eve. And that makes 36 for the winter 48 and 326 out of the grid. And a couple more Liz Faye did Osgoode Hill, Coolish or Coolish Ledges and Blacktop in Partridge Woods.

[00:56:09] Now Nelson, New Hampshire. Littlefoot hiked Passacanaway for 41 out of the winter 48. Unbelievable. The pictures brought back memories, man, they glare ice. And then finally C. Gothberg did Currier Hills and Ames Mountain. So thanks for tagging this everybody. You're crushing it. Good work.

[00:56:31] Oh man, Littlefoot's gonna beat me. She's gonna finish a winter 48. Yes, steep competition, dude. Can't keep up with that kid. Steep. Don't even bother. That's impressive. You're really jealous. Yeah. How is she beating me? Right, right. It's time for Slashers guest of the week. Very cool.

[00:57:10] Very cool. All right, stop. So this is a big one. We got the Mount Washington Auto Road people here. I'm nervous, but I'm also I need to we need to leverage this to get stuff. That's right. That's right. Figure that out afterwards, but Toby and Megan now welcome.

[00:57:36] So Toby Reichardt is the general manager. So Toby is that me? Are you in charge of everything? You run the whole ship? I do. Yeah, the whole ship is all mine. Oh, stop. Yeah, I'm gonna make friends with this guy. Yeah, that's right.

[00:57:50] That's right. And then Megan Moody Schwartz, you are the marketing and events director. That is correct. I just stepped into the role in November. I've been here for the past year and a half, but I'm excited to take on this new set of responsibilities.

[00:58:06] All right. Well, I got I got a million dollar idea for you. I want to at the end we're going to talk about it because I have I have an idea that's going to make you guys a boatload of money.

[00:58:14] So, but I guess just to start off with so we're going to talk about the auto road. We're going to cover a whole bunch of stuff about the history and sort of like the events that go on

[00:58:26] and I want to talk about sort of the operations and behind the scenes stuff. But to start off with I'm an HR guy Toby. So I'm always curious like what is your career trajectory that landed you in the spot where you're running something like this?

[00:58:39] Because it's like a dream job for a lot of people. So just curious like what's your background and how did you end up being the general manager? Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking that. I'm actually part of the original founding family of the company.

[00:58:52] So there's many many decades of family involvement in running the company. It goes back to as early as 1906 actually and I'm honored to be the sixth generation to actually run the family business at this level.

[00:59:10] Wow, so I worked for years. I worked at a restaurant where it was like a family-run operation. So there was like different generations coming in. Do you my impression was that like the younger kids that came in that were part of the family

[00:59:21] that were going to you know stick around in the business like they had it harder than like everybody. So it was a tough sort of trial by fire, but how was it for you when you when did you start working there and you know what was your experience

[00:59:36] and did they make you do pretty much every job before you got to be in a leadership role? You know what you nailed it. That's it. That's exactly how it played out. You know probably about I think eight years ago now I started on the road crew

[00:59:48] and was just doing maintenance to the road and you know learn a company from the ground up and be realistic that was the only way to learn it. You know now I've seen all the roles.

[00:59:59] I've had a chance to experience them and now of course being at the top and running the business it's really been a pleasure and a lot of fun. And I love how you shared that you grew up with your dad who worked on the road crew.

[01:00:12] Yeah, so he also got to see his father do that. That is a good point Megan. So my father actually had worked on the road crew for over 40 years. And so as a child I was you know very experienced with the company

[01:00:27] and you know I grew up on this mountain. You know it's in my blood. It's what we do here. So that's why I'm honored to be a part of it today and take over the legacy. Now are you a hiker or do you get outside a lot?

[01:00:42] I do get outside a lot. I really enjoy hiking. I don't get to do it as much as I'd like to but definitely an enjoyment for me. Yeah, you always think like you work at the Auto Road you can get out and hike all the time

[01:00:51] but this is probably a million things to do around there. I got to tell you it takes all my time. I wish it didn't but it's a lot of time and dedication. Yeah, and how many hours a week do you work on average? Anywhere between 50 and 60.

[01:01:07] And is the impression I've always got is that like oh winter's the slow period but I'm assuming there's a lot of planning and other activities that go on. Is it true that like winter is a little bit slower for you though?

[01:01:18] So in the winter time the business levels are a little bit slower than what we're used to compared to the summertime. You know summer is a major part of our business but you know our offerings in the winter just change.

[01:01:30] It actually makes it exciting because it changes it up, you know, and but I will say that I'm still waiting for that slow period. I haven't experienced it yet. Yeah, and do you for as far as the crew and the people that you hire,

[01:01:42] do you struggle to find people to work or is it pretty easy to hire positions? I'm going to say it's been pretty easy. We have a great reputation here at the Auto Road and being a family-owned business.

[01:01:55] It's I think it's an attractant for people to want to be a part of our family here, our workforce and you know, I'm very proud to say that some of our older generation workers that have been here for 40 plus years.

[01:02:08] So in my eyes that says a lot about what we have to offer. Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah, it's a good reminder and Stomp and I like we've talked about this before Toby around like there's a certain I think piece of the hiking population that are you know,

[01:02:23] they think of themselves as purist and they're like, well, you know the mountain should be you shouldn't have all this stuff up on top of it and it's great, you know, you can't go back in time and you know, I think that the Auto Road and the cog

[01:02:34] and the accessibility of you know, the Auto Road and the cog allowing people that would otherwise not have a chance to experience the mountains is a great thing and you know, I don't think I would want it on every mountain

[01:02:47] but it's is a long history on how this came to be that Mount Washington has an established infrastructure on it and it is what it is and I always like to point out to people that you know, the people that work in this area,

[01:03:02] you know, they're part of the community and the biggest thing for me is that there's always people stepping up when there's times for you know needed for rescue. So I can't tell you how many times me and Stomp have gone over like search-and-rescue news

[01:03:13] where like okay, they came up the Auto Road to hike down to rescue somebody out of the Great Gulf or something like that. So it's a good reminder that you got, you know, everybody that basically works there is local and you know, it's like a big family.

[01:03:25] So yeah, for sure. It's great. And then Megan just moving on to your background. So you're in charge of the marketing and events and there's always things going on at the Auto Road. Can you talk a little bit about your background

[01:03:38] and how you ended up in this role? Absolutely. So we're, you know, we're here talking about the Auto Road and this family operated and owned business also has another company which is owned and operated which is Great Glen Trails Outdoor Center

[01:03:53] which is at the base of Mount Washington. So we share a base lodge and our sister company across the street which is owned by the family and managed by a hospitality group is the Glen House Hotel.

[01:04:05] So, you know, between these entities there are a lot of really fun and always exciting things going on. And so, you know, this time of year like I just got off the course clearing the ski,

[01:04:18] you know, we have a citizens race that happens for Nordic Meisters on Tuesdays. So I just cleared the course for that before this and I'm also planning some summer events right now.

