Episode 138 - Welcome Andy from the Mount Washington Cog Railway

[00:00:03] Here is the latest Higher Summits Forecast brought to you by our friends at the Mount 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 mountwashington.org.

[00:00:32] Weather observers working at the non-profit Mount 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.

[00:00:54] Go to mountwashington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. And here is your forecast for Friday, February 2nd and Saturday, February 3rd. Friday Mostly in the clouds with a chance of snow showers. Possible snow accumulations of a trace to 2 inches. With a high falling to around 10 degrees.

[00:01:30] Winds will be northwest shifting north at 15-30 mph, increasing to 25-40 mph with a wind chill falling to 10 below to 20 below. Friday night Mostly in the clouds trending towards clearing under partly cloudy skies. With a slight chance of snow showers early.

[00:01:51] Possible snow accumulations of a trace to less than 1 inch. With a low in the upper single digits. Winds will be north at 25-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph. Wind chill falling to 15 below to 25 below. Saturday In the clear under mostly sunny skies.

[00:02:12] With a high in the upper single digits. Winds will be north at 20-35 mph with gusts up to 45 mph. With a wind chill rising to 10 below to 20 below. Broadcasting from the Woodpecker Studio in the great state of New Hampshire, welcome

[00:03:06] to 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. Alright Stomp, we are live episode 138. Crack that beer. Cracking the beer.

[00:03:48] I got something to start the show I want to show you Stomp. Okay, what is that? Let's get to it. Oh! Yeah, I can see it. It is so pretty. It's showing me. It's an Avalanche brand butt sled for hiking. Sweet, have you used it yet? I haven't.

[00:04:08] I'm going to take it up tomorrow and see how it goes. I've been trying to find these Euro sleds but I can't find a lot of them online. What do the Euro sleds look like? They're essentially like this except for this part.

[00:04:26] This has a foot rest part but they're essentially just cut off. So Mike's sled looks like a figure eight with half of it a little smaller diameter for the feet and then two handles to hold on to. That's cool.

[00:04:42] Yeah, I read online they said it's pretty good for smaller people and I'm not a big guy so I think it would be okay. I don't know Stomp about you though. Yeah, that's not going to happen.

[00:04:50] I usually just go right on my pants and my snow pants and that's always been good. Andy, do you ever just get a sled and rip down the cog? You must have done that. I've yet to do that. I've been tempted but I've done some butt sledding hiking.

[00:05:07] I did a season of snow making so that's where I learned that putting some duct tape or tape like that on the ski pants can help you out with the coefficient of friction there. You can get ripped.

[00:05:19] I did a little bit of butt sledding down Valley Way last weekend which was good but it's a lot of effort because you only go like 50 to 100 feet and then you got to get up again and my core.

[00:05:30] I haven't been doing a lot of sit ups so it's hard. Getting all banged up and bruised. Yeah, exactly. All right, so welcome to episode 138 of the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue podcast. This week we are joined by Andy Valaine. So welcome Andy. Welcome.

[00:05:47] Thanks for having me on. Yeah, no problem. So Andy is the train master for the Mount Washington Cog Railway. So the railway has been open to the Mount Washington Summit since 1869 and has been a rite of passage for generations of visitors to the Mount Washington Valley.

[00:06:02] So Andy's going to join us to talk about the history of the Mount Washington Cog Railway, the various events and activities available at the cog and then he'll share some details about the trains, the day-to-day operations, the maintenance of the track and many other details.

[00:06:16] So Andy, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. All this plus Stomp is shopping for a new backpack so we'll talk a little bit more about some hiking gear. I'll do a recap on a recent hike to Mount Adams and Mount Madison.

[00:06:28] Stomp has had some snowmobile adventures and we'll do a refresher on communication safety devices while hiking and then we've got some recent incidents in the world of search and rescue and then we got breaking news.

[00:06:39] Somebody drove a car through a pizza parlor down in Hudson, New Hampshire, Stomp. So we'll talk about that. Nice. So I'm Mike. You drove through pizza. Yes. And I'm Stomp. Let's get started. This is Ben Pease from Hiking Buddies.

[00:07:20] We are a 501c3 nonprofit committed to reducing avoidable tragedies through education, impactful projects and fostering a community of support. You can find out more at hikingbuddies.org. We wanted to say thank you to those who have supported our mission and most importantly

[00:07:35] say thanks to those who speak up, who ask questions and who are willing to provide guidance and assistance on the trails when needed. 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.

[00:07:57] Get to know the parking area that you'll be going to before you head there for your hike. Note what the trailhead amenities are if any. Know if there is a parking fee, latrines. Does it fill up early? What size is the lot?

[00:08:15] And is there an alternative for plan B? Let's get started. I wasn't going to put that story in, but I was like, well, you know, mom and pops and dolls will be interested. So hey, it's hiking related. People get pizza after a hike. Yes. Yeah.

[00:08:42] So just to start off with Stomp, a listener, Paul Gamble informed us that Guy Waterman has bushwhacked all of the 48 in winter. So I wasn't surprised to read this just because my understanding is that he bushwhacked each 48 for a thousand footer from the, what is that called?

[00:09:04] The like North, South, East and West. Oh yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep. So is there a reason why he reached out to tell us that or was it just a fun fact? Well because we had talked about that. I had challenged a recent guest about that.

[00:09:19] I think it may have been Dave and Liz. And yeah, so it just tied into that conversation. Yeah. If you were going to bushwhack Mount Washington, what direction would you go in Stomp in winter? In winter? Wow. That's a really good question.

[00:09:37] I think, I suppose I would bushwhack from just what is the valley there? The headwall just South of Tuckermans that people tend to go into. Hootspur? It's adjacent. Yeah. I'd probably go somewhere in that area where Glen Boulder is and make my way up that way.

[00:09:59] Gulf of Salines. Gulf of Salines. Yeah. I would probably do that if it were not avalanche conditions. But yeah, it's a tough one. There's not very many. Or you could come in from the South like Isolation Route. Yeah. I don't know.

[00:10:17] That's what I was thinking is maybe that dry river section there. But I mean no matter what, you're in for a haul and I don't even know how you- Oh hell yeah. Yeah. It'd be interesting.

[00:10:26] So Paul, if you're listening, if, and I'm sure this isn't one of Guy's books, but I would be curious what direction he used to get onto Mount Washington. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. All right.

[00:10:37] And then next up Stomp, I hope you have the answer to this because I don't have the answer, but Cheswick. So Cheswick was a guest on our show. I don't. He's a through hiker. He had done some of the crazy long hikes.

[00:10:46] He had connected like the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail and had done one continuous hike across that entire loop. I think it's called the Great Western Loop that he had done. So listeners had reached out and they wanted an update.

[00:11:00] So have you been checking out what's going on Stomp? Well, that's what spurred this on. Somebody had sent in a message saying, what's the update on Cheswick? And I've not heard anything about it to be honest with you.

[00:11:13] So I did some digging on his pages and there are no new updates that I can see. So if anybody out there knows some news about Cheswick, let us know. He joined us twice in the past and those episodes are really fascinating. So worth a listen.

[00:11:29] But yeah, let us know if you hear anything. I've not personally heard anything, but maybe there is. All right, I'll just email and see what he's up to. Well I sent him a text. Oh you did? He didn't get back to me. Oh okay, got it. All right.

[00:11:42] So maybe he is in the middle of something. All right, Cheswick is missing. We need to find him. Yeah, MIA. Interesting. All right Stomp, now I have one other thing. This is a very visual show and we're podcasting.

[00:11:53] We don't do videos, so I don't know why I keep doing this, but I got a new book. So Dave Shits in the Woods, who was on a couple of episodes ago, had recommended Shrouded Memories.

[00:12:03] So I am currently, I started reading it and they have a, Andy there's actually a story in here, I haven't read it yet, about a shooting that happened in like the 1920s, 1930s. They say it was like at the cog, but it wasn't really at the cog.

[00:12:24] It looks like it was across the street closer to Zeeland campground. But I'm going to check that story out. But I did read the first chapter, which is about the plane crash Stomp that we've talked

[00:12:35] about before, that the two doctors in the 19, I think it was the 1950s, that were flying back and forth between like the southern part of the state. They were going up to Berlin. It was in like late 1950, I think 1959, it was the winter of 59.

[00:12:51] And they crashed in the Pemi by that Thoreau trail there on the back of the Bonds there. Okay. Yep. Sure. So crazy story. So they had crashed in like these minus 10 degree weather. And unfortunately like the rescue teams had been looking for them.

[00:13:08] They were flying, civil air patrol was flying to look for them and couldn't find them. They did survive the crash for about four or five days enough so that they could sort of write their families and attempt to light some fires and things like that.

[00:13:21] But they were pretty severely, one of them was severely injured during the crash and didn't survive long. And then the other doctor tried to make some snowshoes out of like bark on trees and things like that, but he couldn't get out.

[00:13:33] It was so thick, but they did find them eventually, I think a couple of months later. Fascinating. Wow. Yeah. But yeah, so far I'm impressed. So shrouded memories and the author is Floyd Ramsey. So recommend that. Awesome. All right, Stomp is dealing with a new gear issue here.

[00:13:54] So he's going to retire his, you have a 30 liter low Alpine? Yeah. That's a small pack. That's not your big pack. No, I've got a low 90 that expands up to 115 that I use for winter, but I've been using my- Yeah, which is ridiculous.

[00:14:13] So you're going to keep that one? I'm going to keep that one, but I did a poll if, whether or not I was going to get a new pack or not. And it was pretty much split 50-50, but yes, I am getting a new pack.

[00:14:27] And what I decided was I'm going to dedicate the old 30 liter to snowmobile sled guiding. First of all, it's a pain in the ass whopping out every season to get ready for the season.

[00:14:39] But yeah, I'm just going to keep it all in that 30 and use it for the guiding. And I've got a new low Alpine 65 in the mail coming my way. And what is, so this is your, is this like your summer pack or is, because I always thought

[00:14:57] you just used your giant pack for everything. I don't really roll like that. No, I don't. I used to swap out for the summers. I would use that 30 liter, which I'm going to dedicate to snowmobiling now, which was a fairly small pack.

[00:15:11] But the 65 is going to be great. It's the happy medium for me. I like a big pack. I don't like having to rip everything out to get things. I like to look into it and see what I need immediately, just grab it.

[00:15:22] And I do pack a lot anyway. These 30s never really fit with my style. So 65 should be nice. I just have to laugh because like my winter backpacking pack is a 55 liter and then my day pack is like a 25 liter. So stop small pack is a 65 liter.

[00:15:39] So I don't know, Andy, do you have, are you a heavy packer when you go hiking or are you? Very, yeah. And I can identify with that because I used to exclusively use a 75 for everything, even

[00:15:50] if it was a day hike and I was stubborn about it to the point where my girlfriend encouraged me to get a second pack and I wound up getting an Osprey Kestrel 38, I believe it is for day hikes.

[00:16:06] But I do, my 75 is an old yellow bean white mountain 75 from like the early 2000s and I love it. But it's, I definitely skew hiking heavy all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So he wasn't even thinking twice about throwing on like the 90 liter for a day hike, you

[00:16:28] know, and it's fine for you though, but is there a particular reason why you like these low packs? Well it speaks for itself. I mean the two lows I have right now are running on probably close to 30, 40 years old now and they're still killing it.

[00:16:44] I mean they're just built really, really well. They've been around forever. So yeah, I just tend to go back to the tried and true, the ones that have been historically tested. Yeah. You don't see them around as much.

[00:16:56] I mean you see a lot of like Osprey and Gregory and Duder backpacks, but you don't see the low brand a lot. But I like your pack shop. I like it because I can instantly recognize you. Cause it's as big as me.

[00:17:10] He's like, is that two people walking? So Andy, if you hike with Stomp, if you need a kitchen sink, he'll have you covered. That's perfect. I was looking at, I think I was looking at a 90 the other day at IME in the basement.

