Episode 139 - Welcome Patrick Hummel from Mt. Washington State Park

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

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

[00:00:54] Go to www.mtwashington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. And here is your forecast for Friday, February 9th and Saturday, February 10th. Friday Mostly in the clear onto mostly cloudy skies. Chance of drizzle or flurries.

[00:01:25] Possible snow accumulations of a trace to 2 inches with a high in the mid 30s. Winds will be west at 25-40 mph increasing to 35-50 mph with gusts up to 60 mph in the afternoon. Windchill 10-20 above. Friday night In the clouds with a slight chance of snow showers.

[00:01:47] Possible additional snow accumulations of a trace to 1 inch with a low in the mid 20s. Winds will be west at 35-50 mph increasing to 45-60 mph with gusts up to 75 mph. The windchill will be falling to 0-10 above.

[00:02:06] Saturday In the clouds with a slight chance of snow showers. Possible additional snow accumulations of a trace to 1 inch with a high in the mid 30s Falling into the lower 30s by the afternoon.

[00:02:18] Winds will be west at 35-50 mph and a windchill will be rising to 10-20 above. Have fun out there!

[00:03:56] Welcome to episode 139 of the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue Podcast. This week we are joined by Patrick Hummel. Patrick is the Park Manager of Mount Washington State Park. So Patrick oversees and manages the operations of the 60 acres of Summit on Mount Washington.

[00:04:12] Patrick has previously worked as the supervisor of the New Hampshire State Parks Volunteer Program and he has also worked as Park Manager at Monadnock State Park. So he has a lot of experience and knowledge of the operations, maintenance and logistics

[00:04:26] of maintaining the Summit infrastructure as well as working to coordinate across the various stakeholders that work together to manage all the visitors and visits that happen on Mount Washington. So in addition to Patrick we break down the best gift shops in New Hampshire this week.

[00:04:41] We are going to talk about Pucks Itani Fill. He has spoken and declared an early spring is on the way. And we got a recent hike on Mount Pierce and then some search and rescue news. So I'm Mike and I'm Stomp. Let's get started.

[00:05:22] This has been Pease from Hiking Buddies. 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.

[00:05:35] We wanted to say thank you to those who have supported our mission and most importantly say thanks to those who speak up, who ask questions and who are willing to provide guidance and assistance on the trails when needed. You embody what it means to be a hiking buddy.

[00:05:48] And now for all my newer hikers out there, here's this episode's Hiking Buddies quick tip. As the nights get colder, a good tip is to put some boiling hot water into a Nalgene

[00:06:07] bottle and tuck it right inside your sleeping bag so you'll have a nice cozy bag when you go to sleep. All right. Thank you, Hiking Buddies. That was great. Thank you, Hiking Buddies. All right, Patrick. So I didn't prep you for this one.

[00:06:36] Actually, this is a late edition, but I wanted to just hit you with a question right away. So on behalf of the hiking community, so I'm the official spokesman for the hiking community.

[00:06:46] So one of the common topics of hikers, especially in the summertime when we hike Mount Washington and we've worked our butts off to get up there, we get up there and then there's that line of people from the auto road and the cog waiting in line.

[00:07:00] Who do we need to talk to to get our own special Mount Washington summit sign so that only we're allowed to take photos? Well, Mike, first I want to thank you for your service in representing the hiking community as a whole in New England.

[00:07:17] The community is represented well, so thank you. I have to say from afar, in seeing, tracking social media and the conversations and suggestions going on, yeah, the topic of the summit sign is not lost on us to the point where we had

[00:07:36] a little staff costume party for our last weekend. We kind of brought Halloween to the summit early this past year and one of our staff dressed as the summit sign and I recommended in addition to adding a hikers only tag to the summit sign.

[00:07:57] Listen, the hikers do not have to wait in line for seven months of the year. Of course, it's not the seven months that most are up there, but there's one summit. There's one summit.

[00:08:12] There's one top point in New England and so thus there's one summit sign and I don't foresee us changing how we approach that at the state park. The summit sign, the summit's in the state park. It's probably the most photographed sign in the Northeast.

[00:08:31] There's high demand for it. As far as I'm concerned, it's the ultimate democracy up there and it's a reflection of the fact that for the state park and for me as the park supervisor that we don't, there's no viewpoint in regards to how people got up there.