[01:04:28] We were just, you know, talking about parking and porter potties are a lot of what we work on. 80% of your discussion. I work for Highline today but they're important, right? Because we collect a lot of things together. Doing it safely and properly is important.

[01:04:42] So, you know, my background, I'm, you know, born and raised in the Mount Washington Valley. My mom always says I was the first kid born up in Hart's location in like 60 years and maybe some of the townspeople gave her grief because, you know,

[01:04:58] being the first kid that meant thinking about school in the future. But it's a nice story to tell and we grew up in Bartlett and my background is mostly in food and hospitality. So my parents were caterers growing up.

[01:05:12] I learned how to prep and host and serve food, you know, at 10 years old when my parents were cooking in the ski clubs on the weekends. And I've ran a couple of really lovely food establishments in the area. And so my background originally is in that hospitality

[01:05:32] and I met some really great people through that, which included Lisa McCoy who was the previous marketing and events director here and good friend for a long time. And a couple years ago when I told her I was looking for a change in a career,

[01:05:47] she was like, I think, you know, I'm biased because I'm already friends with you, but I really I do think this is made for you. Like I think you're supposed to be here. You should come join us.

[01:05:56] And I'm glad she did because I do really enjoy it and it's always different and that, you know, experience of interacting with folks in the host setting and planning events that are catered around food actually really does tie into, you know, different race and timed events

[01:06:14] as well as a lot of the community events that we host here with both the Mount Washington Auto Road and Great Glen Trails. All right. Yeah, that's a good reminder for the listeners. So it's one basically it's multiple companies but under the same entity.

[01:06:28] So Great Glen Trails, the Auto Road, and then the hotel which is the Great Glen Inn at the bottom. Is that? The Glen House. Glen House. That's right. Okay. So all three of those are owned by the same enterprise and over the winter the Great Glen,

[01:06:46] that's where you can do like cross-country skiing and in the summertime. It's a lot of like mountain biking and things like that. I'm not really as familiar with Great Glen. So is there other things that you can also do there?

[01:06:59] Yeah, I think the biggest surprise to folks in the summer is that we like our big part of our business is this wildlife guided kayak tour. And so folks meet here. We get you prepared with the right equipment and then we bring you all over the North Country

[01:07:15] and do these awesome wildlife tours where you can see a bald eagle or a moose or otter beaver all over, you know, we don't like to talk about all the secret places that we go. So I'll leave it vague here,

[01:07:27] but that's a big part of the summer as well as the events and then in the winter Nordic skiing. We have this awesome tubing hill, which is the traditional, you know, walk up tube down experience and Toby's father-in-law actually is typically at the top of the hill

[01:07:44] tending the fire making s'mores and hot chocolate. All the kids are always like is Grandpa Raj going to be here? Yeah, that's a good reminding. A lot of times like I've talked about Nesselnoke in the past,

[01:07:54] but that's so this is another option to do the sledding hill up if you head up 16 a little farther. So that's good. So we'll link that in the show notes for sure. And then the Mount Washington snow coach,

[01:08:07] which is utilized as Mount Washington Auto Road in the winter is technically with Great Glen. And so it's this awesome tracked vehicle, which I can send you some information on. Yeah, that's awesome.

[01:08:19] We bring you up a tree line in this warm safe guided van with this tour guide who's very excited about the ecology and the weather and the history of the mountain and their own experiences. You get out at the top, you can take some pictures,

[01:08:32] look around really have that one of a kind of experience that, you know, truly the majority of people can't safely experience. Mount Washington is the home of the world's worst weather and this is one way to safely enjoy it year-round.

[01:08:46] And so experiencing those views in the winter is, you know, a combination of the Auto Road and Great Glen. Okay, so you're basically that's basically going right up to I think it's about 4,400 feet

[01:08:58] of elevation, you break tree line and then there's that sort of the parking areas there that you can go up and that's where the view is right out into the Great Gulf and you can see Madison Adams and the views awesome. It's an amazing experience.

[01:09:12] I can't say enough about it, you know, and if it's not the greatest weather you're getting the weather experience out of it, not the view so and I will say I've never seen anybody disappointed when the winds are gusting at 60 miles an hour,

[01:09:25] the snow is coming down sideways, you know, it's just such an experience. It sure is and you can dive back into the vehicle to protect yourself. You got it. That's good thinking. All right, Toby. So I got some questions about the Auto Road here.

[01:09:38] So just basic for the listeners. So it's 7.6 miles. It's a 12.6 or 12% grade. I think what is it top out stomp like 22 degrees? I think is that last section when you run. It's the steepest section is that very last stretch of road

[01:09:54] and I'm not sure exactly but you're pretty close. I think it's right in that range of the actual percent. Yeah, have you run up the Auto Road Toby? No, I'm not a runner. I prefer to drive.

[01:10:05] All right. Well, we got to change that. We got to figure out somebody is so make it you have to figure out like at some point like there has to be like a an employee motivated event that if everybody does something

[01:10:18] then he has to run up the Auto Road. I'd be happy to make it to the one mile. All right. All right. Well, and then the rules of the road. So so it's it's vehicles. There are special events where like non-traditional vehicles can drive up.

[01:10:35] There's a toll at the bottom for cars to go up and then you've talked about sort of the some of the special options to go up like you offer van rides in the summer. You have also have the winter options to go up for hikers.

[01:10:51] There's a lot of people that listen and you know, we get this question quite a bit. My understanding is is that so the Auto Road is closed in the winter to all hiking and foot travel but in the when in the summer period

[01:11:03] when the Auto Road is open hikers can use the Auto Road, but cars have the right away. Is that correct? Yeah, that is correct. Okay, and there's a lot of many reasons for that the biggest one is safety,

[01:11:15] you know with all that traffic on a narrow mountain road, you know, we prefer to keep the hikers on the trails if possible. Yeah. Yeah and for people that haven't been on or around the Auto Road essentially, you know, you've got you know, it's 7.6 miles.

[01:11:33] I think up to mile 4 is below tree line. I think the lower half is technically a little steeper than the top half of my recollection is correct. We break through the tree line around 4,000 4,400 feet at the four mile mark

[01:11:46] and then from there it's just spectacular views that take you first. You'll be on the Great Gulf side. Then you hit the sort of the Huntington Ravine side and then come back over

[01:11:57] and you've got even higher views of the Great Gulf before you approach the top of the Auto Road. So there's a couple of flat spots traditionally between mile like five and six was dirt road, but you guys paved that in the last year or two.

[01:12:12] Can you talk about like what the reason was to change that from dirt to paved? So that's been a long time goal of ours here at the Auto Road and it just the biggest delay was of course, you know cost and infrastructure.

[01:12:28] And so we were kind of doing it in phases and that was our last phase and very proud to say that we're able to complete that two years ago and we're able to get the infrastructure in a place where we're ready to put some pavement on it.