[00:17:25] I'm like, Ooh, that looks kind of nice. And I caught some flack about that from my girlfriend. What do you need a 90 for? But I do, I like to, I don't go light in any sense of the word. I'm like a pack mule out there, bigger guy.

[00:17:40] So I carry a lot and I move at a slow but steady pace. Well, you just have to tell her, look, I'm carrying everything for you as well. So you don't need to carry anything.

[00:17:54] She can pack, but I think because of my frame size, I can just really, I'm well suited to just be weighted down and have it not affect my stamina that much. And Stomp, do you, cause I know like there's two trains of thought around like the backpack.

[00:18:10] Like there's a lot of people that will say go to a store to get it fitted and definitely makes sense, especially if you're not comfortable doing the adjustments yourself. But I've never really done that.

[00:18:20] I've just kind of bought the pack and then fiddled with it until it worked out for me. Are you going to do the same? Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure this is a hundred percent adjustable and we all know how it works for

[00:18:34] the most part. You know, have it riding on your hips as opposed to your shoulders and yeah, tweak it and make it work. All right. Well, listeners, if you're confident, then you can, you know, I have a feeling it's more

[00:18:44] that just Stomp has no life and he has like the eight hours to fiddle with the pack. If you don't have that free time, you can just go to any store and they'll help you fit your pack. But Stomp's an expert apparently. Oh boy. All right, Stomp.

[00:18:58] So you want to do this story? So Stomp pulled a social media story about the Grand Canyon National Park Instagram page posted a picture of the Grand Canyon and then like it's like a Barbie doll.

[00:19:14] And it says like, I don't know why, like there's no good can come of this. No kidding. So, ageless and fabulous, just like the Grand Canyon. Today for Wanderlust Wednesday, Barbie trades her dream house for the breathtaking landscape of the Grand Canyon.

[00:19:29] And it's like just Barbie doing one of those, those mid-air jumps that people do on social media. I think it looks fine. I think she looks good in the Grand Canyon. Well, yeah, you got to read the comments, man. They savage this post.

[00:19:42] I mean, people don't want to see Barbie. They want to see the mountains behind her and they're all faded out. But yeah, it just begs the question like these national park federal agencies, do they really

[00:19:51] need to use pop culture or political hot button issues to promote these things? It always ends up in disaster. So funny. I love it. I think it's hilarious. I hope that whoever posted this, that's running the National Park Service Instagram is just laughing at all these people.

[00:20:09] Well, that was one of the comments. One of the comments was like, I can't believe somebody got paid to post this. I don't know. I think people should just have fun. Let people have fun. Barbie is fun.

[00:20:20] I feel like a lot of those social media directors of entities like National Parks and others, they just seem like they're towing that fine line between promoting and almost trolling the audience and it makes some pretty good content. Yeah. This one got a lot of reaction.

[00:20:38] It has a bunch of comments and likes and stuff. So it's great. Next time I go to the Grand Canyon, Stumpf, I'm going to bring my Barbie dolls. Post some pictures. I'm pretty disturbed you have Barbie dolls, but you learned something new. We'll save that for another episode.

[00:20:56] Yeah. All right. So Stumpf, have you ever heard of anybody getting stuck on a gondola? I mean, I've heard people get stuck on ski lifts, but not really a gondola. No, not really. Yeah, I think you're right. I can't recall any stories.

[00:21:18] So there was a story this week. This is in Heavenly Mountain Resort. I'm not exactly sure. It's on the West Coast somewhere. Apparently there was a lady that was skiing. For whatever reason, she was a snowboarder.

[00:21:38] For whatever reason, she was on the top of the mountain right before closing time. She had said she wasn't feeling good. She didn't want to snowboard down the mountain. Doesn't really say the details on what happened, but somehow a worker had allowed her to get

[00:21:55] on the gondola to go down to the bottom so that she didn't have to ski. But it was right at five o'clock closing time. Apparently she went down in the gondola, not that far, only about two minutes. These West Coast resorts are bigger and they stopped the gondola.

[00:22:20] She started screaming. She's like, I'm still on the gondola. Nobody came. So she got stuck at five o'clock and the gondolas, I don't think, started running until eight o'clock the next morning. She was in there for 15 hours in the freezing cold weather. Holy moly. Which is crazy.

[00:22:37] Yeah, that's tough. That's a long, long time to be up there. I mean, it's not 100% exposed, but still. It's like, phew. Yeah, you're out of the wind. The chief operating officer had said that there was a breakdown in protocols and that

[00:22:54] they were doing an investigation to figure out what happened. But yeah, that's a little bit scary. I would assume that they would cycle through at least one time and have somebody checking to make sure that no one's in there. True. Yep, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

[00:23:11] Do you guys sweep the trains every night to make sure no one sneaks on? In a way, yeah. One of my duties at the end of the night during the busy season when the trains are outside

[00:23:22] is to check them all, mostly to make sure they've been put to bed properly by the crew, but also to see if anyone's hanging around or snooping around anything and we're going in the coaches at night. Haven't had anything like that.

[00:23:35] We've had a person try to spend the night in the station before and had to take care of that. But yeah, I do check the trains nightly. This time of year it's great because they park in the shop every night so they're sort of secured in there.

[00:23:50] But when they're outside, I have to give them a once over before I take off. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty sheer. Years ago I worked at a car rental place and we had protocols around checking all the buses before we put them to bed. So yeah.

[00:24:03] So anyway, all's well that ends well. She was a little traumatized but she's good to go. 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.

[00:24:23] So this is the part of the show where we do a dad joke. Normally I would be using my book that I got from my friends Lance and Camilla but we're going to switch it up and we're going to allow you to do the dad joke.

[00:24:35] Oh yeah, this is just a tribute to my uncle James. He passed away two weeks ago due to a heart attack. It was like complete shock. And he was the self-proclaimed funniest man alive. He was always just joyful and just full of laughter.

[00:24:52] And at the wake, he actually had sent a dad joke to one of his granddaughters just before he passed. So he left behind this one final dad joke from Uncle James. So when you found that out, you were like, oh, immediately I have to do the dad joke

[00:25:13] on the show. Oh hell yeah. This is like the perfect sending off for Uncle James. So here it is. Why did the cell phone go to the dentist? I give up. Because it had a Bluetooth. All right, well Uncle James.

[00:25:35] We should have had him on the show before he passed. He would have been perfect. I know, no kidding. So there it is. Yeah, a little dedication to my late uncle. All right, well thoughts and prayers with your family. I hope that they're out there. Doing well, Stomp.

[00:25:51] Sounds like a great guy. Appreciate it. Oh, he was. He was tremendous. Miss him dearly. And now a word from our sponsor. Fieldstone Kombucha. 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.

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[00:27:09] straight to your door. Fieldstone Kombucha Co.com. Hey, what's that sound? It must be time for the pop culture segment with Mike and Stomp. All right, so now this is the part of the show where we talk a little bit of pop culture.

[00:27:54] We've got a film recommendation from our friend Stosh who he's been on the show. He hosts the Catskills podcast, so we'll put a link to his show. He recommends a movie called Safe and Found which covers search and rescue.

[00:28:11] That's right, so they use three stories to highlight search and rescue and it was a documentary that premiered with a free screening last weekend at Haywood Community College. The film's preventative search and rescue message is taught through these three stories

[00:28:29] and their first hand accounts of trials and tribulations in the wilderness. The real life scenarios center on the top three situations hikers find themselves in, bad preparation, bad choices and bad luck. So check it out, it's pretty decent and thank you Stosh for the tip.

[00:28:48] I haven't watched this yet, is there a particular location where it's focused on? I haven't watched it either, I'm just passing on the info. I believe it's a lengthier documentary too, so it's not like a quick YouTube video.

[00:29:05] I'll check it out tonight and then we don't have anything else for pop culture snop. I will tell you I've got back into video games. Really? Yeah, my wife's not happy but I got Hogwarts Legacy, the Harry Potter thing and she's just like what's going on down here?

[00:29:20] I'm in my man cave. That's hilarious. Where'd Mike go? It's so confusing, there's so many buttons, I'm like I just want to play Super Mario Brothers but I've been spending about 45 minutes because all I'm doing is just screwing

[00:29:33] around on my phone otherwise so I was like I might as well just do video games. So I spend about 45 minutes every night going through, they have these quests and you have to learn to cast these spells and you run around the castle and stuff.

[00:29:46] My wife thinks it's a midlife crisis. Games are fun. It is. My wife, Mrs. Stomp and I play Beach Buggy on our old PlayStation and I still have my Steam account. Steam's fantastic, great stuff out there but it's a matter of finding the time. It's like oh man.

[00:30:06] Yeah, I don't know how you would sit down and do this for like five, six hours like some of these young folks do but yeah my wife's not approving so I just said you need to let me have some fun, Mrs. Mike. Yeah, that's cool.

[00:30:18] And the other thing about these games these days, I used to be into it too but now it's so stressful. I get so amped up and like I can't play this game. I'm just gonna get freaked out.

[00:30:27] Like at that time of my life where I'm trying to minimize my stress. Yeah, I am noticing it's starting to get a little stressful so I may toss the thing and just switch over to something easier but anyway, anybody who plays Hogwarts Legacy and they

[00:30:41] want to send me a tip, that'd be great. That's funny. All right. All right, so get the old plugs coming. We have stickers available at Ski Fanatics off of exit 28 in Campton, New Hampshire or at Spinner's Pizza Pala in Andover just off Dascom Road in Massachusetts.

[00:31:00] If anybody's interested, we do offer advertising opportunities for the podcast if you want to get your thing plugged on the show and we have our first sponsor here, Vaucluse Gear. Does your backpack not provide enough ventilation? Does your back sweat too much when backpacking?

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[00:32:29] slasher to enjoy a $5 discount and let them know that Mike and Stomp sent you. Very good. I like my Vaucluse, so recommend it. Yeah, me too. Oh yeah, mine is attached to my ultralight for jogging and stuff like that. Excellent stuff. Hey, hold my beer.

[00:32:53] It's time to find out what Mike and Stomp are drinking on this week's beer talk. Great. So this is the part of the show where we talk about what beer we're drinking. Andy, you relaxing?

[00:33:09] You're not driving a train tonight, so do you have anything you want to share? I'm very much a square and I don't drink, but I do have a main route going right now, which is about as close as I'll get to drinking. You wouldn't be surprised.

[00:33:25] I would say more than half our guests are not drinkers, so that's pretty common. I thought I was in a small minority. No, a lot of people, they don't drink. I spent a long time away from it, but now my wife's yelling at me over video games,

[00:33:41] so I need a beer to calm it down. It's called A Little Rain by Small Change Brewing. I don't know where they're located, Stomp. Huh, Small Change. It's an American pale ale, so it's not bad. It's a little smoother than what I've been drinking lately.

[00:34:02] Mrs. Stomp grabbed me a classic. Sorry, guys, nothing new tonight, but it's a Pulp Daddy from Greater Good, Imperial Brewing Company, 8%, Imperial IPA. It's a hazy, so yeah, nothing new on the IPA front tonight, but thank you, Mrs. Stomp, much appreciated. Thank you for not yelling at Stomp.

[00:34:20] Appreciate it. Exactly, yeah. I knew we should have gone left back there. Stomp, 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? Totally. We got this. But I just blew out my hip.

[00:34:44] Fell down that gully with my 40-year-old microspikes. 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, we got no cell connection, and we can't feel our fingers,

[00:34:58] 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. What a chump. This is the last time I hike with you.

[00:35:10] Ha! Whatever, Mr. Do-You-Know-Me-I-Have-A-Podcast. Whatever. Let's find out what Mike and Stomp have been hiking. Alright, Stomp, this is the part of the show where we talk about recent hikes. So you haven't gone out and done anything, but you had an adventure on your snowmobile this weekend.