[00:08:48] If people arrived via the train, the auto road or by foot. Nobody has any entitlement or right over anybody else to that sign. It's first come, first serve let's say. Really and I know hikers and I'm a hiker myself and I understand it and I understand the culture

[00:09:09] shock in a way of spending all day in Tuckerman Ravine or Ammonoosk Ravine and stepping foot into a little city and what that kind of looks like. The summit sign is, you know, we just allow people to take whatever approach they want to up there.

[00:09:31] If there are people waiting in line and they see a hiker and they want to let them go in front of them, great. What we don't want to see is rudeness or people just reasonably jumping in front of other people

[00:09:40] because you know, we're all on the same boat up there. We're all looking to get to the summit of Mount Washington and enjoy the place. We're all fans of the same thing.

[00:09:50] Well there is the other sign by the corner of the tip-top house that, I forget what that sign says but I've taken photos of it. There's a state park sign near our front door, near the water filling station at the Sherman Adams Visitor Center.

[00:10:03] There's other places to do it and people have their own approach if someone wants to go up, tap the summit benchmark with their hand or their hiking pole and get out of there.

[00:10:12] That's fine too but you know, at the end of the day, we want, yeah there's one summit sign. You know, we're not going to break people off and if you really want to get down to

[00:10:21] it, the folks that came up on the Cog railway have 60 minutes on that summit. There's a lot of lines. There's lines to the bathroom, there's lines to the food service, lines in the museum. You know, if you want to prioritize based on available time, maybe the Cog passengers

[00:10:39] should have their own and if you're a day hiker, if you came up Tuckerman Ravine, are you going to relent to somebody who is an AT-thru hiker? Say, hey I hiked from Georgia to get to this sign. Honestly, like Stomp made me ask that question.

[00:10:51] I didn't really care. No, I'm glad you asked it because it comes up a lot and I get it and I get, you know, that you've slogged all the way to the top of Mount Washington and it's the highest point in the Northeast.

[00:11:03] It's not an easy day whether you're coming from Georgia or just from Pinkham Notch or Ammo or if you're doing a traverse but it's an understanding of that's what you're walking into. You know, when you get to the top of Mount Washington, you shouldn't expect anything different.

[00:11:20] It's been the same since the 1850s and it's not going to change. Yeah. Hike Jefferson or Adams if you want that. There's every other peak almost, maybe aside from Cannon.

[00:11:30] So we have one peak to share and I like that and I'll tell you, you know, I haven't always worked at Mount Washington but I've hiked for a long time and I've gone through some

[00:11:40] evolution myself and the concept that just because a family or a person drove to the summit or took the cog railway means that they have less value or entitlement to be there to enjoy the places is ludicrous. It's a bad angle and I don't really like it.

[00:12:05] I've talked to a lot of people on the top of that mountain. I've talked to folks who used to hike that mountain a long time ago. They can't do it anymore but you know what?

[00:12:19] The auto road and the cog railway give them avenues to come back to share in the memory of their times as hikers. I think hikers have to remember that there are people in that line that might be in flip-flops

[00:12:34] that are part of the same community and in fact, in some ways, were up there a long time before them that just wanted to be able to get back to the summit of Mount Washington

[00:12:45] again to share it with their grandkids, to talk about their hiking days, to reminisce. It's a really interesting and important mix of people up there and you know, I tried to argue because you got to wait a little while for a summit sign picture that you know you're

[00:13:02] going to have to wait for. It doesn't push the needle for the people who manage the summit and for me as a manager to start breaking things up. It's like I said, a democracy.

[00:13:17] You get up there when you get up there, you get in line when you get in line if you want it. It's optional. There's not a lot of other summit signs to take pictures with. No one's demanding summit signs in other locations. It's just there.

[00:13:30] Speaking of democracy, Mike, who elected you to represent the hiking community? I did. I'm going to have to ask for a removal. I don't know if you're, I don't know. You were unelected. This is not cool. This is not happening.

[00:13:45] I can already tell Mike's doing a good job because he's, you know, he's turned me out and he's letting me go too long on this rant. Well no, but it's good because it's a question that comes up all the time so it's great to have an answer.

[00:13:57] And I think we talked about this last week a little bit around the fact that like I go back into, you know, I'm a history buff and I do think back to like when the cog was started

[00:14:06] up and we sort of, I made this point is like there was a lot of conservation efforts that went in to the White Mountains and establishing the White Mountains as a national forest in the early 1900s.