[01:12:41] And you know, I will say the experience now for our customers is so much better not having that the fear factor of driving on a gravel road on a side of a mountain. Yeah. Yeah, it's a deep drop.

[01:12:54] I kind of I'm an old school so I kind of like that fear factor a little bit but I get it that you want to have safety

[01:13:00] but does it help with the pay that section there you get especially by the here pin turn like you get a lot of snow that just really just drops onto that road in that section, especially when you're heading up to the back,

[01:13:13] you know, you turn back around the here pin turn is the snow just drops on there the pave section. Now does that help clear the snow or does it not make a difference one way or the other? It really doesn't make a difference.

[01:13:24] You know, it does help in maintenance and upkeep. It actually is much easier now to maintain the road with the pay surface all the way up and it just makes the spring clearing process that much faster.

[01:13:36] So on an ideal winter we could probably maybe open up a couple weeks sooner than we would have in the past. That's one of my favorite pieces that I learned. I mean, I'm still there's I'm always going to be learning here.

[01:13:48] There's so much history and personal stories to tell but how spring clearing used to happen and maybe they would open the road after the 4th of July when they were hand digging the road out

[01:14:00] and that that hairpin turn that you're talking about we refer to it as the cragway corner and it's that like epic drift right? Oh yeah. Yeah. For sure. And it's right there and it's it's Appalachian Trail is crossing lower down

[01:14:15] and then the Nelson Crag Trail comes out right there right next to the road and now we're clearing and it you know, it depends on whether it's weather dependent as everything is here, but we were able to open, you know mid-May last year

[01:14:32] and that allows access for you know, the public for recreation. Some people like to come skiing and access in different ways in you know, the spring and then also the State Park and the Mount Washington Observatory are at the top and they're preparing for their summer season

[01:14:51] and it creates a lot more access on a day-to-day basis for them going up. Were you guys sweating it this this spring when with that washout? I remember you guys had a big section of road that got washed away.

[01:15:05] That was just before the roadways too if I remember correctly a couple weeks before maybe. It's May 1st. Yeah, that was pretty wild. That wasn't the greatest feeling when I got that call in the morning. It was just one of those events, you know,

[01:15:19] and a lot of folks thought that it was the section that we freshly paved but no, it was actually above that. It was a section of road that's been paved for 20 plus years probably and you know, water works in mysterious ways and we had a perfect storm, right?

[01:15:34] We had everything cleared. Everything was good and then it snowed and then it rained and then it snowed again and the rain had no place to go. So it found its way but fortunately we're able to recover from that fairly quickly and pretty much didn't skip a beat.

[01:15:51] Yeah, and just for my curiosity, where does the road end? Do you traverse straight up to the Sherman building or do you stop earlier? What's your responsibility in terms of maintenance? We're actually responsible right up to the parking lots.

[01:16:10] You know, so the state park, the state of New Hampshire owns a state park which we call it the Summit Circle. Yeah. So they actually own I believe it's like 75, 76 acres or so at the summit of Mount Washington

[01:16:22] and but our responsibility is the road and up to the parking lots. Gotcha. That's great. Thank you. I was curious about that. Yep. And as far as the opening closing date, so first of all Toby, I'm curious like do you guys ever like, I always thought about this.

[01:16:40] I was like if you guys got desperate and there was a lot of snow cover still in May like would you ever just get a flamethrower up there and just start clearing part of the road? Like that would be so cool.

[01:16:49] Like you could, that's a marketing idea Megan I'm thinking. Flamethrower tours. You know, as Megan had talked earlier, I mean the involvement with, the involvement with equipment these days is just amazing. You know, back in the day as she stated,

[01:17:05] you know it was a bunch of folks up there with shovels and I can't imagine, I can't imagine shoveling that cragway drift which can get up to anywhere of 25 feet deep. That's amazing. So when we get a foot or two snowfall,

[01:17:20] imagine 25 feet and then you know after the shoveling, it evolved to using a bulldozer and that was done for many years using a bulldozer and this day and age we use modern technology, a snow cap. You know, it's a Pistole 400 snow cap

[01:17:39] that's designed and made to plow snow and it really has sped up the process immensely from the way it used to be. So that's safer. It is, it's much safer. You know, the bulldozer could get a little slippery up there versus you know, the snow cap.

[01:17:54] That's what it's designed for. Yeah, and generally you target like on or around Memorial Day to open the roads and then when does it, when do you guys close? I can't remember when you close. Well, so we've recently extended that this year.

[01:18:08] We actually extended it to the first week of November. Historically, it was always like October 23rd, but we extended it two weeks because of the way the climate has been changing and winter just seems like it keeps coming later and later.

[01:18:22] So we extended our summer operating season by a few weeks. Interesting. I love the vibe. I always go up on Memorial Day weekend and you know, I'll typically will, I'll go old Jackson and I'll hit the road at mile two and then run up to the other summit

[01:18:38] and then hike down, usually come down like old Lion's Head or something, but the vibe up there, especially when the first cars are coming up on Memorial Day, so it's always fun. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, it's definitely a great time of year

[01:18:50] after all the work that goes into getting it cleared and ready. You know, we're always ready for that opening day. It's super exciting here for us. Yeah, and can you, Stomp and I, we've done like, we've done a couple episodes where we've tried to dig into the,

[01:19:07] there's a lot of stakeholders on and around the mountain. So there's the Auto Road, there's the COG and then there's the New Hampshire State Park. Can you talk through like, what is the relationship there and all the stakeholders and how do you guys like, I guess,

[01:19:22] coordinate when you need to? Yeah, so we're, I consider us all partners. You know, we all have to work very closely together and share this beautiful mountain that we all love and enjoy and the State Park, we work very closely with them

[01:19:39] for getting up to the park, of course, as the COG. You know, we've all encountered our problems and issues up here and, you know, any one of the folks that we just talked about, the other entities are always there to help in any way we can,

[01:19:54] you know, to make sure that we can all work together and make it a great experience for everybody that comes to visit. And do you have somebody on set? Like if there's a rescue and they get it, and Fishing Game has to get up the road

[01:20:06] or they want to request it, is that, do they call you or is there somebody on your staff that manages that liaison work? Yeah, so they'll usually give me a call. You know, I actually have just retired from law enforcement before I came here.

[01:20:17] So I have a lot of close friends in the industry still. So, but yeah, they'll give me a call. They actually do have our gate code so they know that the road is theirs when they need it and they greatly appreciate that, you know, offering

[01:20:32] because, you know, as you started earlier or stated earlier that, you know, it saves them a heck of a lot of work, you know, by being able to drive up there and assist all these hikers that do require help and need help. Yeah, I mean the alternative,

[01:20:48] you know, we've talked about this before, but I mean the alternative. So say you get somebody that's in trouble on like Mount Clay or they're in trouble in Huntington or Tuckerman, like the alternative to hike up to get to them. I mean, you're talking,

[01:21:00] you're probably saving like two, three hours in a lot of scenarios which can be life or death. Yeah, for sure. And it's happened. I mean, we've had dozens of these calls where we've gone through in the news stump. Yeah. Yeah, no, that happens quite often in the summer

[01:21:14] and you're absolutely right. Hours are key in that moment. Yeah. Now, are you a weather junkie? Do you keep an eye on the weather every day? You got both of you must just say it's you live and die by the weekend weather, I would guess. I honestly...