[00:35:33] Do you want to talk about it? Oh, yeah. I was having a strong run without any incidents, and then I took out a tour of six sleds. Three of them had young children on the back of the sleds, and then there was a couple on one sled,

[00:35:47] and then two others, and whatever. I think that math adds up. But we were at Little Deception Pond on Cherry Mountain Road. We were at a stop, and we were just taking pictures, and when it was time to go, I left, and a couple sleds left behind me,

[00:36:05] and then sure enough, about a quarter mile down the road, a snowmobile behind us zipped up to us fast and got my attention. And I came back, and literally from the start of where this one person on my tour started

[00:36:21] to 10 feet after, he had crashed into a tree. And he went from, he completely, I guess, people behind him saw what happened. He caught a rut, literally at the start when he started to move, freaked out, whiskey throttled it, as they say,

[00:36:37] and just hit a tree at maximum velocity, and broke his leg, broke his tibia. I was assuming, I mean, holy moly. It was pretty wild, Mike. I mean, I've had crashes and things. I've had broken noses, I've had dislocated wrists, but this was a whole other level.

[00:36:56] And I'm still trying to process my decisions and things like that. We don't have to get super deep into it, but ultimately, you can imagine, there's two or three sleds a quarter mile up ahead. There are people behind. The kids were ahead, so you're trying

[00:37:13] to manage all these people that are somewhat dislocated from each other. You've got somebody on the ground. The spouse was fine. There was no cell service, so yeah, it was wild. But ultimately we got him out. It was about four miles, and I made the call

[00:37:29] to get him on the back of my sled, as opposed to calling 911, which would have taken a couple hours. I don't know, but they were little kids. We just couldn't really do that. And he was alert and oriented. You couldn't really 100% screen him for head injury or spinal,

[00:37:46] but he was moving his head and moving his arms. Yeah, man, heavy duty. Go ahead, you had a question? So then did you have to go over Jefferson Notch Road to get back? No, so Cherry Mountain Road, which is on the eastern side

[00:38:01] of Mount Martha and Owls Head, is a low elevation. It's probably maybe six miles in length total. So from where we were, it was maybe three to four miles to get back to Route 302. And then from there he just jumped into his spouse's car, and they drove off

[00:38:18] to I think one of the local hospitals. I don't want to reveal that. Did you guys just get the sled at some later point? Yeah, it was absolutely totaled. So we had to drag it out. Yeah, it was a mess. But one thing,

[00:38:33] I approached guiding up until this weekend with sort of a hiker's mentality. And I would pack as if I was ready or prepared to say make a splint out of like ace wrap or make a tourniquet out of fabric and a stick and whatever else.

[00:38:51] But after this weekend, I decided to harden all those things. So I purchased legit like rhino tourniquets, real slings and all that stuff. Because it's just a matter of time before something like that happens where somebody needs like legit care as opposed to...

[00:39:11] You're not going to get the lower leg injuries necessarily like you do in hiking. You're going to get concussions and shoulders and arms. You'll get some of those injuries where people are pinned against a tree. Oh yeah, or a tree has ruptured somebody's femoral artery.

[00:39:28] I mean, it's not a joke. So it was sort of... I guess it was a sort of a... I don't want to say it's a wake-up call. I knew that that was a possibility. But I was compelled to really up my gear

[00:39:41] just to make it easier on me should that happen. I don't think it's the place for the hiker approach to get financial injuries, that's for sure. So anyway, all's well that ends well. Do you test out the users

[00:39:55] to say like, okay, go drive up and down the road so we can see if you're... I guess you probably... We do that together as a group and you know how people are... Before we even go, I interview them and screen them like,

[00:40:10] have you ridden? I'm going to place you here. I'm going to place you there. And within the first five minutes, you can tell if somebody is fairly adept at it or not. And you can change things up as you go.

[00:40:22] But honestly, it was the end of the tour. We had been out for two hours already and this one individual was a great rider. He was fine. The reflexes took over and he just flew off the trail. Hit a tree. Are those the throttles?

[00:40:40] Are they the thumb throttles? It's been years since I've driven those things. Yeah, absolutely. And you're supposed to only use your thumb because if you're manhandling it with your entire hand, you're going to get in trouble for sure. Especially when you're taking a left turn.

[00:40:54] It's on the right, so you're taking a left turn and inevitably people get into trouble and they panic and they press the whole thing and end up in the river or wherever. Nice job, Sompel. I had a much better day than you did on Saturday,

[00:41:10] I'll tell you that. Tell us about it. I saw some pics. I hiked Madison and Adams. Andy, have you been up above the clouds this week? Yeah. This week's been unbelievable, right? Just a crazy string of days with an undercast. It's just one of the longest

[00:41:32] chains of days I can remember where it's been like that. I just saw some pictures of somebody that was out today or yesterday. We had a group of... Originally me and my friend Steve were going to hike the Wildcats and then we heard back from Nick,

[00:41:48] our friend Nick, and he said he was going to hike Madison and Adams with a friend. So I just offered to Steve, Steve immediately was like, yeah, let's bail on Wildcats and just go to the Prezzy. We didn't know.

[00:42:04] We were kind of like, yeah, maybe we'll get some views, we'll get some peaks, so it was pretty uneventful to get up Valley Way. A lot of people in the parking lot, I saw like five people I knew. There was a couple of different groups,

[00:42:18] but there was Littlefoot and her grandparents were heading up the Valley Way so we saw... Wherever we went, we kept seeing people we knew, so that was fun, but it also wasn't super crowded. It was just different groups. But we got to Madison Springs and the clouds

[00:42:36] were just burning off and we got to the hut. That's so great. I looked around, I was like, it's happening. There's going to be good views here, but I didn't realize how insane the undercast was because you can't really tell when you're at that hut.

[00:42:52] But we got up halfway up Madison and I looked behind me and there was a white rainbow Wow. which I'd never seen before, so I got some shots of the... a white rainbow and then Mount Washington looked like just a little island surrounded by the clouds

[00:43:12] and luckily one of the guys we hiked with, Nick, is a photographer so he had his nice camera so he got a bunch of really cool shots. Epic. And Madison was amazing and then we got back down to the hut Littlefoot was coming up

[00:43:28] so her and her crew were heading up to Madison and then we decided to go up Star Lake which wasn't broken out so we got a little bit over by Star Lake and then we were mostly just staying on top of the crust but we started sinking in

[00:43:44] so we put snowshoes on and then made our way across the lower snow field on Star Lake and that trail, I don't know, Stomp, if you've been on there in the winter, but it's nice but it's like you're going up

[00:43:58] but you're going at an angle so you're kind of like falling down the whole time so it's a little exposed so it's not the most comfortable trail Yeah, that's a challenging trail How'd you do at the top there where you got to do those scrambles?

[00:44:12] So Steve was leading I was sweeping and Steve was like going over to the left to try to find an approach because the only way up that I was looking at was like a chimney that didn't look safe at all but I ended up just going up it

[00:44:28] and then Steve and Nick and Mike went around and I think they found the easier spot but it was good it was a little chilly when we got on Adams then we went back down, airline saw a bunch of people coming up but like the views

[00:44:42] were just insane Yeah, incredible pictures So that brings you to what on your winter 48 list? Well I'd already done all those so I'm at 43 so I've got 5 more to go Oh, okay Alright I'm not too worried about it, I'll get it either later in February or in March

[00:45:02] I'll finish up Oh, should we tell the listeners the news about the dinner? AMC dinner? Oh sure, yeah Yeah, super cool We were invited to have a table at the AMC Awards this spring so we'll be kicking around and here's the funny thing about this

[00:45:22] I've got to get both of you guys your opinion on this I got the email and immediately I'm like, oh yeah let me check with Mike and see what happens and then I'm talking with Mike and Mike's like, yeah that's great

[00:45:36] and then all of a sudden I realize it's my wedding anniversary So I asked Mrs. Stomp if it's I presented it like, well I can't really do this it's our anniversary and then she wrote back and said, oh, I don't mind What anniversary would it be?

[00:45:52] Yeah, wedding anniversary For a year, I don't know how many years Oh my goodness, you had to ask 11? Yeah, 11 You can just guess I'd say it was the 10th, maybe not a good move but 11th? Yeah, it's not a milestone And you presented it really well

[00:46:10] you gave her the first right of refusal so I think that was Yeah, there you go and I meant that right I was like, well Mike's got it covered He's the popular one anyway I wonder though is it is the dinner on a weekday

[00:46:28] or is it a weeknight? Or weekend? That would be a Saturday night, I think if I remember correctly I can pull it up if you want It's in April so it's April 20th Saturday, April 20th Yeah, so pencil it in people

[00:46:50] It's time for Slasher's Notable Hike of the Week 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 Alright Stomp, so this is the part of the show

[00:47:10] where we do the Notable listener hikes and then Andy, you're going to be up soon Alright Yeah, awesome So if you want to tag Slasher on your adventure to be considered for Slasher's Hike of the Week, do so and hopefully we will

[00:47:26] get to you. Some weeks we're floored and we just don't have enough time to put them all in but this week we have four So Littlefoot, you just mentioned, finished her third round of New Hampshire 48 on Madison & Adams Pretty amazing, I didn't know that was her third

[00:47:42] round. Holy moly What a machine Rob MCC85 did North and South Kinsman and that was 11-12 out of the Winter 48 Nice work Veterans on the 48 tagged us, they had a trip out to, and I gotta hand it to them, this is not an easy trip

[00:48:04] They did Mount Willie from the Willie side lower down, not from Tauman Field so they did Mount & Back, they did all the ladders That's a hell of a trail Hell of a trail So that's intense and then our man Dave, Shits in the Woods did Mount Wolf

[00:48:24] and this was 99 out of 104 New Hampshire Highest 100 I read the review and that's pretty intense It's funny, I go to work up over Lost River and I always look at that trail to see if it's broken out and that's the Kinsman Ridge Trail

[00:48:44] so if you start at Lost River Beaver Brook Pond you can go several miles in to get to Mount Wolf and sure enough I saw somebody broke it out on the way back from work later one day and I'm assuming

[00:48:58] it was him, but that's a hell of a trip Yeah, nobody goes out there He broke trail, yeah, nobody So, I don't know Mike Immediately no, he doesn't get it Veterans on the 48 gets it from Mount Willie So Andy, I'm not being mean, but we know Dave

[00:49:16] and we are now never going to give him the award because we think it's funny I don't know, yeah, I'm on the fence but I guess you're right Mike No, stay strong Stomp Okay Will do He'll probably keep putting in for it though

[00:49:32] He will, he will, he's got to keep going That might be the one way he'd win if he stopped sending him in, but we won't tell him Yeah, yeah, yeah It's time for Slashers Guest of the Week Very cool, very cool Alright Andy, so this is your segment

[00:50:16] So thanks for joining us again So, again for the listeners, so Andy is the train master of the Mount Washington Cog Railway So what does that entail? I'm assuming you're in charge of all the operations of the train and track system for the railway

[00:50:30] It's like an operations manager so I have oversight of the train crews, the train movements, safety rule adherence, scheduling and then got to work in between departments with the shop to coordinate and make sure we have enough trains available, substitutions So it's like a day-to-day

[00:50:50] operations manager, I work pretty close with the general manager to make sure things are running smoothly and to interface between departments to get that done, which there's quite a bit to do in all times of the year busy season, we see close to 2,000

[00:51:06] people a day on a busy day and then this time of year we're not seeing ridership like that but there's a lot of other things to contend with weather-wise that keep us busy for sure

[00:51:18] Can you talk a little bit about your early life? Are you a New Hampshire resident or were you always sort of an outdoor person? I hate to admit it but I'm actually a transplanted masshole Alright, I'll go with you Right? Me too. I grew up

[00:51:34] in Massachusetts but coming up here my dad was instrumental in kind of fostering my love for the outdoors because our summer vacations were frequently coming up to the White Mountains, camping and exploring the wild spaces up here so I kind of got that bug early and I think

[00:51:56] through repeated visits to this area I had this idea in the back of my mind that I always wanted to relocate and live there one day but I didn't know if I could really make it happen, didn't know if the time was right so I didn't wind up