[00:14:16] And I suspect that a lot of the people that were involved in that probably made their way up via the auto road and the cog and realized like the majestic beauty of that. It wasn't all just hikers, it was religious leaders, political leaders, you know, all

[00:14:30] kinds of people came from the conservation effort and I think they weren't going to all hike up. So it is something to remember that, you know, accessibility and getting people up on top

[00:14:39] of Mount Washington is critical for the history of how the whites were created in the first place. And the future. Let's not lose that. The accessibility of Mount Washington and as Andy Villein pointed out last week and others,

[00:14:55] if the cog railway and the auto road didn't exist now, they wouldn't be put in. We know that. But they're there. They've been there since the 1860s. And they're a part of the mountains living history.

[00:15:07] But the accessibility that they provided have given people who wouldn't otherwise have access, whether it was physical ability, time, people who are visiting the mountains, it gives them an ability to get to the summit of Mount Washington as an alternative to an all day hike, which

[00:15:25] is not a beginner's hike. Let's not forget that. And the ability to connect with the location, to connect with our mountains. You know, Mount Washington has provided an avenue for people from all over the world

[00:15:40] to come to New Hampshire and to leave with an appreciation of the White Mountains. That creates bonds, that creates relationships and it creates future advocates. When these mountains are in need, there's going to be that base.

[00:15:55] And I believe that part of the availability for people to come to the summit of Mount Washington and share in the experience and the awe and to learn more about it is an integral part in the ultimate long term protection of the White Mountains as a whole.

[00:16:09] Yeah, I agree. And just going back to the sign for a minute. The other question I did have for you is, what is the typical life, like what's the lifespan because it gets so much traffic and it has to go through the winter.

[00:16:21] Is it like every year you replace it or is it every couple of years? We have a stash of signs. So the typical, it's a typical rotation where we have once, it's one sign out on a post now that's facing the Sherman Adams building.

[00:16:36] There's no point in having a west facing sign up there in the winter time. And there's not a lot of demand outside of the people that get up there by foot. And so that summit sign that's up there currently will stay there until the spring when we're

[00:16:55] getting close to opening sometime in mid May, at which point it will come down, be brought inside. We have two other summit signs that will go up for the summer. And essentially the signs that are not out on a post currently will be brought inside

[00:17:15] to be touched up, rehabbed, fixed until we can't fix them anymore. And then we'll put new ones up. How are they, I've never even looked at this, but are they mounted on like a metal reinforced pole or how exactly are they mounted on there?

[00:17:31] I didn't even think to look at it. The summit sign is bolted into a wooden post and that post is anchored in the summit rocks with cement. The summit sign over the last few years had kind of gotten a gradual lean.

[00:17:53] And this past spring, prior to opening, we had an afternoon up there where the post was removed so that it could be reset. And there was actually a few hours where there was no summit sign at all. Unfortunately, I was not there that day.

[00:18:11] Our staff was up there doing that. But to be able to have grabbed a photo with the weather tower in the background and the summit without a sign would have been kind of a cool, unique photo opportunity. It was reset.

[00:18:30] The sign post is as straight as anything gets up there at this point. It'll gradually lean, I'm sure. The winter sign does get beat up a lot more and you would probably not be surprised to hear that.

[00:18:44] But it's hikers that end up doing more damage to that sign than the weather. And that is usually ice axes and other devices scraping the front of the sign to get the rime and the ice off so that the lettering is exposed.

[00:19:01] We see the winter sign beat up a lot more by people than the weather. Do you know, is that the original, has that always been the summit? Or do you know through the construction of the Sherman Adams building, has the summit moved around over time?

[00:19:17] I don't believe it has moved around much. The summit, well not the summit, but the whole mountain of course has the moniker of being the rock pile. But in this case, that summit area, there's a lot of ledge and it, you know, I don't know

[00:19:33] what it looked like in the 1850s and beyond as the summit began to be developed. But even through old historical photos, it appears to me to this point that the summit geographically or geologically rather is probably pretty close to where it is present day.

[00:19:52] Now, the summit sign hasn't always been there. I've been trying to figure out when the summit sign was first installed. I seem to think it might have come around the time of the Sherman Adams building being built or maybe slightly before that.

[00:20:07] The summit sign has gone through different versions and reiterations. I actually added the state park lettering to it a couple of years ago. It seemed to me like a lost opportunity. Throw a little marketing in there? Probably, well not just marketing, but it's recognition.