[01:21:28] He has a dedicated monitor in his office the Mount Washington Observatory hires on its forecast. I gotta tell you, I can't wait for the day that I can retire and not have to worry about the weather anymore. It really is, you know,

[01:21:41] the weather is such a key for us and, you know, being able to provide a safe environment for all of our guests to come and when they visit us. Yeah. What's the deciding factor on whether... if you... so on a summer weekend

[01:21:57] or like, you know, Memorial Day to October on a weekend, what's the deciding factor if you shut the road down? Is there like certain parameters where you just say like, all right, I know based on experience, I know that this isn't going to happen.

[01:22:10] Yeah, we do have parameters that are set and it's in regards to the winds and, you know, and we're constantly monitoring the radar. You know, if we see a real serious cell coming our way, we'll start making the calls and the decisions if we're gonna...

[01:22:25] you know, we could still operate maybe to 4200 feet and just not go to the summit where it's a lot safer but it's a constant evaluation and conversation when that type of weather is approaching. Yeah, and just I guess... I had a question around the history.

[01:22:44] So we've done a couple of topics on the history of the Auto Road. So I think construction started in the 1850s. There was a little bit of a delay. They got to the halfway house in the 1850s. There was a couple year delay

[01:22:57] and then the road was built up to the summit and I think opened in 1861. One of the things that I didn't realize was how critical the Auto Road was in the early marketing of automobiles. So in the early 1900s, the automobiles were starting to take off

[01:23:16] but they needed marketing material to sort of push. So they would actually do these circuits around the mountains and they would go up the Mount Washington Auto Road and they would use that in these newsreels and things like that to get people interested and realize like,

[01:23:32] oh wow, these automobiles can really get us out to these different places. So do you know, do either of you know any interesting stories about the early days of the Auto Road as far as like the construction or any history that's not well known?

[01:23:49] I don't, that last part of the well-known, I think it just depends on the listener. I mean, I'm from the area. I consider myself someone that's interested in history and even if you just, we have a barn here that's a museum and it's a transportation museum essentially.

[01:24:05] So you can see the different generations of transportation and how things have evolved right in front of you. We have these really beautiful old cars and carriages. As you said, the road started as a carriage road. I think they got halfway up and they went bankrupt.

[01:24:20] So they sold that company to the second owners who decided to start a toll at the bottom and start allowing people to pay as they were still constructing which is how they were able to get to the summit. And so it's always been a private business, right?

[01:24:35] We're not the state. We don't have public funding. We are a private family-owned entity and so the toll helps us maintain and builds this safe access to the summit. But the first ascent of a motorized vehicle happens. A couple of brothers down in the southern part

[01:24:57] of the state came up and it's the Stanley Steamer is like the locomotive. He had this PR stunt where he drove the vehicle to the top of Mount Washington and that's really how they started selling their cars. Like that was their big PR marketing stint

[01:25:13] and that really kicked off a new era of transportation history on the mountain. We also are home to the first automobile race, the first hill climb. Oh, that's right. It's amazing. And so that happens every few years here. But there's so much history in between. I don't, yeah.

[01:25:34] It's interesting because you know, as you were talking about earlier, the first gasoline-powered vehicle made it to the summit in 1902 and not even a couple years after, it was 1904 is when we had our first climb to the clouds, the first car race. Yeah, yeah.

[01:25:52] It's like didn't take long for people to just say we need to race these things now. Absolutely. All the adrenaline junkies out there. Yeah, right. It's amazing. And then how far, so at what point did your family take over ownership in the history of the Auto Road?

[01:26:06] Yeah, so that was 1906. You okay. So it goes back that long. Wow. Well, it's been the same ownership ever since. Okay, and so Megan, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, but so Stomp and I met based on, you know,

[01:26:20] we did the Auto Road race, the road race and we just met sort of through this online message board and then we became friends. My own experience, like my memory of the first time that I went on the Auto Road is I was nervous about the race.

[01:26:35] So I had actually trained, so I had done some research and realized that you could run up it and it was okay to do that. So I had run up but I had picked Alton Weagle Day. So I had ran up and I was like everything's cool

[01:26:50] and I had a good time. And then as I started coming down, I saw this guy dressed up in a Star Trooper outfit. Or Star Wars outfit. And then I saw another guy doing a jump rope backwards in lederhosen. And then I saw another person,

[01:27:09] I forget what they were doing. I think they were like crawling up on all fours or something like that. And I like had to stop and ask one person looks somewhat normal, but I was like, what is going on here? So they explained about Alton Weagle Day

[01:27:21] and I've talked about this before in the show, but can you talk a little bit about Alton Weagle Day and what the background is for that? Absolutely. So Alton Weagle Day, for those who don't know, is always the Saturday of Memorial Day weekends.

[01:27:34] The first one happens on our 150th anniversary here at the Otter Road. So about 12 years ago. And the GM at that time, Howie, and his team were trying to, as I understand it, find a way to kind of memorialize and start a new tradition on the road.

[01:27:51] And since the mountain is, and the road is so well known for its history, how could others make their own history here? And so Alton Weagle Day is the day of first ascents. And so what happens is you can reach out to me

[01:28:07] and you can tell me the idea that you have of something that's never happened going up the Otter Road before. And I have a whole log of all of the things that someone has, these different people have done.

[01:28:18] And I thought I was going to be so smooth last year. It was my first year. I said, Lisa, I'm going to play cribbage going up the Otter Road. She said, that was done 10 years ago. Try it. And so there's all of these wonderfully wacky,

[01:28:34] creative, beautiful ways that people come up the road and they hike up. Everything from last year, I had this one artist was painting. She was collecting water along the way and painted watercolors. Actually, I can send you a copy if you want.

[01:28:51] She sent me a framed version of all the paintings that she did afterwards. So she's ascending to the top. There was a stormtrooper this past year and somebody has like crawled up on all fours, collected sticks and then created this beautiful American flag

[01:29:11] that is permanently on the front of our baselodge here. So there's a whole list of things, but there's a... I think one person was juggling when I saw them. That might have been another year, but I've seen, I've been on it a couple of years.