[00:52:10] actually putting that through and actualizing that until 2015 when I actually kind of reset my whole life to come work at the Cog and that was going to be the catalyst for me moving up to the White Mountains was going to be actually to apply and get

[00:52:28] my foot in the door working as a brakeman at the Cog Railway and came from a pretty different background. I was working as the head of security of a couple different music venues in the Boston area and I was one of those trained kids

[00:52:44] that grew up with a train affinity from a young age, just being fascinated by them so I think the marrying of trains with the White Mountains and putting that all together just really appealed to me so when I finally pulled that trigger and made the move

[00:52:58] I've been so happy to actually be able to live the dream and have this beautiful natural playground in my backyard. Wow, so you moved up a little less than 10 years ago, basically got your foot in the door and worked your way up? Yeah, I started just our

[00:53:18] brakeman are kind of a combination between a safety person on the coach and a conductor, they will interface with the guests and they're also a tour guy element as well where there'll be a narrative that goes on on the trip and that's what I started

[00:53:32] doing and I always wanted to learn a little more as I went, pick up what I could and learn from the guys that have been there and I just kind of started integrating different job duties and titles and eventually wound up working into the role that I have

[00:53:48] today. Wow, and then it sounds like you do a fair amount of hiking as well in the area? Yeah, I like to, that's the number one thing I like to do when I have off time, I like going out solo, my girlfriend

[00:54:02] and I get out and do a lot. She works for the state at the Summit so we actually met through the railway which is kind of a nice cheesy Mount Washington love story and she's into hiking as well so we like to get out together and

[00:54:18] I'm a big fan of trails like the Terrifying 25, that's one I'm working on right now, that list to try to hit all of those. Now let me ask you about the Terrifying 25 because you're in a unique situation so the rules on the Terrifying 25, like you could in

[00:54:34] theory take the cog up and then hike down Spinks, do you do that or do you choose to start from the lower trailheads for all of them? I haven't done that yet, I like to start natural, you know, I did most probably my favorite one that

[00:54:52] I've done where I got close to the train was when I did Great Gulf and I come up and of course see the train passing the Gulfside Trail there and I'm thinking well I could I'm done with the trail now, I could jump on the

[00:55:06] train and ride to the Summit but because I've done the portion of the trail I need, I've done Washington enough times now that I don't need that to count for anything so I thought about it and said no, I'm going to complete the hike and use my own

[00:55:20] two legs to get me there. The one thing I did when I did a bushwhack of Burt's Ravine, I used the train to get me up and then I actually wound up not super proud of this now looking back on it because I wound up

[00:55:34] bushwhacking the Alpine Zone in shoulder season-ish conditions it wasn't adequate snow coverage but I bushwhacked down into Burt's Ravine and then out through Claybrook and back to the Cog and that I did take the train up to get the approach to that

[00:55:50] but otherwise yeah I like to get myself in and out. What's it like inside Burt Ravine? I'm always curious about that. Do you think a lot of people travel in there or is it pretty, it must be pretty sparse? I'm thinking it's one of the sparsest

[00:56:04] I mean it's a bushwhack it's pretty gnarly because of the avalanche that happened through there a little over ten years ago I think it was and the trees are just strewn in such a way that it's a tightly woven sort of under

[00:56:19] canopy that you have to work over, under around and through really wild down there lots of waterfalls lots of rugged terrain destroyed a pair of boots on that bushwhack that just they were reasonable going into it and they were totally trashed coming out it was an interesting perspective

[00:56:39] being down there at the very bottom of the ravine and seeing it was in 2017 I did it so there was a new washout scar that had formed from the big October Halloween flooding rainstorm in 2017 that we had there I think that's a new slide that people even ski

[00:56:59] now it sort of comes from up around the just below the Jacobs Ladder halfway house area of the cog and goes down into Burt's pretty narrow but skiable scar that I guess people do but yeah I didn't see a soul down there

[00:57:15] just saw a couple of ski poles because people will ski it but it was gorgeous to be down in there and have kind of that unique perspective of being in a ravine that no one really travels through. Yeah Stomp you should put that on your

[00:57:31] list for the listeners if you're not sure what we're talking about so Burt ravine is essentially it's the ravine that is between the cog and the jewel trail so there is a couple sections like if you're hiking down the cog like there is

[00:57:45] one no slip zone where you don't want to go you don't want to slip because you will fall into that ravine but in general it's a pretty thick area but it sounds like there's some slides that have openings so that's pretty interesting that you've gone in there

[00:57:59] it makes sense like it's an area that you're around a lot so great so as you've worked your way up into this train master position can you I mean I've done a couple of segments about the early history of the Mount Washington Cog Railway

[00:58:17] can you talk a little bit about your knowledge of the early history so I can tell the listeners so the construction began in 1866 it was completed there was a significant completion up to Jacob's Ladder in 1868 and then full completion in 1869 up to the summit the person that

[00:58:39] was the driving force behind the cog railway is Sylvester Marsh who was quite a character I think he was a Massachusetts native that went between Chicago and New Hampshire and he's got an interesting story but how much of a historian are you of the cog

[00:58:55] I like to dive pretty deep into it so I love history I love railroad history in particular and the cog has such an interesting story because of Marsh and like you said quite a character one that was very highly doubted

[00:59:11] when he came up with this whole idea for the railway he actually was a New Hampshire native born in Campton in 1883 and he wound up moving to Boston after a while when he was 19 he moved to Boston he had a farming upbringing and he wound up

[00:59:29] accumulating a fair amount of wealth in his life through inventions and patents that he had issued for things like a grain dryer and he worked in the meat packing provisions industry as well that led him out to Chicago

[00:59:43] I think he made the bulk of his money out there in the Chicago area I think he was like one of the early founders I think he was in Chicago when there was only like maybe a couple hundred people living out there right

[00:59:55] yeah he was you know in the infancy of that you know sort of booming into become the city that it would be he was a well known and respected kind of business mogul out there in its early days you know kind of started as a big

[01:00:09] fish in what was a small pond and then quickly exploded yeah it's interesting I think the other thing that I've read about him is that he invented some form of the coffee percolator yeah I did see something about that he had quite a few inventions that were

[01:00:27] sort of totally unrelated to the railway and that's what a lot of people don't realize they hear about the marsh story and they hear about the cog and they assume here's a railroad man or here's a you know a person that was you know a railway executive or

[01:00:41] something like that and he really had nothing to do with rail or rail travel prior to this whole cog development and his inventions were in other arenas I think he was like a cattle baron or something out there but he I guess the

[01:00:57] you were telling us before we recorded the show that we had our dates a little bit off but he the motivation behind the railway was he had done a hike up Mount Washington in 1857 and he had gotten I think lost a little bit but did make

[01:01:15] his way up to the summit right he did yeah the hike was in August of 1857 and he wasn't alone he was with his pastor from the Boston area Augustus Thompson and they ascended I believe via the Crawford Path but I could be wrong on that

[01:01:35] there's sketchy information about his route that he took but he was going up and the conditions deteriorated rapidly as they often do and found freezing rain high winds poor visibility and at one point they were really questioning

[01:01:51] whether or not they were going to be able to make it and rather than heed all intelligent decision making and turn back they were already above treeline at this point so they figured pressing on would be best as he knew he could

[01:02:05] seek some form of shelter should they reach the summit with the tip top house being there but narrowly made it with their lives he nearly became another early statistic on the mountain in terms of the extensive fatality list there wow and that do you think

[01:02:23] that we don't know for certain but do you think that that motivated him to start his sort of obsession with the mountain and the idea around building the cog railway yeah there was a quote that's attributed to him when they did finally get there

[01:02:37] and got to safety and spent that night at the tip top house that there's got to be some easier and safety method of ascension of the mountain and he kind of being a business man he saw the potential in sort of having a tourist attraction that could reach

[01:02:55] safely the highest peak in New England and there was sort of that burgeoning tourism economy in the white mountains even at that time with folks coming up from the cities looking for an escape from what was becoming a more cramped and industrial way of life so

[01:03:13] yeah yeah there was a lot of grand hotels that were popping up and a lot of tourism so he had gone to the state about a year later and had gotten skeptical approval I think from the state legislature around like okay you can get the permit to

[01:03:29] to build this so I'm assuming some way he was able to convince the state to give him the access to that land and purchase the I guess the easement to build the cog railway but I think there was a lot of skepticism about whether he could

[01:03:43] actually make it happen right? Absolutely yeah the whole remark that was made was that Marsh may as well build a railway to the moon so sometimes the sort of half joking moniker that we bear is the railway to the moon harkening back to that

[01:03:59] they called him crazy Marsh in the local newspapers of the time and locals just discussing the notion I've never been attempted anywhere in the world mountain climbing railway so the whole idea was kind of foreign and kind of crazy to most that would hear about it

[01:04:15] and I guess that the granting of the charter that the state did was on the grounds of the phrase was what harm could be done either he'll succeed and the benefits are guaranteed it will be a boost to the tourism economy or he'll fail

[01:04:31] and he'll be out only his own money because he was going to put forth bankroll his own operation to get it started with $5,000 of his own funds which you know fair amount of money back then yeah and he did funded himself primarily he did funded himself

[01:04:47] at least in the beginning but there was some delays so he started I mean he got the approval in 1858 and I don't think that they did they not start construction I don't think until five or six years later right yeah they paused for the civil war and some

[01:05:03] other delays scouting around and securing land and so forth and of course the civil war breaking out put things on quite the whole so nothing really got moving truly until May of 1866 got it yeah then he pretty rapidly was able to build out the tracks

[01:05:21] the technology behind a cog railway can you explain exactly what that is so the a cog railway is specifically designed for climbing but can you explain the technology behind that sure so typically on a mainline railway you have two rails

[01:05:37] on the outside and the wheels of the train are driven to friction drive essentially off of those rails on a cog railway all the drive is through a gear in the center going into a you could think of it as a third rail but it's really

[01:05:51] it's called a rack and it's mounted right down the middle of the tracks and it's those gears those two gears or those pinions that are driven interlock with spools in the rack to propel the train forward and up and it works great for climbing a grade

[01:06:05] it had been used in other applications prior to Marsh's design primarily in mining and things like that and his was to be the first application of that technology to actually climb a mountain there had been funiculars that existed before which would be like a cable

[01:06:19] driven railway that would wind and pull something up and he did explore the feasibility of that from Mount Washington and discovered that there was too great of an elevation change, too many changing angles he'd have to have several different cable

[01:06:33] lines and things like this and that's when he went to the design of the propelled gear driven trains. And then the engines are tilted somewhat upward so that when you do the climb they're more level to the plane that they're ascending correct? Correct

[01:06:51] Our average grade is right around 25% so on our steam locomotives we match that pitch on the boiler so that these are fire tube boilers and you're ensuring that there's proper water coverage across that tube bundle inside as long as the crew is maintaining

[01:07:07] the right water level relative to the portion of the track they're at our diesel locomotives have the use of a John Deere engine that has primarily been used as a gen set application in marine types of applications so it's well suited to operate on a grade as a

[01:07:27] real deep oil pickup in the oil pan and it's a motor that can withstand changing of pitches and things like this because of its primary application so it's actually in a way it's a reduction way to put it but it is a boat engine essentially

[01:07:43] in a train locomotive. Wow, and then he was able to build up to Jacob's Ladder in 1868 and then he needed another year to get full completion how many trains did he have running when he got to the summit to start with? Just one in the very early going

[01:08:01] and that was the original locomotive Old Pepper Sass which we still have on display at the base as kind of a reminder of the history and it's a very awkward looking locomotive. It has no enclosed cab, a vertical boiler that's mounted on these trunnions

[01:08:15] so it could actually swivel as it went up the mountain and self-correct it on the grade and that was a wood fired locomotive and it had a top speed of a whole one and a half miles an hour so it was a slow plodding to actually get up

[01:08:31] but it was a wild ride. The earliest cars were completely open people were exposed to the elements and you know very much a highly seasonal operation in those days. What do you think the environment was for the people working on the tracks to build it? Do you have