[00:20:27] Summit of Mount Washington is a state park. It has been for 60 years. The state of New Hampshire has been caretaking for the summit and so it had more to do with recognition. The mountain doesn't need promotion, we know. True, true.

[00:20:44] All right, well I appreciate you answering that Patrick. We're going to come back to you and you can hop in on some of these topics. We've got a few topics to cover and then we're going to talk about a recent hike and then

[00:20:53] we're going to get right into talking to you. We're going to go long tonight, but definitely we have a lot more to cover with you. But Stomp, just to start off with a couple of stories that we pulled here.

[00:21:03] It's Happy Lunar New Year on Saturday, so I'm going to be going up hiking. This is the year of the dragon. There's 12 animals that are assigned to the lunar new year, so year of the dragon.

[00:21:18] I wanted to just call out to both of you that unfortunately for the lunar new year, there is no representation of cats in the 12 cycle. So unfortunately for cat lovers... Did you hear that guys? Oh man.

[00:21:35] It's outrageous, but apparently what happened is that the cat and the rat were very good friends. So the cat was like, look, I want to get there early to sign up for our spots on the lunar new year. And the rat was like, no problem.

[00:21:50] I know that you're a heavy sleeper. I'm going to wake you up in the morning and then we'll make sure that we're both first in line. Unfortunately, what happened is that the rat was so excited when he woke up that he forgot

[00:22:02] his promise to wake up the cat. And the end result is that the cat has no place in the lunar new year cycle. It sounds like there might be ramifications between cats and rats beyond that too at this point. I think so.

[00:22:16] That's probably why they're now ancient enemies. Wow. This is interesting. So you're celebrating the lunar new year by hiking. What are you going to hike? I'm actually going back to Mount Pierce. Although I might switch it up. I was on Mount Pierce last week.

[00:22:35] I'm taking somebody that's a new winter hiker and I always like to take them up Pierce. We'll see if the weather changes, maybe I'll switch it up a little bit and go to Moosilauke or something. It's a winter wonderland up there. It is.

[00:22:49] And then next up, Stomp, there was a wonderful listener put together a photo. So this is shout out to Christy who put together a Photoshop of, we did an article about Barbie being on the, basically going viral on the Grand Canyon's Instagram post.

[00:23:09] And Christy was nice enough to take a photo of me that we had posted on our Instagram and she put the Barbie doll next to me so that we were holding hands. Mrs. Mike's not happy because she thought I was hiking with just guys, but we do want

[00:23:23] to give Christy a shout out and apparently the listeners enjoyed seeing me and Barbie. It was fact checked. It was real dude. That was really you and Barbie. There's no question about it. Yeah. I get some explaining to do for Mrs. Mike, but she likes Barbie too. Yeah.

[00:23:37] I like me more. Yeah. She's a little bit jealous, but Barbie was looking very good. She was well dressed for Mount Madison. Fast and light. And she enjoyed the undercast. Yeah, yeah.

[00:23:48] All right, Stomp, so you wanted to do this next segment is you wanted to do a shout out for the best gift shops in New Hampshire. So you put out a listener request for this and we got a bunch of votes here.

[00:23:59] So do you want to give you a rundown? Yeah, the listeners have voted. So these are not in any particular order, but we have New Hampshire Gifts in Guilford, Waters in Littleton, LaHoots, and I'm not sure which LaHoots, but I'm assuming the whole

[00:24:15] organization because they do have different buildings in Lincoln and Littleton. The Hookset Rest Stop came in. I know that's one of your favorites, Mike. That's one of my favorites. This is a classic. Zeb's, of course.

[00:24:30] White Mountain Trading Post, the Penguin in North Conway, and then the Squam Lake Marketplace, which is a seasonal place that's, I believe, closed at the moment for the winter months. So there's your list of some of the more popular gift shops in the area.

[00:24:46] And Mike, do you have any beyond this list? So I had written down, so I had Zeb's. I called out the Five and Dime store next door to Zeb's, which is nice. The kids always like that.

[00:24:58] You could always get like a good harmonica or a kazoo in the Five and Dime store. And then I had the Penguin. I had the Common Man Rest Stop in Hookset. And then I'm a Route 16 guy, Stomp, over on Freiburg, Western Maine.

[00:25:14] So not in New Hampshire, but I called out the Corn Store in Bridgton, Maine. We call it the Con Store in Bridgton, Maine. And then Rennie's in Bridgton as well. And then there is a nice little gift shop that I don't know the name of, but it's in

[00:25:31] the Naples, Maine Causeway. And then the AMC, the Pinkham Notch Highland Center. And then shout out to the Summit gift shop as well in Mount Washington. Copy. Copy that. Yeah, I listed Mount Washington as well.