[01:29:27] It's like a good, I always go to try to plan my run on Alton Weagle Day just so I can see what the other crazy people. I'm not a costume guy, but I like watching. It really is amazing. And I will say one of our staff members

[01:29:39] a few years back decided that he wanted to back a trailer up from the bottom all the way to the top of the mountain, which he successfully did. Yeah. Oh my, wow. That's crazy. I watch like, this is a side note, but I'm obsessed with this YouTube channel,

[01:29:55] which is called Miami Boat Ramps where people like try to back their boats into... They can't even back their boats into a boat ramp and this guy's driving backwards up the auto road. Like he needs to start a business training some of these boat drivers.

[01:30:08] I know, I know. He is the one that actually does the training, so. Yeah. That's impressive. That's impressive. No, I haven't seen that show. Yeah, so some other events. Obviously the Mount Washington Road Race with me and Stomp, we've been involved in.

[01:30:21] I think I've done that race like six times. Stomp, you've probably done it around the same amount. But can you talk a little bit about the... So that one is one of your longer events, I think, right? Yes, they... You're gonna have to...

[01:30:35] This is a good test for me because this is one of the things that I'm still familiarizing myself with. But we do... We've hosted the race... I'll look it up. I think it's going back into the like the 60s or 70s, right? That I'm not sure.

[01:30:52] So the first... Credit for the first time that someone ran up Mount Washington was in 1904. And then... A race was organized in that racer's honor in 1936. So there were 12 runners in that first year. And the field's just been getting larger, you know, since then.

[01:31:21] Now we have a field of about 1,300 racers. Again, based on parking and capacity, right? Because we... That's making sure that every... You know, we have a lot of... I'm curious about that parking. So you... And by necessity, like you have to...

[01:31:42] You know, you have cars that are parked down in sort of the lawn area in the lower section. Do you have a plan where you have to allow a certain amount of recovery after like... Because I've been on there where it's been muddy and the cars are parked.

[01:31:53] Depending on the damage that the cars do, do you have to like hold off and say like nobody goes on the lawn for a couple of weeks or something like that? Or does it just... It recovers pretty easy? I think that's a case-by-case basis.

[01:32:07] Last year was kind of exceptional if that's... What I... That's my only experience so far with it. And so we did hold off. There's a road that goes around the side of the event field that you're referencing. And so we made sure to utilize that.

[01:32:24] But in general, it does recover pretty quickly. Yeah, I was going to say it's held up very well over the years. You know, this year was definitely an exception because of the record rainfalls that we saw. Yeah. But usually that feels pretty tough. It does pretty well. Yeah.

[01:32:39] And then you do... So you have the bike race as well. So the running, you've got the bike race. And then you have all kinds of specialized vehicles. So you have an ATV day. You've got Mini Coopers as well. Is that right? Yeah. So there's a...

[01:32:57] Minis on Top is this organization of Mini Cooper drivers who, like all of us, you know, have this common shared interest and get together and have camaraderie over it, which is great. And so they rent out the road, actually the evening

[01:33:11] of the road race typically, and they drive to the summit as like a private tour. And so you can rent out the road outside of operating hours to kind of have a private experience. Okay. All right. And then there's ATVs, there's motorcycle, dedicated motorcycle drives, right, as well?

[01:33:29] No, so we've actually changed that. So the... Yeah, we used to do it right around when Bike Week was going on in Laconia. Unfortunately, the attendance was just going way, way down over the several years of doing it. So the decision was made, we just decided to get

[01:33:46] rid of it and now we kind of blend them in with the cars on a regular day. And we do offer a New Hampshire ATV Day. It's a fundraiser for the New Hampshire ATV Club. You know, it is now a half a day event, but we also...

[01:34:00] To add to that, we have opened up ATV access for pretty much the whole summer season now. So anybody can come at their own leisure. You just have to reserve the spot ahead of time on our website. Okay, and then the other thing that I've noticed

[01:34:16] that there's a fair amount of activity is you've gotten involved, and I think you've been doing this has been for a while, but the adaptive hiking groups have been... I see pictures on social media quite a bit on weekends.

[01:34:30] It seems like they go up very early or maybe overnight where they'll have adapted hikers where you use the auto road to get up to the summit, which is pretty interesting. Can you talk a little bit about that? Definitely. So there's this event that's called the Sunrise Ascent

[01:34:45] on Mount Washington and essentially these different athletes who have all different types of accommodations of how they get up the road, whether it be supported with other hikers being carried or using these different wheels, adaptive bikes. Some people use handbikes all to go up the flat and

[01:35:09] safe auto road to the summit and they build these teams and they fundraise. And so it's a big fundraiser for the Adaptive Sports of the North Country, and I think it's their biggest fundraiser of the year. And it's just this really beautiful collection of

[01:35:27] people who have the most spirit that you've ever met and are the most excited that you've ever seen to come together and get to the top. Yeah, and it's always like I always point to this when people talk about like, you know, oh, you should just

[01:35:46] hike up or whatever. Like it is this the auto road just such a great thing to give people access that may otherwise not ever been able to, you know, ever be able to get up to see the views that we enjoy when we go hiking.

[01:35:56] So it's a great thing and stop. We got to get on that. We've gotten we've offered we've been offered to tell about before. I just got to find the time. Yeah, for sure. That'd be great. Yeah. All right. So there's so much to do.

[01:36:10] So there's a ton to do in the winter you talked about like you can take that snow. What is it? Is snow cat ride up above the snow line? You can do Nordic skiing. Snow coach. So it's coach the cat is what we grew him in and then

[01:36:23] the eight passenger van that we put this these awesome tracks on is called the snow coach and it's such a unique experience. We're definitely the only one doing it around. Absolutely. Yeah, and is that is it just you taking an existing

[01:36:36] van and just putting different treads on it or is it a dedicated snow machine? No, it's a standard 12 passengers Chevy Express van that we actually send out to have a four-wheel drive conversion kit put into it which we don't gives it a

[01:36:52] little more height and it actually puts a Ford solid front axle in the front of this van. So it's a conversion that they just won't do for anybody else but us at this point because we're kind of grandfathered in we've been doing it for so long, but

[01:37:07] and then once that conversions done then we buy these specialized tracks that we bolt on we take the wheels off bolt them on and ready to go. Awesome. And then in the the warmer seasons there is a hiker shuttle as well, right? Yeah, correct.

[01:37:23] Yeah, we do offer a hiking shuttle off the summit of the mountain. We don't do reservations. So it's a first-come first-served type service and any hikers that need the service are encouraged to go up to our summit stage office that we have right at the

[01:37:38] top of the wooden stairway and they can book the trip down right inside there. Excellent. Any big future plans coming up Megan? Oh, that's a good question. Well, what's a hiker shuttle to I just want to add it is weather dependent.

[01:37:51] So it's good for hikers to know that it's there but not to plan on it as their only, you know, their their plan down I guess you have to be prepared. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you got to be ready to hike down if you get lucky

[01:38:06] and you can get a bill out up there then you're lucky but you're ready to hike down. Yeah. Well, yeah in regards to your last question, we always have, you know, special plans coming forward. Some of the ones I'd like to share is the big plan

[01:38:22] that I've been working on now for the last couple years is we're actually going to be constructing a new bridge across the Peabody River here at the base. I'm sure you're familiar with the current bridge situation that we have as you approach the toll house.