[01:08:49] any sense of, I'm assuming they lived close to the station and probably had to deal with a lot of rough weather but is there any sort of history that's tracked around that I guess the experience that those construction people went through? Yeah there's

[01:09:07] a little. There's not a lot of documentation of direct stories but there's understandings and some compiled history on it. There was a lot of lodging. The Cogger Railway actually has a long standing history of lodging at the base for workers that sort of began

[01:09:21] with that initial construction crew and really that lasted until the mid 2000's where a lot of the workers were actually living on base but those early workers I mean there's a lot of stories out there from that period sort of contemporary to that would have been the

[01:09:39] continental railroad being completed in the western part of the country but railroad workers it was not a glorified job. It was hard, dirty often dangerous work and now you're taking all the dangers and the hard laborious tasks that come with any railroad work and now you're saying okay

[01:09:59] now you're going to build a railway on the side of a mountain that bears the world's worst weather and now you have to contend with that on top of all the other issues that come with that form of really trying labor. Yeah but you do have

[01:10:13] to imagine too like in that period of American history the amount of real building that was going on even though the environment's difficult and the work's hard like the labor population that had expertise in that area was probably pretty good. Yeah, I mean it was

[01:10:33] much more of a physical workforce then and there's an understanding that a lot of the initial workers were returning veterans from the northern states of the Civil War so they were coming back from the war if they weren't wounded or compromised in any

[01:10:47] way some of them did be looking for work and this would be something to get them you know sort of guaranteed work that had a clear goal and a clear vision in mind that someone could sign up for but there are figures suggesting that there were up to 300

[01:11:03] laborers engaged at a time. I think that might be a bit inflated but there was certainly the between clearing the way and actually building our track is entirely trestle based so it's basically like one big bridge ascending the mountain and the height off the ground varies

[01:11:19] depending on the terrain so different than a traditional railway they would be set right on the ground so these guys are not only building a railway but they're building basically a big trestle all the way up the mountain. Yeah and I think the

[01:11:35] weather conditions and things like that from a preventative maintenance perspective like early on the concerns around like oil freezing and fuel and things like that I would imagine they could only run it like you said it's seasonal so I would imagine

[01:11:51] by like the fall they would have to just shut it down completely right? Yeah it was pretty much a June to September operation in those days and that actually persisted for quite a while our operating season was pretty much May to October or November until

[01:12:07] just a few years ago when we started exploring partial winter operations but yeah in those early days it was strictly a summer operation for sure. Yeah and we'll talk about all the activities and stuff because there's a lot that

[01:12:21] goes on especially in the winter like I've been over I've been you know at the COC a bunch of times almost every winter I do at least one trip down the COG from a hiking perspective but just going back to the technology to start with so you

[01:12:35] for most of the life of the railway you utilized you know non-diesel trains but you have you have cut over in the last like what is it like the last 10 years or so you've transitioned to diesel trains mostly? Yeah the first viable diesel was built in 2008

[01:12:54] and we now have a fleet of seven of those we do maintain a couple of steam engines to kind of keep that heritage alive but you know 90% of the trips or if not more that are going up the mountain are diesel powered now with that larger diesel fleet.

[01:13:08] Yeah and I do like like I like in the morning a lot in the area and you do see usually the first train in the morning the steam trains that come up like it's just sort of like okay the Mount Washington Valley is like waking up

[01:13:22] it's pretty good but do you just run that train like one time and then the rest of it's diesel or does that train go up and down all day like the other ones? No it's more of a finite schedule so it'll go twice a day usually

[01:13:36] the very first and the very last hours of the operation and during a shorter season as well so it doesn't get rolled out until the Memorial Day weekend and then it gets put away Columbus Day weekend so it's running a more condensed portion of the season

[01:13:52] and that helps us out with freezing temperatures and considerations for the water and so forth that it has to take on and just the twice a day whereas the diesels are going every hour on the hour. And the

[01:14:08] correct me if I'm wrong I'm trying to remember like you push the passenger cars up is that correct? Yes that's correct it's another way they're pretty different from a traditional railway so the engine is behind the coach and the coach in the railway industry is being shoved ahead

[01:14:26] and the reason for that is two fold number one if you had the engine pulling that coach car you'd have tremendous stress on the coupling system on that grade and also for safety with that in mind if you have the heavier engine behind the lighter coach

[01:14:44] you have more safety fail safes essentially so the coaches have their own brakes and by not being connected together because while they're touching they're not hitched together in any way the engine because the whole track is on a grade the engine just sits behind that

[01:14:58] coach and pushes it up the whole time then when they come down the coach rests on the engine with the diesels and it does the braking through the hydraulic system or in the case of the steam you're actually adding brake in the coach there's a crew member

[01:15:12] on board the brakeman actually manually brakes that coach all the way down the mountain if you weren't doing anything in that coach the over speed would get to be really intolerable so the engine only has certain amount of hold back power with our heavier

[01:15:26] coaches that we run today and are the brakes like we would think of as traditional like brake pads or is it all based on the cog technology it's a hybrid so it is brake pads on a drum for these

[01:15:40] manual brake coaches the ones that would be on the steam trips and the axle that's mounted on is adjacent to the gear so essentially you're braking on that same axle where the gear is mounted so there wouldn't be any friction braking force going on the

[01:15:54] wheel per say just like the wheel is not driving so you're braking just adjacent to that drive gear and stopping that whole shaft from turning or slowing the turning of that shaft and then all the diesels in our newer coaches do have an air

[01:16:06] brake set up that can pretty much lock and hold very quickly anywhere on the mountain and those are quite similar to what you would see on a mainline train or even on like a tractor trailer with the air cans. Awesome and for people

[01:16:22] that want to purchase tickets so essentially you can buy tickets to go up to Mt. Washington you can do winter up to, do you go to the summit in winter or you go just to Jacobs Ladder right? We go just a little

[01:16:34] below Jacobs we have an area called Womback Station. Yeah Womback which is about 4000 feet roughly on the side of the mountain we've kind of built a nice destination there where there are level platforms that you can enjoy the views from, there are warming huts

[01:16:50] a little fire pit. Yeah there's a fire pit it's a cool and then you can also like it's very entertaining because you can see all the hikers like doing the sort of the death march at the finish of their hike and then you can see

[01:17:02] all the skiers you know going up and going down and it's a lot going on in that area but if you're interested in the COG essentially you can buy tickets online or you can go to, you can drive right up go to Marshfield, Bay Station it's not

[01:17:16] always guaranteed that you're going to have available tickets you sell out I'm assuming in certain days but you can go there and then when you do take the COG there's a in the coach there's somebody that will give you sort of like a informational

[01:17:32] tour and do a little bit of entertainment when you're riding up. Yes we like to have that as one of the driving aspects of the experience and there there's a crew member that will give a narration that's a little different every time each crew member

[01:17:48] has their own approach so if you do visit more than once it won't necessarily be the same spiel that's you know it's certainly not a script everyone comes up with their own approach based on a loose outline and they'll

[01:18:00] do everything from a little bit of history to a little bit of the mechanical and then to a little bit of the natural elements that are going on and what you can see in flora there's it's basically an individualized approach that can change based

[01:18:14] on the weather and what experience is going on that day. Yeah and you get a huge mix of people I'm assuming you'll get like you know locals that want to go up there and then you get a lot of tourists but it really is great it gives

[01:18:26] you it's sort of like the same thing as the auto road it gives people and I know we're hikers and we're like you know we're purists and we want people to like you know we don't want anything on our mountains but like

[01:18:36] there's a lot going on Mount Washington we can give access to like other people on Mount Washington but it's great that they you can get people up there and I think in the early days you know right before right as it was

[01:18:49] opening too it was like it gave people more access and I do think people need to think from the perspective of there was a population of activists in the late 1800s early 1900s that were responsible for protecting these mountains that we love and I think I would

[01:19:07] guarantee you that a lot of the people that were involved in protecting these mountains it wasn't all just hikers and outdoors people it was people that had gone up on the cog or the auto road and realized like just how majestic this is so I do think that

[01:19:19] you know hikers are there's a lot of purist hikers but I do think that there's a lot of benefit for giving people access that wouldn't otherwise be able to hike up correct yeah the accessibility is a big thing because not everyone

[01:19:32] is necessarily able to hike like you said it'll give people an exposure to an alpine zone that they couldn't normally experience first hand and as long as they respectfully conduct themselves while they're there and learn about it it's a great

[01:19:46] window that can be open to folks that wouldn't have that access and you know I agree I don't want to see unchecked development in the mountains Mount Washington has this history associated with it and if you know there's one peak that is sort of ultra developed

[01:20:02] in a sense that Mount Washington is with a road and a large summit building and a railway and it's there and the other peaks are kept wild then that's something that I think is acceptable you know as long as we're not spreading this unchecked development

[01:20:20] across the entire national forest which I mean you couldn't build this railway today if it was an operation that was just being conceived of now and that's a good thing it gives that chance to experience it to those that wouldn't have it but

[01:20:34] you don't want this everywhere you don't want this on every single peak in the White Mountains for sure. Yeah and I would say as a hiker so the hikers that are listening to this I think definitely I would recommend if you want to climb Mount Washington

[01:20:48] especially if you want to do it in a way that's you know it's never going to be safe but I think one of the safer routes in my opinion and one of the best ways to do it in winter is to actually and I mean you can park

[01:21:00] at the Ammonusic lot it'll add I think an extra like quarter of a mile or half mile but I prefer actually to go to the Cog railway lot and start my day there because it does it is a you know there's no

[01:21:14] you don't have to worry about break-ins there's going to be people around so it's pretty safe it does it is a fee I think it's like ten dollars or something it's pretty easy to just pay it and then the nice thing about it

[01:21:24] is that you get access to the Marshfield base station so you can use the bathroom you can change get ready in there you can get a nice hot chocolate you can get a hot dog whatever you want is available and then people

[01:21:36] don't understand this they always ask this question but there's a trail system from the Cog that connects it's called the I think the Ammonusic connector trail or something like that so essentially like you can park at the Cog railway the hiker parking is in the lower lot

[01:21:52] you just go up you can stop at the base station use the bathroom and then from there you can go up Ammonusic and then summit you know Monroe Washington and then you can hike back down the Cog railway typically you'll sort of stay to the right hand

[01:22:08] side and then you do have to cross over when you get to Jacobs Ladder but it's an enjoyable hike it's you know it's steeper than you're used to but it's a great way to experience Mount Washington

[01:22:18] in the winter and I've done it I think I've done it for the last four or five years and it's a great area so I think hikers have benefited quite a bit and you know the lots always going to be plowed too that's the nice thing too

[01:22:30] I bring up my guests on snowmobiles too they love it just for a nice respite from the cold and hit the food and the gift shop and everybody loves it in the Hampshire gift shop right? Am I right? And we I'll be honest

[01:22:46] we had a little push back when we started charging again so hiker parking historically was charged at the Cog going back for a while and then it was abolished for a period and then when it was brought back more recently ish there was some push back from

[01:23:00] folks you know oh why are you guys charging what is this but in turn we are so we actually plowed that entire six mile base road yes so we took that over we were basically subcontracted by the state to keep that clear so that

[01:23:14] we can pay more deliberate attention to it because of the microclimate there it gets pounded with snow when other areas aren't necessarily seeing anything so we can kind of stay on top of it better and then of course we'll keep that lot plowed out

[01:23:28] and like you said access to the building so yes we're charging that ten dollars but we're also providing these services and if folks don't want to take advantage of that they can certainly park at the ammo lot for the five or I think it's yes USFS five dollar

[01:23:42] fee instead but we feel like we do offer some things that you know you get your money's worth for that ten dollars with the nice warm heated building and the bathrooms the gift shop the security we do patrol that area so like

[01:23:58] you said you don't have to worry about someone breaking into a car there certainly yeah and most importantly as a hiker like you save about a quarter of a half mile or a half mile from of extra hiking which is

[01:24:08] critical to me because even though I'm a hiker I'm still lazy we find that a lot they don't want to park in the hiker lot they want to come up and I understand they want to park right next to the building and then jump on that ammo connector