[00:25:46] But Indian Head Gift Shop on my end for their awesome, awesome gift shop. It's like all this crazy UFO stuff. And then Sunburst Trading Company in Woodstock as well. And those are my faves. How about you, Patrick? Any things we missed? You have a very good list.

[00:26:03] I think the listeners did a pretty solid job putting some good suggestions forward. I think so. I think I'm partially biased to the Mount Washington State Park gift shop at the Summit, largely because that's what keeps the Summit running and helps give me a paycheck.

[00:26:24] But it's only available five months out of the year. Certainly there's always the availability on the New Hampshire State Park webpage at nhstateparks.org to pick up some Mount Washington gear and other gear from around the park system for some online sales.

[00:26:44] I do have a family in North Carolina and certainly a stop at Zeb's before I go down there for my niece and nephew. Helps make some more unique and less overly corporatized candy selection available to them that they seem to appreciate. Excellent.

[00:27:11] Yeah, I like the candy at Zeb's for sure. I like the soap too. I like going to that back corner and smelling all the soap. I've never bought soap but I'm always like, oh, what is this? You're making it like a Yankee candle, huh? Yes. Yeah, exactly.

[00:27:26] All right, Stomp. So next up we've got Paxatani Phil. So this is a groundhog that lives in Pennsylvania and he is essentially the arbiter of whether or not we're going to have an early spring or a late spring.

[00:27:43] Each year during Groundhog Day on February 2nd, he is taken out of his ... I think he lives in a groundhog pen or something and he's taken out and then whether or not he sees a shadow ... What is the rule, Stomp?

[00:27:57] I'm like 50 and I don't know the rule of the groundhog. Is it when he sees a shadow or doesn't see a shadow? What's happening here? If he doesn't see the shadow, that means it'll be an early spring.

[00:28:10] If he sees a shadow, he hides and that means that it'll be a lengthier winter from what I remember. And then what happened this year? He didn't see the shadow, correct? Yeah, he didn't see a shadow so it's going to be an early spring. Early spring.

[00:28:29] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, right? We'll see. We'll see. I did read today somebody was speculating that we were going to have an early spring and then someone else just said that we're in fall spring and that second winter is going

[00:28:41] to be on its way and then mud season will come along. So we'll see. We'll see for sure. And then a follow-up story to Paxatani Phil. So PETA, which is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, they are pushing to replace Phil.

[00:29:00] They want to retire Phil and replace him with a giant coin. Whoa, like flip it? They flip the coin, see what happens? Yes, yeah. Same effect I guess. Yeah, yeah. Huh. I don't know about that. Interesting.

[00:29:17] And then next up, Stomp, we've got our friends, the Waterville Valley Athletic and Improvement Association are having their winter social soon. Yeah, looks fun. So we'll include this in our show notes so you can book. What is this all about, Stomp? Are you going? I'm not sure.

[00:29:31] I will be guiding, so I'm not 100% sure, but this is Saturday, February 24th. It begins at 4.30. We will provide the link and you have to reserve online and then you can pay at the door, but

[00:29:43] they have a guest speaker, Dr. Rick Vandenpoel or Vandepoel who will be speaking and it just looks like a really nice time to socialize and get some education from Mr. Vandepoel who apparently promotes biodiversity conservation in New England. So that should be a really interesting time.

[00:30:03] Again, it's February 24th and we will give you the link so you can check it out and that's right here in Waterville. All right, Stomp. So next up we got a listener request. This is listener Instagram handle inthewoods29.

[00:30:19] We have a recent hike drop where we do like a back and forth around the fact that we're 3,500 feet up on a mountain- Lost. Nine miles from the car. Yeah, we're lost.

[00:30:31] So the listener was asking like where exactly are you if you're nine miles away from a car and 3,500 feet of elevation? So Stomp was asking me and I said, I don't know. I mean, I took a couple of guesses but what did you come up with?

[00:30:43] Well, I mean in the summer there are a few places that are that deep that would not have like an escape route, like a plan B for instance. But the one that I came up with is right below Bond Cliff as you're heading back towards

[00:30:57] Lincoln Woods Road at the hairpin. That's about 3,500 feet and that's about nine miles out. I think in the winter if the roads are closed, another one that came to mind was somewhere near like the Shoal Pond region but mostly in the Pemmi.