[01:38:37] Yes, we're in a process of building a new bridge. It's going to be located upstream a little farther south and it's actually going to be a three-lane bridge with a four-foot walking lane, which is much wider than the current bridge that we have.

[01:38:50] And with this new location, what it's going to do is it's going to allow us to have a larger capacity for storage of our cars or customers as they're waiting to go up the road which in return will cause less congestion on Route 16. Yeah, that's a tight area.

[01:39:07] So you're going to be able to direct people farther down into the waiting area with that bridge. Will you keep the existing bridge too? No, the existing bridge will be removed once the new bridge is in place and our goal is construction will start

[01:39:22] in early spring and hopefully this bridge will be completed by next winter. Okay, well that'll be fun. And to add to that, we're actually going to be building a new toll house as well, which is going to be located just to the left of the existing toll house.

[01:39:37] It's going to be a little bit larger. It's going to have a nice roof going over the travel lanes as you approach. So it's just a little bit warmer welcome as our guests come to visit us here. That's great. Awesome.

[01:39:50] Well, I had a marketing idea that I wanted to pitch you guys. If you do, you don't have to pay me anything. It's going to make you millions of dollars, but I had this idea. So when I was supposed to run the auto road race this year,

[01:40:03] but I broke my foot like the other, I broke my toe like the week before. So being the nice guy that I am instead of me sleeping late, I came and I just was like Stomp's hype guy.

[01:40:14] So I went and I was like, all right, Stomp get ready. This guy when he warms up for the race, like the guy disappears. So it was like a waste of my time. I was like, where is this guy? I'm supposed to be here to support him.

[01:40:23] He's like running off. He's like warming up. I'm not a warm-up guy. I'm like, I'll warm up when the race starts. But the thing I love about the auto road race is that you move the start behind that pond and at first I didn't like it because

[01:40:37] I was like, well, because I had done the race that was right after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and I had done that start and that was awesome when was it Dave McGill where he did his speech, but you moved it to off to the right-hand side where

[01:40:52] the pond is and at first I didn't like it. But then I fell in love with it this year because you had the band not Reckless Brewing, but you had the band Reckless and she had done the national anthem in front of that pond and

[01:41:08] I thought the acoustics and I thought that moment when she did the national anthem was like an unbelievable chills. I was like they need to do concerts here. Like you got to get Fleetwood Mac or you got to do you got to do concerts there.

[01:41:20] I don't know how it will work logistically. I don't know if you want to build a concert venue, but like that's the spot for the guy that did the backing up of the kayak pay you to say that because he's been saying that for a very

[01:41:31] long time here. It has been conversation in-house for quite some time and you know, who knows? It's interesting. Yeah, the natural acoustics there are amazing, especially with the water. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. That moment was just mind-blowing like whoo.

[01:41:48] Yeah, yeah because I got that on tape and I was just like I just sat there and I was like wow this would be an awesome place to do a concert. Like maybe you don't do maybe not Fleetwood Mac, you know,

[01:41:57] maybe maybe you get Noah Kahn to start off with get a look at it. But anyway, that was my million dollar suggestion. So take it as you will but well Mike I'll invite you. I think you should sign up for our moat Mountain 24-hour mountain

[01:42:10] bike race because on Friday night before the race starts we hire a band. Okay, right near that location and we have a welcome party and it's a rockin time. Are you doing the 24 hours? Are you doing the bike thing? Yes registrations open right now.

[01:42:28] The event will be it's always that first weekend in August. Yeah. So the race will start on August 3rd this year 2024. And the theme is kind of outer space. So you really know, however, is it competitive? Like I don't know anything about the 24 hours of great quality.

[01:42:49] Is it is it it can be competitive but it can also be riding for fun, right? Exactly. Yes, there's it's a holes, you know, I did my first lap this year. It's about a 10 mile lap throughout our single track carriage

[01:43:04] roads here all at the base of Mount Washington and I took my time doing it. I had a lot of fun and I was definitely maxed out after one lap and then there's some people who sign up as solos and

[01:43:18] race it the entire time on a bike that has no gears. Yeah, they do the fixie. Yeah, it's incredible. I have no idea how they even stand. Stomp you may have to dust off your Huffy and get out there. Oh man, that'd be rough.

[01:43:37] I would love to know that's fun. But I mean just for the the band alone. I might I might have to check that out. So there's so much going as a team. So, okay. No, you can tag in and out.

[01:43:47] You don't have to be racing the whole time. Okay, so you can essentially like for this one. You can you can build whatever you want. If you want to do two three laps, you can do 20 30 miles or

[01:43:55] you can just you can just do one lap if you want. Exactly. I'm proud of my one lap. Yes. No, that's good. That's good. I used to do the they had this race called the wild man biathlon

[01:44:05] which starts down in Shelburne and then that comes up past the Auto Road to Wildcat and then up Wildcat. So that's the only real bike thing. I've done around. I've done a few century rides around but I gotta get off the

[01:44:18] road and get on get on the dirt. It's a great challenge. You'll love it. Yeah, do you ride? Do you ride it? I ride I don't ride the race. No, I always like to come up here and just be a part of it as

[01:44:29] as Megan was saying it's amazing, you know, the pre-party the you know, just the camaraderie of everybody being here, you know young kids. We have a young kids race, you know that we do during the day and 24 minutes 24 minutes. We call it's awesome.

[01:44:44] You know, just to see all the families coming out here and enjoy a nice weekend is well worth it and tying back into the family thing, you know Toby's son was here. He set up a lemonade stand last year at the event. Yeah, you're an entrepreneurial family. Nice.

[01:45:01] Well, I still like the flamethrower idea. I like that, you know, maybe that would be a nice marketing ploy. I know you got heavy equipment, but I will I will gladly invite you up this year ride in the snowcat with me with a flamethrower

[01:45:13] if you want to get up. I'll probably blow us both up but I don't know. I do want to add one other new thing that we have going on just you know with COVID everything changed including the closure

[01:45:25] of our cafe, which was very near and dear here for a lot of people fueling on the mountain is a very important thing. And so we just brought back the cafe and a new iteration. It's called the Pinkham Notch Market.

[01:45:38] Okay, it's a lot more grab-and-go get coffee tea sandwiches. There's some frozen protein bowls and different options that you can heat up. And so if you're in Pinkham Notch and you're looking for something to eat, that's not the full sit down experience.

[01:45:55] Definitely stop in because we're excited to bring back, you know, the fuel here at the base. Okay. So this is the building across the street where the vans sometimes park and you used to have the snack area. So that's now open this bathrooms in there.