[01:24:22] or jump on the jewel connector there and you tell them no I'm sorry you're going to move your car down to the hiker lot so that we can keep this for the train passengers and make sure all the hikers are there and keep it separate and

[01:24:34] most of the people you know nine times out of ten they'll gladly go down there to the hiker lot and understand but you always get someone that extra thousand fifteen hundred feet whatever it is that's just a deal breaker for them they'll get really agitated about it

[01:24:52] yeah I know it is a low I will say I do think like the first time I did it I could park in the upper lot and then they did switch it to the lower lot but it's a little bit of a walk it's like

[01:25:02] two minutes it's not a big deal but it's great and then you can get hot chocolate one time we did hang out at the base station afterwards because we were ahead of some other hikers so we waited there and it was kind of fun to watch

[01:25:14] there's a lot going on so in the winter time you've got like the skiers that are teeing up you get a lot of people that are skinning up I think you can take you can actually take the real way up if you're a skier

[01:25:24] and then get off and ski right that's right we've tried to keep this under wraps for a while because we weren't sure how to manage it but now we want the word to get out that we do offer rides up for skiers

[01:25:36] a lot of people want to get themselves up there they want to skin up but for those that want to use the train like a ski lift you can buy a ticket to our Wombeck station and you get two runs for the price of

[01:25:46] that one round trip ticket because you're not coming down so we'll give you two rides up essentially two lifts up to that point and some folks will use that as a jumping off point they'll ride up to Wombeck and then they'll continue skinning from there

[01:25:58] higher and some will just take that rip down from Wombeck station down what we call Cold Spring Hill that real first sharp ascent there right back to the base station and then hit it again so yeah you can basically use the train as an

[01:26:14] antique ski lift and get a nice warm heated train ride up to there to jump off your skiing adventure and the other thing that's great about in the winter actually all seasons is you're guaranteed to see a moose every time that you ride the Cog railway that's right

[01:26:32] I won't give maybe too much away but it is guaranteed if you're looking out the first few minutes of the ride a moose will be there yes yeah guaranteed guaranteed some other events that you have so you actually started partnering with our friend Christina so there's a race

[01:26:52] the Cog event so can you talk a little bit about like you know your memory or recollection from concept to the first time you've done it now I think this is the second year that we've had it running up there yeah we're going into the third one

[01:27:06] this coming June so if you're into the ultra running events and the crazy trail running stuff this is a unique one for those that don't know about it it's so it's called Race to Cog it's June 23rd that's Sunday June 23rd and essentially

[01:27:22] what it is is you're running alongside our right of way so right next to the tracks is a crude and I'll use this term loosely trail you know I believe it shows up on all trails and things like that which is

[01:27:34] sort of funny but it's not a maintained trail it's more for our access to work on the tracks we certainly invite people to use it and use that as a means of access both in the winter and the summer and this race will run

[01:27:50] right up it's about 2.75 miles to reach the summit from the base on this route and you're talking about a 3,500 foot elevation gain the terrain is pretty rough it's a mixture of dirt sort of loose talus-y stuff at one point you know when you get next to Burt's Ravine

[01:28:06] it is pretty loose through there above Jacob's Ladder and then it does finally get a little more relenting when you pitch over what we call Skyline and there's that last just under a mile push to the summit from there when you start getting parallel with Gulfside

[01:28:24] and then what not and it's a crazy run our train goes up in about 40 to 45 minutes the diesel locomotive so you're essentially racing against that train to try to beat that train to the summit so you're talking that kind of gain that kind of distance in 40 to 45

[01:28:40] minutes and it's pretty demanding and if you're in that elite category where you can really run at that level then you're racing the train but folks there's also what they call the chill wave and you can come out just for the experience

[01:28:56] you maybe know you're not going to beat the train but you want to run that route you want to have that experience and there's plenty of folks in that group as well and it's a great event we do it the whole morning and folks

[01:29:08] come together and you know Christina's great White Mountain Inference and you can sign up and be a part of it Yeah I was fortunate enough to DJ that last one this year and that was great so I just want to clarify things here so we had Joe Gray

[01:29:26] take the lead for the men and then Amber Ferreira took it this past year did they physically beat the train or did the train come in first? What happened? The first year Joe beat the train by almost a minute you know pretty soundly

[01:29:46] So you guys got a chip on your shoulder Long story short all the diesels are pretty much the same we actually build them ourselves they're all pretty much the same but there is one that is inherently faster than the rest and we're talking by 4.76 miles an hour

[01:30:04] to maybe 4.9 miles an hour something like that I wanted that locomotive in the mix for this past year's event and it wasn't possible to have maintenance things that were going on so I will it's unofficial but I may have made the engine we used that day

[01:30:22] behave like the one I wanted to be in there in terms of adjusting its maximum speed so I didn't choose it but I might have put it on a performance enhancer for that one trip right there Oh my god that's so funny you guys are great

[01:30:42] I'm telling you that is so much fun to hear the whistle blow to start the race and then everybody's like hell yeah let's go there was like nothing oh yeah there was no energy I mean Mt. Washington road race is one thing but there's nothing

[01:31:00] like man vs machine the Terminator it was so cool so cool I had a chat with the engineer his name was Mike that was running the trip that day this past year and I said Mike we got beat last year I don't want to get beat this

[01:31:18] year so when you get across that switch we do have a switch coming out of the base and there's a protocol where you have to go a switch speed that is approximately one and a half miles an hour and that is to ensure that the train

[01:31:32] behaves properly in the part of the track that is intended to move so I said to him when you come out and you clear that switch we have a ramped acceleration where we gradually get up to speed up the bridge and then across I told him to

[01:31:48] be a little more liberal with the throttle there and take right off so you can see I took a video of it because it's exciting when that race starts you see the queue of runners all ready to go you see the train traversing the switch

[01:32:04] and as soon as he does it he laces on and just accelerates we're talking 5 miles an hour from 1.5 to 5 quickly it's kind of exciting I have another idea you might like this with your new video game thing but you guys could do the old

[01:32:22] Donkey Kong and start dropping barrels and oil and stuff like that slow the runners down what do you think? yeah? no? yeah we get some banana peels, chuck them out I didn't sign up for this but actually that is a good question so how many

[01:32:40] how do you guys handle the load balancing because I do feel like there's a lot of lollygaggers up in the summit that may not do you get to the point where you've got too many people up in the summit that aren't taking you go with a half

[01:32:54] full train and then at the end of the day all of a sudden you find like oh no I gotta push two more trains up or are you pretty good about telling people you gotta get on the train or we're holding a train until it's full

[01:33:06] so we actually sell the round trip as a 3 hour experience so just like you have a departure that leaves the base at a given time that's then paired with your time coming off the summit so that tries to cut into people staying too long up there because

[01:33:22] then that makes it impossible for us to plan how many folks are gonna on a good day they could be up there all day and then we have to fetch them with a train or multiple trains potentially late in the day we get folks that will

[01:33:34] sort of ignore that rule and then they're put on standby so the method of discouragement I guess is if you miss your train off the summit and that one that leaves an hour after your arrival essentially you're then boarded on subsequent trains as availability

[01:33:52] allows so obviously all the ticketed passengers will be allowed on first and then if there's room you'll be put on standby and then you're put in your party but get split up you certainly won't have the same seat that you had on the way up but

[01:34:04] we do get folks that'll miss trains we do one ways as well so that's another if we have extra room on the way down we sell a one way ticket and hikers will utilize that we just try to make sure that we interface

[01:34:16] with the hikers and a lot of folks sadly don't understand you ask them what trail they hiked up and they look at you like what are you talking about or they can't remember what it's called and you try to give them clues okay what was at the

[01:34:30] base when you started was there a train or not was you know do you remember anything about Pinkham Notch or Joe Dodge do you remember anything about Ammonusic some of them will get it and some of them really have no idea because if we

[01:34:42] take this one way on the train and they go down with us and they hiked up through Tuckerman's 20 miles away yeah exactly and they don't especially if they're not from around here they don't understand that and then they're kind of left in the large thing

[01:34:58] you made me come down here so we try to ask how did you hike up or what trail were you on and if we can get them to answer that then we know we can guide them and we can send them down on the road shuttle

[01:35:10] if they came up on that side but if they came up on the west side we'll gladly take them down but sadly we get a lot of folks they have no map they have no knowledge of what trail they hiked up and you ask them and they

[01:35:20] think there's only one way to get up and they were on it and they're woefully unaware of what's going on yeah it's crazy you must have so many stories like that do you do you find a lot of the workers that you work with

[01:35:36] are a lot of you guys hikers no I would say it's not the minority but for real serious hikers it's probably myself and just a couple others some of the seasonal folks are pretty avid hikers of the year round folks there's probably less we have a guy

[01:35:56] Ray who has been worked here for quite a while and he is active on the steam train and he runs the Wombek station a couple days a week in the winter and maintains the fire pit up there and he's a big hiker he likes to get out

[01:36:10] he likes to get out there on bushwacks and stuff and we chat a lot about various adventures but I would say there aren't a lot of us that are super into it but there's enough of us that we shoot stuff around and share stories and

[01:36:28] ideas for what to do next yeah and I know there was a few years back so before we talk about the ownership so the ownership has passed around a little bit but the ownership has been pretty stable for 45 years 40 years or so so Wayne Presby

[01:36:46] Presby family has owned the cog railway and local family I think they own various businesses but they took over ownership in a partnership in like 1983 but he's owned it sort of outright for the last 10 years or so I think right yeah 2017 he bought out the

[01:37:04] Bedores that were the other major controlling interest and then more recently he started there's been some small stakeholders that he's tried to consolidate ownership from in more recent times but essentially the Presby family in all true purposes is the sole owner at this

[01:37:22] point with some real minority interest I think still might be kicking around there got it and then he so he's been the driving force around like the building out like a lot of offerings that are available in winter now so I think people think like you know

[01:37:36] it's not just seasonal now there's a lot going on in the winter that people can check out between you know the skiing, snowboarding snowshoeing, hiker parking and then the Wombat station trips and Wombat station is at 4,000 feet so you can catch an undercast you can see

[01:37:52] all kinds of amazing views I mean you're really up there but he's also explored the idea of like trying to set up some overnight options and I think that originally there was some talk about a structure but then that was changed to potentially just having more like

[01:38:08] I think overnight friendly train cars I don't know where things are from that perspective but one of the things I want to call out is you know hikers were pushing back on some of these ideas but one of the things that I always talk about

[01:38:22] when I talk about this with the AMC I talk about this with the Auto Road I talk about this with the COG is that you guys will step in and help with hiker rescues and you know I think at least every year we've had a story where

[01:38:36] somebody gets in trouble on Mount Washington and you guys will step in so I guess two questions for you is one is are there any other still plans to do overnight stays somehow and then two can you talk about like sort of your engagement with doing

[01:38:50] different rescues and working with fishing game? Sure right now the sort of discussion about an overnight arrangement is you know in a holding phase so we don't really have the infrastructure in place at our base to construct what we would need to construct

[01:39:08] to make that a reality right now so there are a lot of things we would need to do that are on our short term plans at the base in order to realize that as a goal that would work towards. The initial plan that was heavily

[01:39:22] maligned and pushed back on was a physical structure like you mentioned at Skyline so roughly 5,000 feet on the west side and it would have a degree of visibility from various places and it was understandable why there was push back to that proposal that's long since

[01:39:38] been struck from our goals and intentions completely and the iteration that sort of survives today but is an indefinite hold would be sleeping cars at what we would call the Lizzie's area so the Lizzie board memorial marker there that's track side just down mountain of that would be

[01:40:00] a siding or a couple of sidings with sleeper cars that could accommodate overnight guests that would not be physically built on the mountain but would actually be rail cars that would be movable so that sort of sits. I think that's a fantastic idea. I mean it's

[01:40:18] fantastic. It's a great solution. It pulls, the goal of it would be to pull some of the overcrowding off the summit as well the summit is such a highly visited area between us and the road and hikers in the summer that if there was another spot just below