[00:31:12] That's as deep as you can get I think around here. I can't think of any other spots that would cover that bit of data. Yeah, you know what I was thinking was maybe like the weeks. The weeks. I'm going to kill Kenny Ridge or something.

[00:31:27] In the winter, yes? Yes. Yes. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I was trying to think of places though without like a spur trail that you could dive out on. If that were the case, yeah. That would be close too. So there you go people.

[00:31:43] That's where we are in that drop. 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. Well this is the part of the show.

[00:32:03] I'm going to skip a few things here, Stomp, but this is the part of the show where we do the dad joke. All right, what you got? What is an astronaut's favorite part of the keyboard? I have no clue. The space bar.

[00:32:19] Oh, okay, because I like the sound effects. I was looking at my Roland MIDI controller thinking keyboard like a piano, so I was way off. Yeah. Oh well. Space. So yeah, shout out to Camille and Lance.

[00:32:36] They've given me my 365 days of dad jokes and I've gone through six of them so far. That's so awesome. All right, so we have a sponsor here, Fieldstone Kombucha. Fieldstone Kombucha, New England's premium craft kombucha company.

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[00:35:44] Hey, hold my beer. It's time to find out what Mike and Stomp are drinking. On this week's Beer Talk. Alright, Stomp, are we at the part of the show where we do beer talk? Mm-mm, yeah-ha. Excited. Feels like a Friday, doesn't it? It does.

[00:36:05] Yeah, well I mean for listeners it's Friday, but it's a Thursday. Yep. What you got? So Stomp, I'm still working my way through the four pack of Small Change Brewery's A Little Reign American Pale Ale. It's pretty good. It's a beer.

[00:36:21] Good stuff. I've got one of these guys. I like this company here. So this is called Bombshell. It's 8% Imperial Blonde Ale and it's by the Greater Good Imperial Brewing Company. And it's a blonde. I don't even know what that is.

[00:36:36] So it's bright and citrusy. This 8% blonde features a mild maltiness and subtle notes of pineapple, melon and zesty tangerine. And a little bit of citra. Ah, there you go. It's pretty tasty. Very good. And Patrick, are you drinking anything or are you just having some water tonight?

[00:36:56] No, thank you for asking. Even though it's the middle of the week, I use this certainly as an excuse to crack one open and enjoy tonight with you fellas. I came prepared. You know, you had to have a 62-88 from our friends at

[00:37:15] Tuckerman Brewing and it is winter so stout season for me. And even though I don't have the right glass style, so to speak, I had to grab a traditional pint glass, New Hampshire State Parks pint glass here to enjoy it in. Oh great.

[00:37:34] That's what I'm enjoying this evening. A beer, I call a hobby. My untapped account I look at and call Exhibit A. It kind of guides my beer choices. But yeah, I figured I'm on with you guys here to represent the summit of Mount Washington

[00:37:54] in the park so a 62-88 stout would be fitting from our friends at Tuckerman Brewing. Now where do you get those glasses? Can you get those glasses at the... So this particular glass was issued for the First Day Hike, which is an event that is

[00:38:09] now in all 50 states. It just passed. It happens on January 1st. But it's an initiative to get outdoors on the first day of the year being January 1st. And while New Hampshire wasn't the first state to engage with the First Day Hike,

[00:38:28] actually I believe Massachusetts might have been the ones that broke ground on that. But for New Hampshire State Parks, we hosted our first ever First Day Hike many years ago at Monadnock State Park. It is an annual tradition at many of our state parks throughout the state

[00:38:45] where we host guided hikes in different parks throughout the state on January 1st. And that pint glass was a giveaway a couple years ago. One of the years, then I've continued to take it.

[00:39:03] So it's in the cabinet and, you know, I don't know. There's something to be said sometimes on certain days looking at your employer's logo with an alcoholic beverage. You go, you know what? This is a good pairing. This fits.

[00:39:24] Yes, exactly. Very good. Well, I got to remember to go over to Tuckerman Brewing and get some more. But that's a good call, Patrick. So, all right. So this is the part of the show, Stomp,

[00:39:37] where we're going to talk about recent hikes. So I know you're in snowmobile season at this point, so you're not really getting out there. But did you ride this weekend? Yeah, it was a great weekend. The weather was really nice. And despite the lack of snow,

[00:39:52] it's really not that bad out there. I actually got to take out a tour of listeners. Lee and a bunch of her friends came out, and we had several sleds ripping around the mountains.