[01:46:11] Yes, or do we want to advertise that to hikers? I don't know. There are showers to downstairs if you want. Oh, there are okay. All right, that's good to know. So that's a good alternative because the ones up in Pinkham Notch are a little nasty.

[01:46:28] We have a great offering here. Awesome. Anything else we met? I mean, there's so much going on but anything else we missed? I'm sure there is. The hotel. So talk about the hotel. Is there a pool in there? Yeah, there is. No hot tub.

[01:46:44] We do have a saltwater pool. You know, it's an amazing restaurant and bar. You know, if you haven't been as soon as you walk in the front entrance, it's you're immediately greeted by a full glass windows overlooking the presidential range.

[01:47:02] We have a beautiful deck with an outdoor fireplace that's always lit always going. So if you want to enjoy a cocktail out by the fire and looking at the presidentials, you know, you're more than welcome to just an amazing building new construction, of course, nice and modern.

[01:47:20] And it's the green initiatives with that with the whole campus here are impressive. But with that building specifically, is it net neutral yet? It isn't net neutral yet, but we're working towards that. So another an exciting project that we're looking at fulfilling

[01:47:35] this summer is a solar array that we're going to put up that our goal is to make that the Glenhouse Hotel net zero. Currently, we have elevators that generate power as they're coming down. We have geothermal that heats and cools the building.

[01:47:52] We have hydroelectric power that's produced here on property, two generators, one that generates power for the Glenhouse and the other one generates power for our facility here at the Auto Road and Great Glen Trails. We have 10 of our vans that we give tours in in the summertime that

[01:48:08] actually have been converted over to run on propane, which is a much cleaner fuel. So we and we heat our building here at Great Glen in the wintertime with two pellet boilers. Wow. Now, if you if the power goes out, are you able to store power locally

[01:48:23] and keep things going for a little while? No. So all the power just goes back into the grid. It's kind of eatering. We do have standby generators here. Oh, that's right. All right. Well, stop. If you want to take Mrs.

[01:48:36] Stomp for a nice romantic weekend, it's that sounds like the place. Yeah, it sure does. We also just installed more EV stations. So, you know, as people are planning their trips in the North Country, we're right off of Route 16.

[01:48:53] It's a great place to stop in and have a meal. You can have it at the Glenhouse if you want the full sit down thing or come on a guided tour and charge up on your way north. Well, that's a good point.

[01:49:03] I feel like I saw like a whole crew of like electric Tesla vehicles that were oh, you know what it was the there was like a group of Tesla vehicles that had volunteered to do the they had parked up

[01:49:15] up top and had driven some of the road the road race runners down. Yep. Yep. That's a good point Megan. Yeah, we do have four charging stations here at the Auto Road and two over at the Glenhouse as well. All right, so Stomp's anti-EV.

[01:49:31] So when we finally convert him to EV vehicles, he can use that to charges. Yes. Good to go and you can bring the missus up with you. Good to go. Good to go. So I have a question. Are you guys responsible for shuttling winter staff?

[01:49:46] No, so that doesn't have anything to do with us. Okay, the state park has their own snowcat and they conduct their own shift changes. They do have coverage at the Sherman Adams building at the Summit 24-7. Gotcha. And the same with the Mount Washington Observatory.

[01:50:01] They also have their own snowcat and they'll shuttle their own staff up and down all winter long all season long. Okay. We do allow passage, you know, it is this agreement where they utilize the Auto Road weekly to daily to have that access.

[01:50:17] And so that is a part of our partnership for sure in the same way that we utilize the weather data that we're receiving from all the Mizzanettes along the Auto Road in live time to make the best safety decisions and in the way that the state park is

[01:50:30] shelter at the Summit. Mm-hmm. Okay, and my last question just briefly. I know this question could go long because I'm fascinated by it, but I was up on Mount Adams with my wife and we noticed the old carriage road as it diverts off of the four-mile marker in

[01:50:46] that area around Chandler Ridge. Do you have any history on that? Well, yeah, so that from what I understand it was definitely before my time. So we call that the winter cutoff. Right. And that was an old access road that they used in the winter

[01:51:05] time in the snow cats. It was a shortcut. Sure. Yes, it is. You're right, you know at the time it was easier. I believe more direct route to get to the summit of the mountain. I'm not sure when they stopped using that road, but I know it

[01:51:20] was quite some time ago and and currently they just follow the footprint of our roadway. They don't even use it for winter anymore. Not not at all. Oh interesting. Okay. Wow. Yep. Yeah, I think I read somewhere that that that part of that old

[01:51:36] road was potentially where the halfway house might have been located but I don't remember. No, that the halfway house is actually located right just below the four-mile marker on the okay. It's kind of like the bigger parking lot, you know before you

[01:51:51] yeah, yeah coming into the above tree line. Yeah, the halfway house is actually located right there. Okay, interesting. So when you when you go up above tree line in the in the winter and you get like it the quiet it must be just amazing out there

[01:52:08] if it's not windy obviously, but it must just be an amazing experience. Oh, it's absolutely truly amazing. You know, some of my favorite moments up there is when I'm in the snow cat preparing the road for the next business day, you

[01:52:20] know either in the evening watching the the lights from all the surrounding towns, you know at that elevation or it's early morning watching the Sunrise. It's just a phenomenal experience. Yeah, and the opposite my view is like I've been hiking in

[01:52:36] like Madison Gulf and I've been coming up like Huntington or Tuckerman's and I can see like these early morning, you know, the Sunrise cars coming up the auto road sometimes yeah, unbelievable when you're hiking up and you just see that line of lights coming up. It's it's amazing.

[01:52:53] Well and glad you mentioned that, you know, that's a couple of the other offerings that we have here in the summertime. We do offer two Sunrise drives and as of this past year, we now are offering two sunset drives.

[01:53:06] So definitely recommend going to our website if you want a nice romantic amazing experience, you know, it can't be like it. I brought my husband had never been on the auto road and I had an early morning video shoot up here last summer and I said,

[01:53:21] you know, Dave we come with me and so his first experience on the auto road was at four o'clock in the morning watching the Sunrise and you know, I recommend it. Awesome. Stop. Let's do it me and you yeah. There's so much more to talk about.

[01:53:44] We love to come back. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing the amount of activities that you have and like people just need to remember like don't stop in Jackson go up to Pinkham Notch. There's way is there's plenty of things to do up there and you

[01:54:00] know, we'll plug a bunch of this stuff in our show notes and make sure that anytime people ask us like, okay, what are things to do? We'll make sure that we include all the stuff that we talked about tonight.

[01:54:10] We appreciate that and now that we have the Glen house, it's definitely a destination now that that you can come and enjoy the whole weekend. There's all kinds of activities and and things to do here. Excellent.

[01:54:22] So Toby Megan, thank you so much and we will let you go. I appreciate everything. Thank you for having us. Thanks so much. All right, stop. Fantastic. Thank you so much for that information. That was the that was the coolest interview. Yeah.