[01:40:34] the summit where folks could sort of congregate and you know there could be a siding there for our trains we could alleviate some of the pressure from that but like I said it's something that's in an indefinite hold right now just because there's a lot of things

[01:40:50] we have to consider with making that a reality and also infrastructure and planning that goes into building those sleeper cars if we're going to go and embrace that plan. Got it, yeah. And then obviously you guys are available for search and rescue

[01:41:08] and helping out so that's sort of like I know that there was a lot of feedback from the hiking community around the plans that we talked about. My pushback has always been like look keep in mind that when people get in trouble these organizations are stepping up

[01:41:24] for sure and I think you guys have at least like two or three a year actually that I can think of that you're helping out with. So can you talk a little bit about how that happens like what the engagement is like with Fish and Game and

[01:41:38] what you have to do when the calls come in? Sure, so our general manager who I work closely with Ryan Presby he has a law enforcement background so he has all of the contact info and the inroads into Fish and Game and if

[01:41:54] a rescue comes up where we could facilitate assistance with so if it's something on more of the west side or the approach would make sense with us he'll get a call from either Mark Ober or someone that will sort of orchestrate this and express

[01:42:12] what they need and we'll see if we can provide it or not and we always are willing to help so if they say they want our help we'll jump in and do what needs to be done. So starts with that phone call to our GM and then he'll

[01:42:24] then orchestrate a train crew to go up sometimes it's himself and another crew member Josh who lives very close and I've been on one or two and it's just having the staff available that's willing and we do have a number of folks that are

[01:42:40] super willing to jump into this stuff so we'll get the train together sometimes Fish and Game will meet us at the base and they'll ride up sometimes they're just requesting a way to bring an injured hiker down without having to hike them down so sometimes they're already

[01:42:57] on scene somewhere and we're going to and they might get them to the track and whatever is feasible and then we'll get them on the train and transport them down and there have been a number of notable ones that we've assisted in and you're right it is

[01:43:11] a few every year sometimes it's just as simple as a twisted knee sometimes Fish and Game's not even involved we'll get flagged down by someone on the north side or west side and they'll come over and we can get them up on the train bring them

[01:43:25] back to base but often we're working close with Fish and Game to coordinate an approach and we've expressed to them please use us you know if you've got a rescue attempt that using us as your approach makes more sense than going up the road

[01:43:39] and is quicker than going up the road by all means you know get in touch with us and we're ready and willing to assist to make sure that we can provide every resource we can to make a rescue more feasible or

[01:43:51] to make it more smooth to get somebody out Wow and do you the few times that you've been on are you like is your adrenaline pumping are you like oh man this is crazy Yeah no I get excited I just very recently got my wilderness first aid and

[01:44:09] you know re-upped my CPR so I the rescue world is something that appeals to me I would love to be on search and rescue but I don't have a lot of time to actualize that so helping in this arena is a

[01:44:21] great way for me to help because it's interlaced with my work where I often am especially in the busy season where it's a lot of long days but you know no matter how long the day is the core group of us we'll jump right in

[01:44:35] whatever's needed and help facilitate something on the side of the mountain to really offer what we can to help. Yeah there's a fair amount of rescues that go on on the Jewel Trail and Gulfside and Westside so there's a lot

[01:44:49] of activity matter of fact I don't know if you listen way back in the early days of this show I talked about like a couple I stumbled on a couple of now friends of mine who had found an old backpack

[01:44:59] that was like a mile up the Jewel Trail that was involved in a rescue of a guy that had been hiking with his sons they got separated in the parking lot he went back up and almost died but he did survive but we found the old

[01:45:11] we found his backpack that had been abandoned that he had lost so there's a lot that goes on up there. Oh yeah and we want to see us as something that's woven into the hiking community where we'll work with hikers, we're there as a resource, don't count on

[01:45:27] us being a one way opportunity because if we can't reach the summit for weather reasons we just won't be there so I always say don't plan your trip don't plan okay I'm going to hike up and take the cog down use it as a

[01:45:39] as a not a last resort but an option I wouldn't say base your hike around that just because there are things that can change but we want to work with both hikers and with search and rescue to kind of not create you know we don't want this

[01:45:53] divisive you know hikers versus the cog you know there's the whole moon the cog thing that's been in tradition for a long time and sort of a contentious relationship between the hiking community and the cog we want to really knock a lot of that down and

[01:46:07] provide access points for hikers and kind of bridge everything together and smooth it over and have a better relationship with the hiking community moving forward yeah and like I said you know you guys are stepping up helping with search and rescues you know there's the offerings

[01:46:27] that you have for hikers for convenience especially the parking area there and then you know hiking down the cog is like an experience I tell people you need to do that at least once in your life because it's such an amazing

[01:46:41] view and it's a unique view and the one thing I love about hiking down the cog especially when you get a good view is like you can look at Marshfield Station and just you know it looks like so far away when you start and then you start getting

[01:46:53] closer and closer but it's just such a unique experience to have something that you can sort of baseline against to say like alright that's my destination usually you're doing that when you're going uphill but not a lot of times you get that opportunity when you're going downhill

[01:47:05] so yeah it's just unique question about the decision making for like bad weather and things like that so what do you guys how do you guys manage I'm assuming you're looking at the weather all the time but like what is the tolerance for saying like okay we

[01:47:23] can no longer go up on the trains because the wind is too far or too fast or the weather's too bad sure we work really close with the Mount Washington Observatory I have their forecast on frequent refresh on my phone on my computer wherever I'm at

[01:47:41] and I'll call them at times to get more detailed information about conditions that are occurring up there and sometimes ground conditions and kind of build a lot of that into a decision making process when the weather does turn foul the biggest thing

[01:47:55] that will stop the train is wind so we'll run into a multitude of you know snow ice and conditions like that and it doesn't really affect the operation because of the gear drive it's not like you're going to lose traction or anything like that

[01:48:09] or slip because of the penetration into the rack so the issues we're concerned about have to do with wind primarily and the wind load on the train but more particularly the experience of the guest stepping off the train at the summit and being hit with that wind

[01:48:23] up there while the train can withstand winds up to and just over 100 miles an hour your average person doesn't want to be smacked in the face with that as soon as they're stepping out of the rail car at the top so

[01:48:37] we do have a cut off where if we have sustained winds in excess of 74 miles an hour with that sort of category 1 hurricane threshold that's when we'll pull stuff back and the train will operate but it will operate to what we have that skyline point which is

[01:48:53] just above tree line around 5000 feet a little above tree line but it's at a point on the cull between Washington and Clay where it's sheltered enough that you're not going to get bombarded with wind the same way you would further up and towards the summit

[01:49:07] so it's kind of what we have a safe zone there where we can still give you a journey pretty high up and still get that alpine zone without getting into the worst of the exposure there and then the price gets adjusted downward

[01:49:19] a little bit if that has to happen Alright, what's the even not necessarily just on a bad day but any day when you've got the passengers that are clearly not hikers, what is their reaction when they get to that little section of Gulfside

[01:49:35] where they start seeing the hikers up next to the train are they all like, what are those people, are they crazy or do they have a common reaction? That is a very common reaction they have is look at the crazy people or what are those

[01:49:51] crazy people doing, I mean if it's a bluebird day there's not a lot of reaction to it but it's those days where it's pea soup visibility and someone crosses under Westside or comes across Trinity Heights and you have they pop out of the fog and then

[01:50:09] the train ridership go whoa, where did they come from? What are they doing up here? People hike up here in this and it may not even be that disagreeable, it might just be a low vis day with calmish wind and temperature is agreeable but yeah

[01:50:23] most of our ridership is not doesn't have an overlap with a hiking community so they see folks that are hiking Mount Washington as extremists and real well versed alpinists that are part of a unique elite which is certainly not the case but that's how they see it

[01:50:43] from their perspective. Don't tell them, don't give it away. I get that since I'll be up there eating my hot dog in cloudy weather or something and someone will be like, you walk up here? I'll be like yeah. They're amazed. They get very interested so wow, that's interesting.

[01:51:01] For listeners, I think if you've got somebody in your family that doesn't like it, they're not into hiking but you want to give them a taste of what we experience, I think the COG is a great way to do that. I'm planning on taking

[01:51:13] my dad up the next time he comes up for sure because he's always talking about how he wants to see these mountains and he's been up on the auto road a couple of times but I haven't taken him up on the COG so it's a great

[01:51:23] way to get older family members or younger family members or people that just aren't into hiking. Maybe you can get them into the hiking bug if you can take them up on the COG. Yeah, absolutely. If you want a free ride, join Search and Rescue. That's great.

[01:51:41] We need the help. You guys are pretty focused on safety and you don't have to get into a lot of detail on this but we did at one point cover, there's been a couple of incidents over the years, a long time ago, we're talking like years and years

[01:51:57] ago but you put in a lot of safety protocols and I'm assuming there's a lot of different you're the guy that's in charge of testing all the safety equipment and all that so talk a little bit about safety from your perspective. Sure, there's that adage that safety

[01:52:17] is number one and that's sort of cliched but it really is everything starts from that. The crew's first responsibility is safety of themselves, the guest and the equipment and then second to that is the guest experience but nothing will ever compromise the safety aspect and the vigilance

[01:52:35] that's required to operate a train on the side of a mountain so we do have various protocols that have to be adhered to in order to ensure that that safety remains a constant and that includes stopping at all the switches

[01:52:47] the parts of the track that are designed to move so you're coming to a positive stop confirming everything's aligned before proceeding there are safety features of both the coaches and the engines that are tested before each trip and inspections that are done

[01:53:01] both at the base and the summit before the next leg of the journey begins and walk arounds by the crew just check everything over and the diesels are all computerized so the system that the engineers have essentially in their face will give them real time

[01:53:17] thresholds for temperatures, pressures and so forth that they can then monitor for the whole trip so vigilance is key you know this isn't a subway that has signals and signal control and things like that you really have to be engaged with the operation but

[01:53:35] we have a good crew that looks out for safety as number one and make sure that they're adhering to protocols that are set forth to make sure that each trip while it might be different in the experience side is sort of cookie cutter the same

[01:53:51] in terms of the protocol side of things You must have some amazing mechanics too right? Oh yeah, the crew here, I mean the CAWG is a long standing tradition of doing things in house, we're really self sufficient and independent in that regard, we have our own

[01:54:05] shop facility that you know talk about the Presby family innovation just a couple years ago this massive facility went up at the base where we can really with some state of the art tools work on our fleet in a much more agreeable environment our old shop is on

[01:54:23] a very historic building, it's been there since the 1800s and it's a great place to visit to get a look at what happened but we were working in it up until just a few years ago this new facility and our mechanics that work out of it

[01:54:37] they're a great core group of guys everything from guys that work on the diesel engines to machinists, carpenters you name it we try to keep it in house, we outsource pretty much as little as we can or little as we need to but

[01:54:53] we're doing a lot of our own fabricating right under one roof down there Oh yeah and there's a lot of like in the at the base station there's a lot of displays around the history of the railway and it sounds like you can look at the original

[01:55:07] train and then you can get into that older building that you just talked about? That one isn't quite where we're trying to work on a system where we can formalize the shop tour experience but right now not something that we're inviting most of the general

[01:55:23] public to partake in in terms of a shop tour but the museum that's in the Marshfield building does give a great timeline going back to the inception and you can see how the railway has sort of evolved along the way there's a lot of interactive displays and

[01:55:37] videos that run on a loop in there and of course the Pepper Sass locomotive, the original engine is on display at the base right track side where folks board so they can see that awkward engine that got it all started so even

[01:55:51] folks that don't ride they come up and they walk through the museum and they can get a whole experience of the base even without taking a train ride necessarily. Yeah, no I love going in there before hikes and just checking everything out and you know getting

[01:56:03] something to eat and then even better stuff using the bathroom before the hike It's much better than the ammunucic parking lot privy. Oh yeah likes priorities. Right, yeah exactly after that long drive up I'm like bathroom immediately I like a good pre-hike bathroom but when I'm out there