[00:40:03] So that was really cool. And that's about it. So I'm looking forward to another great weekend. And apparently some more listeners are coming out this weekend. So we'll find out about that on the next episode. What area did you ride in, Stomp? Excuse me?

[00:40:18] I was just wondering what area that you went out in. Oh, we do Jefferson Notch. So I work out of Bretton Woods, and we go from the Twin Mountain town trails all the way up to the North Country, up into Gorham, Berlin.

[00:40:34] So it depends on the time allotted to us. But all over, right in your backyard, essentially. Yeah, that's great. Oh, it's fantastic. One of the stops we make is the Caps Ridge Trailhead, and I see you guys at the top of Mount Washington maybe 10% of the time.

[00:40:54] It's always sucked in. Sounds right. Yeah, yeah. But it's just beautiful. It's a lot of fun. Excellent stuff. Well, my plans got a little turned around, but I did a hike with our friend Nobby,

[00:41:06] and we were planning to just do a loop of, we were going to go by the Mizpah Hut and then skip Pierce and then go over to Jackson. And I had bought a new butt sled, so I wanted to test that out on the trail.

[00:41:20] So unfortunately, we got turned around. So we started at Crawford Path Extension, and Nobby was like fiddling around with all his gear when we were in the parking lot. He couldn't find a pair of his liner gloves.

[00:41:34] So I noticed as he was fiddling around, he had his heavier, thick gloves hanging out of his pockets. And I even videotaped it, and I said, like, that's going to be a problem. And sure enough, about a mile in, he had dropped his $60 nice gloves.

[00:41:51] So by the time we got up to Mizpah, he had told me, like, oh, Mike, I think I dropped my gloves. And it was a Friday, so it wasn't very crowded. And I knew immediately, I was like, well, what do you want to do?

[00:42:03] He's like, well, let me think about it. And I said, why are we pretending? You're going to go back and get that glove. So we got to Mizpah, and we had to put snowshoes on because it was getting a little windblown.

[00:42:15] And sure enough, Nobby's like, yeah, let's get the glove. And I said, of course you were going to get the glove. I said, why did you even think twice? So we ended up going up from Mizpah.

[00:42:26] And there's like two sections that are extremely steep that I wasn't prepared for. But otherwise, we got to the flat section. And it's kind of a lemon squeeze in there with the amount of snow that's covering the trees.

[00:42:41] And you got to climb under some and walk around some. And we were covered in snow by the time we got to the summit. That whole section is notorious anyway.

[00:42:52] I've never been there, but I've heard so many stories about people getting either in trouble in there or lost in there or whatever. And then to see your video or Nobby's video, I was shocked. I'm like, wow, it's absolutely beautiful.

[00:43:05] But I can see, I mean, is it like boggy or it's got to be a drainage to some degree, right? I think so. I think there's some wet spots up there. But it's mostly just like it's a narrow trail and the snow just sticks up there.

[00:43:21] And the trees just kind of fall in on each other. And I was on my knees crawling with snowshoes and stuff. But it was only a small section, maybe a quarter mile or so. Amazing. Amazing. It reminded me of Mitzpah.

[00:43:32] Always looks like the Overlook Hotel from The Shining with the big snow banks coming up the side of the walls. It was so quiet when we got there. It was just, there's nothing more quiet than winter hiking, winter hiking. But this was just nothing.

[00:43:49] You couldn't hear a pin drop. Yeah. Yeah. So hats off to Nobby. That was a fun video. I always look forward to seeing those. And Mike, seeing you butt-sledding down from the top view of Nobby down to you was the funniest thing ever.

[00:44:01] You looked like a miniature toy going down the trail. And then Nobby running behind you panting. It was a funny video, man. Yeah. Yeah. And he lost his snowshoe. And I know butt-sledding is controversial and some people don't like it because it does luge up the trails.

[00:44:18] But it's winter hiking. And I figured I'd try it out. So I bought an avalanche rocket sled and it worked out pretty well. The handles are a little too wide for the trail, so I did have to bend them up a bit.

[00:44:31] But I think I probably sled about 75% of the trail down from Mount Pierce Summit. So it was fun. Yeah. Great stuff. Good time. It was a good day. We got on a Friday. We saw like two or three other hikers.