[01:54:40] Yeah, that was amazing full circle for us to stop. We still we who would have thought after meeting over the the Mount Washington Auto Road race and now we've we've we've we've moved on to this or interviewing the you know, the general manager and the marketing director.

[01:54:58] Yeah, that we would end this podcast on such a high note. Yeah. Yeah. No, they were a Toby and Megan will break. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's good information. I just love the whole idea of all these people going up and

[01:55:10] down there in the winter and these snow cats like the Arctic up there man. It's hardcore. I know. I know. I like that idea of going up on the you know, driving up and checking out that like 4,000 foot section there. But yeah, I'm glad you're here.

[01:55:26] Foot section there, but yeah, we'll see and talk about I bet the reservations for that hotel are already booked for the Mount Washington Road race. What do you think about that? That would be a new place to stay. It'll be awesome.

[01:55:39] Yeah, it sure would something to think about sure. Anyway, well, we have a little bit of search and rescue news while we have time here. So this one you sent to me as well. And yeah, I guess Huck sent it over but somebody was having

[01:56:35] a really close call in the Adirondacks. Yeah. So this is this one happened on December 26th. So there was a hiker who had slipped off the summit of South Dix Mountain. So is a 46 year old that had called they use 911 to gather

[01:57:03] her coordinates, but she had fallen several hundred feet down steep snow and a rock slide before grabbing a small tree which prevented her from going over a vertical cliff face. Oh my God. This is my biggest nightmare. It was pouring rain soaking wet spruce tree cover deep snow

[01:57:19] slippery ice unbelievable. Yeah, I mean potential hypothermia here. So they were able to contact the subject at like 1 30 a.m. And they provided warm liquids food and dry clothing and guided her out of the out of the trail. So she got back by 630 so long day for her.

[01:57:41] So basically she called it 530 hanging off of a tree and then they got to her at 1 30 in the morning and got her out at 630. That's a long 12 hours. Oh, it sure is unbelievable story. Yeah. So I mean that's pretty late to be on the summit and then

[01:57:57] hiking down but you know, it is what it is. Absolutely amazing. Got it. And then next up here stomp. We've got a unfortunately, we've got a fatality here due to a selfie on the edge of a cliff. So yeah, we sure do. Not good.

[01:58:23] So this is a tourist from Singapore that had died. This is up in New York State. So the tourist from Singapore was hiking with her husband in Minnewaska State Park in New York right before Christmas 39 year old hiker and her husband a 41 year old they were on the

[01:58:39] Beacon Hill Trail when they stopped to take a photo near the edge of the cliff and the the wife apparently lost her footing fell over the cliff falling about 70 feet. So her husband called 911 and emergency crews rushed to the area.

[01:58:57] They were able to hoist her out with a helicopter. They spent about a three hours resuscitating her but unfortunately, she was pronounced dead by the time they got to the hospital. So got to be careful near those those edges.

[01:59:11] Yeah, I think it happens more often than we know such an awful story. It's such an avoidable tragedy. Yeah, it certainly is. It's just I think people just kind of lose their their I mean, it's just self-awareness on where you are. You just got to pay attention.

[01:59:31] So right. What local we have one local one local. We've got a hiker that was in distress on Mount Percival stop and this was on December 26. So a 21 year old hiker from Wolfboro, New Hampshire was on the the Crawford Ridge Pole trail with a companion.

[01:59:50] So stop you and I've been up there. So pretty familiar with that area. So they started hiking around one day took off from sandwich notch Road. So that's interesting that they were able to get get up there from sandwich notch still open.

[02:00:03] So they called 911 at 428 due to a medical condition and this 21 year old hiker was unable to continue. Fish and game responded along with Holton is fire and rescue sandwich fire and rescue Campton Thornton fire and rescue and Center Harbor fire and rescue.

[02:00:24] So I wonder how the Campton Thornton fire department gets over there. They don't go across sandwich notch Road and this time of the year. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out here. I want to reread this and make sure that that's accurate. Would you see that?

[02:00:39] It's on the press release. That's in the fish and game press release. So so they had begun hiking departing from sandwich notch Road in sandwich. So they were like the same place where we parked when we hike they must have been going up. Right, right.

[02:00:55] I would I don't see anybody going over sandwich notch Road by vehicle. Correct. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know because it's interesting because if you look at the the the press release, so they located the hiker near

[02:01:17] the Mount Percival Trail and they were able to assess and treat your condition. She was a little walk with assistance about a half a mile to a waiting rescue UTV and then they were able to transfer her to Campton Thornton's ambulance at the trailhead parking area.

[02:01:32] So that's kind of interesting that Campton Thornton. Yeah, I was able to to make it across but maybe they did so she was driven to her father at a local hospital for further evaluation. So all's good. Yeah, that's an interesting one.

[02:01:44] I'm not sure because I mean Morgan and Percival there's so much further South than the yeah, the sandwich notch. I mean that does none of it makes sense. It's possible that that was still open because usually they put Jersey barriers on the Thornton side.

[02:02:02] So you can't really traverse it. Yeah, because remember when we did, you know that sandwich dome and Jennings and all that like we were able to drive out pretty far up to that trailhead. I don't mean it was sketchy but maybe it's just been dry as can

[02:02:16] be and they maybe they made it all the way across. Yeah. Yeah, possibly interesting. Yeah. Good work. All right stomp, but that is that's the episode for this week. So we're back we got and we got a whole list of great guests

[02:02:31] lined up or is it just me and you for next week? Oh next week. We are having a listener spotlight and that will be top secret until next week. Alrighty. Well, yeah until then adios. Thank you for listening.

[02:02:49] If you enjoyed the show, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts Spotify Podbean YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to learn more about the topics covered in today's show, please check out the show notes and safety information at Slasher podcast.com. That's SLSR podcast.com.

[02:03:14] You can also follow the show on Facebook and Instagram. We hope you'll join us next week for another great show until then on behalf of Mike and stomp get out there and crush some mega heat. Now covered in scratches blisters and bug bites Chris staff

[02:03:33] wanted to complete his most challenging day hike ever fishing game officers say the hiker from Florida activated an emergency beacon yesterday morning. He was hiking along the Appalachian Trail when the weather started to get worse officials say the snow was piled up to

[02:03:49] three feet in some spots and there was a wind chill of minus one degree. And there's three words to describe this race. Do we all know what they are? Oh, you want help? Lieutenant James Nealon New Hampshire fishing game. Who's ended? Thanks for being with us today.

[02:04:05] Thanks for having me. What are some of the most common mistakes you see people make when they're heading out on the trails to hike here in New Hampshire? It seems to me the most common is being unprepared.

[02:04:14] I think if they just simply visited hikesafe.com and got a list of the 10 essential items and had those in their packs, they probably would have no need to ever call us at all.