[01:56:25] I'm a big poop in the woods guy so I do that pretty much every hike. You should meet Dave's shits in the woods. Every hike really? I really should yeah because every hike I like to take a nice number two out there pretty much

[01:56:39] every time I get out. Yeah, well I end up doing that occasionally too but every time I do it no matter how far off the trail I go somebody comes walking along and I get all nervous but we have to send you a link

[01:56:51] to the crap strap then you'll have to see there's a product you can use so. I've heard of that. Yes the crap strap so just be careful if you're walking around Burt Ravine and he's been there I try not to go above tree line

[01:57:09] sometimes when there's an emergency but yeah try not to Alright so this is great so we'll put all the links to the activities and ticket sales and all that stuff on the Mount Washington Cog Railway you know hikers like I said you know accessibility

[01:57:27] helping out with search and rescue you know stop mooning the train we're not doing that anymore these are our friends so be nice right and yeah definitely check it out like I said ride a passage hike for me absolutely in the winter

[01:57:41] parking at the cog going up the EMO and then coming down the cog railway don't fall into Burt Ravine you got to be careful there you got to bring your crampons for that section but otherwise it's pretty safe oh yeah yeah for sure anything else we missed Andy

[01:57:59] no I think that pretty much covers everything we invite folks to check us out if anyone wants the website it is thecog t-h-e-c-o-g dot com and that'll have our schedule ticket information we have information for hikers up there I mean

[01:58:15] you can just go there to buy tickets but if you poke around on the site there's actually a lot of information there so yeah thecog dot com yeah and that Wombat station section there is actually it's actually perfect like a lot of times in the winter like going

[01:58:27] it's too much it's like gets crazy up there in the summit like it's been a good week but a lot of times like it's not t-shirt weather like it's bit so it's nice to just go to that Wombat you got the fire pit there

[01:58:39] and you're good to go it's enough in the winter yeah it's a great ambiance there and you can get that mountain experience without you know going up into the alpine zone where it's crazy we'd love to run to the summit all year but it's just

[01:58:53] not something that the mountain would agree with a lot of times yeah yeah I think a lot of the hikers too in the winter like it is nice to you know you don't have to wait in line for the pitchers and all that stuff so I think it's

[01:59:07] a good balance for sure any questions for Andy before we move on to we'll just do a quick hiker communication segment and then we'll wrap up I think we're good come over and say hi if I'm fortunate enough to be invited back for the DJing

[01:59:23] for that Race the Cog I was going to say are you going to DJ again? I hope so we'll see that was such a great time I actually have a funny story Mr. Presby Sr. came over towards the end of the event and he said he goes

[01:59:39] hey thanks for playing that Morgan Wallen song I'll never forget that I'm like alright I know what to play next year that was a good memory but yeah thank you for joining us and this has been great I'm sure the listeners will love it

[02:00:00] thank you guys for having me on I really enjoyed it I love this podcast my girlfriend Cameron got me into you guys and it's great you guys have an awesome show we never imagined that we'd actually get some serious people on this dumb podcast but it's worked out

[02:00:16] no kidding not too bad Slashers hiking topic of the week so moving into our next segment we're going to talk about hiker communication when you go out it sounds like you do a lot of solo stuff do you have an in reach

[02:00:42] or anything or do you just rely on your cell phone? I don't have so actually my girlfriend and I just got an in reach it's new to us and I haven't used it on a hike yet and I've I used to be

[02:00:56] I don't know why I was but I used to be really stubborn against modern technology on a hike like my phone is a tool but it's one that I don't want to rely on or really use that much other than take pictures if the battery is fine

[02:01:10] like I'll scout stuff using like guy or all trails but I don't like to actually I think one hike did I actually do a navigate feature and track my time and stuff on the phone like I try to keep that stuff to a minimum when I'm out there

[02:01:24] but yeah we just got one so we're going to start going with that just as an extra form of safety out there yeah well Stomp put together a list here of just some pre-hike ideas and then some on-hike stuff

[02:01:38] so Stomp I know you want to go through the list here yeah sure it's always good to refresh on these ideas so pre-hike if you are going out on a hike here are a few tips definitely you want to leave plans with your friends and

[02:01:54] family let them know where you're going what you're hiking what your anticipated start times are going to be your anticipated end times what gear you're taking the gear thing is interesting let people know what you have what color your clothing will be if you have a water bottle

[02:02:12] that may look a particular way you never know if you may become a subject of a search those details can be really helpful leave behind your bailout routes a plan B and also the car make and model okay simple stuff and don't let ego talk you

[02:02:34] out of telling people your plans you know it's one of those things like oh I can't wait to share this on Facebook after I complete this but nobody's going to know this one until after the fact that's not a smart move you definitely

[02:02:48] want to let people know ahead of time estimated times for specific locations can be handy if you think you're going to be at Lincoln Lafayette by 11 o'clock great just document them write them down end time we mentioned the time for those aware of your

[02:03:08] plans to press the red button this is always a little bit contentious and can cause problems but if you think you have a time where your loved ones friends and family should call 911 or call the authorities try to write that down I know that can be a little

[02:03:26] bit controversial but it may be a life-saving maneuver I've been in this situation myself and it's not comfortable but yeah that's a good call I probably need to reset with Mrs. Mike on this one because I've never really talked about that I just kind of assume like okay

[02:03:47] I'm going to be in the car by four I'll be home by seven and I usually just assume I'm going to check in with her so I should just remind her like hey if you haven't heard from me by like 530 or so like start

[02:03:59] checking around but I do always leave a note and I tell her who I'm hiking with and you know how they can get in touch with those people if they need to yeah any comments on that Andy yeah I think there's been a couple of occasions where

[02:04:15] my girlfriend was hiking solo and you know of course don't have contact and it got to be a point at which I started to wonder about time wasn't worried at all she's more than capable but I start to wonder like okay haven't heard yeah so yeah

[02:04:29] you know there's one occasion where I went up the trail to meet her and then there was an occasion I drove into Zealand down to meet her she was coming out with a truck at that point so after she did Z-Bond it was just a long day

[02:04:47] but I think establishing when we do solo stuff you know yeah unforeseen things can happen but what would be a point at which okay this might be concerning versus okay is it just a long slog because I'm a slower hiker you know I'm a bigger guy but I

[02:05:07] just kind of keep moving so I wouldn't want anyone to get alarmed prematurely if I'm just out there on something that's more than 15 miles and taking my time but at the same time there might be a point where it's like okay concern escalates to some type of action

[02:05:25] and maybe define that okay yeah no that makes sense luckily haven't had to test that too much on my end so and then Stomp you talk about putting notes in the windshields in your cars so I did used to do this I don't do this as much

[02:05:45] I don't I definitely don't I just get paranoid that somebody may read the note and say oh I have plenty of time to take that catalytic converter that is an unfortunate reality it seems like we've seen a rash of break-ins the last few years now like

[02:06:01] ever since where hiking has exploded and popularity has exploded of being outdoors so has the unfortunate other side of opportunistic people trying to you know do things like break into cars at trailheads and stuff like that it's awful and yeah I mean I

[02:06:19] think the same thought has crossed my mind like oh I don't want to give them an open ended timeline let's come back after lunch and then the last on my list here for the pre-hike was Hiker and Climber Logs you know I'm familiar with them at say

[02:06:39] the Cannon Cliffs lot for climbers and also at Joe Dodge Lodge at Pinkham you have a register you can sign in definitely do that sign in and when you come out sign out so that they know where you're going and when you came in

[02:06:55] and if you haven't come out so that's always a good thing to do as well yeah I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I think that's very important and then sure enough the last time I went to Baxter this past year I

[02:07:07] forgot to sign both in and out going up the route we took which was going up Hamlin and coming down Saddle and I'm like oh crap okay at least I didn't sign in and not sign out I suppose it's pretty worse but I try to

[02:07:25] be better with that yeah and when you push whack into like those canisters there like you know put your name on there just in case you never know right so what do you do on hike? I mean there are three or four categories you have cell phones

[02:07:39] not so much aware of what androids can do but the iPhone has new and developing features is the iPhone emergency SOS which is a fairly hefty price but apparently it's satellite connected you do have your basic satellite messengers such as Garmin's inReach units the GPS handhelds

[02:07:59] a few other companies Zolio satellite communicator you have the Spot X which has been around for quite a long time and somewhere Global Hotspot these things will let you communicate whether it's a text or a pre-programmed message that's always handy and then of course you have your PLBs

[02:08:19] which I have for my bushwhacking and PLBs personal locator beacons are basically just help me buttons they're SOS buttons no communication they're saying I'm effed come and get me I'm in trouble and the two most popular ones that you'll see are the ACR Rescue Link which runs

[02:08:37] about $400 the battery life on it lasts about five years and every year you get a free renewal you just have to fill a form out the government will send you out a new registration form and then also the Ocean Signal Rescue Me PLB 1 is a newer one

[02:08:55] that offers that same help me feature and then of course Rocky Talkies Mike you added this one I added this matter of fact I was talking with Littlefoot for the listeners that don't know where Littlefoot is I think she's 7 years old so she's doing

[02:09:11] the grid at this point she's almost finished with a winter 4,000 footers and she hikes with her grandparents and a great crew of people Rhonda and Joanne and George and everybody matter of fact I saw them this weekend and Kim her grandmother had told me

[02:09:25] she's like you should check these out you should mention them on the show they're called Rocky Talkies and they use them so I guess they all carry them and they have about a mile worth of range so if you are hiking with people we always tell people

[02:09:39] stick together but sometimes if you're hiking in a group where the pace doesn't match up you can utilize these Rocky Talkies and stay in contact if you need to so something were ever to happen somebody took a wrong turn on a trail you can communicate

[02:09:53] in a pretty far distance okay so that was my question so do we have an idea what the distance is I think she said a mile a mile okay that's pretty handy so I'll put the link in the show notes so people can check it out but

[02:10:07] she said she was very impressed with them yeah excellent alright and then finally post hike if you call if you let people know where you are just let them know when you're out text them send them an email call them whatever send a satellite message on your

[02:10:23] Garmin and definitely check out and log out of those books and registers at the trailheads when they're available so pretty simple post hike yeah do you guys I don't know if you guys remember this story but there was a guy that

[02:10:35] he was a professor I think in Boston and he had been out hiking he was staying at the Omni and he didn't bother to like text his wife oh yeah right and then like she called 911 she's like my husband was hiking he disappeared

[02:10:51] they were out there like looking on I think he was maybe on the jewel trail or something they were out there looking for this guy and it turns out that he was just having a spa day at the Omni yeah oh my god

[02:11:05] you don't want to be that guy I mean enjoy your spa day but text your wife yeah I'm off trail I'm all good even if it's just short and sweet my wife would kill me I triggered a search and rescue for you that would be bad

[02:11:23] I'd have to find a new co-host Andy you'd be the co-host with me and my goodness toast alright well Andy this was awesome super fascinating would love to have you on again maybe if your girlfriend wants to come on we can talk hiking a little bit

[02:11:39] more she would love to yeah we'll stay in touch for sure but Stomp anything else before we wrap up yeah we're good thank you Andy thank you guys very much YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts if you want to learn more

[02:12:07] about the topics covered in today's show please check out the show notes and safety information at slasherpodcast.com that's S-L-A S-R podcast dot com you can also follow the show on Facebook and Instagram we hope you'll join us next week for another great show

[02:12:27] 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 wanted to complete his most challenging day hike ever Fish and Game officers say the hiker from Florida activated an emergency beacon yesterday morning

[02:12:49] he was hiking along the Appalachian Trail when the weather started to get worse officials say the snow was piled up to 3 feet in some spots and there was a wind chill of minus 1 degree there's 3 words to describe this race do we all know what they are?

[02:13:05] HOLY WINE HILL Lt. James Neelan New Hampshire Fish and Game thanks for being with us today 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?

[02:13:19] it seems to me the most common is being unprepared 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