[00:44:48] As a matter of fact, I do want to give a shout-out. I forget the hiker's name, but we said hi to him in the beginning. And he was wearing a dog collar attached to his backpack. And we asked him how he was doing. He said he's good.

[00:45:01] And he said it was his first hike out since his dog had passed away. So his dog joined him for all 4,000 footers. And he was a little emotional about just going on the hike by himself. So he does have some other dogs, but they're bigger dogs.

[00:45:18] So I forget the guy's name, but shout-out to him if he's listening. Because, you know, he talked for about 10 minutes about the dog. So I think he was happy to share that story. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good stuff. Yep. All right. And then, Patrick, have you done any recent hikes?

[00:45:37] Anything cool? Most recently, I hit the Boulder Loop off the Cancun Magus. Just kind of a get-out afternoon, which was enjoyable. Work seems to get in the way even in the off season sometimes more recently.

[00:45:58] So I haven't done a very commendable job over the last couple of winters of making the time to get out on the trails as much as I would like to. But, yeah, that was my most recent run, the Boulder Loop.

[00:46:13] Aside from trying to frustratingly snowshoe through the endless amounts of post-hulling by bare-boot hikers, it was enjoyable. Yeah, I bet. Now, did you get up on the summit in the last like— there was like a run of probably five or six days where there was incredible undercast.

[00:46:35] Were you up on the summit during that? I was. I was. Yeah, we had a great stretch of weather on the summit of Mount Washington and certainly around this area in the Mount Washington Valley and surrounding portions.

[00:46:50] It probably seemed pretty gloomy for a few days while we were in a sea of clouds for I think five or six days. So thankfully, I had a summit shift during that time. Undercast, I've seen every mood of Mount Washington and seen almost everything over the years.

[00:47:10] It feels like. But undercast is one of my favorite conditions, as it should be. To be able to experience that and to have that as your surroundings out the doors of your office is pretty incredible.

[00:47:33] One of our now past staff members, Chris Ueberholt, who we still hold dear, on a day like that might remark, can you imagine this in the paycheck too? So it's those kind of moments that I hear about and it's very grounding. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible.

[00:47:56] The pictures that were coming out on social media for that period were just unbelievable. But it's not a bad office. Not a lot of days. I would say that the challenges and the rewards are both at extreme ends of one another.

[00:48:29] It's time for Slashers Guest of the Week. Very cool, very cool. All right, well we're going to get into your official segment here, Patrick. So Stomp, why don't you kick this off and how did you guys connect?

[00:48:52] You've been wrangling all these great guests lately, so do you want to kick it off? I honestly have nothing to do with any of this. Here's the best I can put this all together. See, I call this the quartet, the Mount Washington Quartet.

[00:49:09] First we had the observatory and then Auto Road and then the cog and then we're putting the cherry on the top here with the Mount Washington Summit, the state park. And this is all because of Ty Gagne. So credit do where credit's due.

[00:49:26] Ty introduced us first off to Charlie over at the OBS and then one thing led to another and people started reaching out. So it's really this 12 degrees of separation type of thing. I guess what's humbling is that Slashers is sort of falling into a nice network

[00:49:42] of all these wonderful organizations and people. So we're humbled and Patrick, we're really glad to have you here with us talking. I'm sure the listeners will be absolutely floored by what we have to talk about tonight. And I think Andy's girlfriend gets some credit too, right?

[00:49:59] Oh yeah, well that's what I mean. But word spread that we existed and we were actually a platform to reach out to. But yeah, we didn't do any actual legwork to get people on. They just sort of reached out and had heard about us and whatever else.

[00:50:17] So yeah, but it all goes back to Ty. Excellent, great. Yeah. Great Patrick. So why don't you start off, introduce yourself if you could give a little bit of background on your early life, talk about sort of how you got into outdoor activities and hiking

[00:50:31] and then we'll get into a little bit more detail about what you do for work. Sure, yeah thanks. I'm happy to be here. I'm grateful to be given the opportunity and certainly enjoy the show. And so I thank you both for having me on.

[00:50:51] My landing at the summit of Mount Washington, I can't say was a linear smooth career path nor one that I set out with with any intention. And I don't know how one would to take on the role and the responsibility of the entire

[00:51:12] operation of the summit of the highest peak in the Northeast with some of the most notorious weather wasn't really something that I had set out for. I started a career in parks 23 years ago. So it was at 1863, I think somewhere around there. Sounds about right.

[00:51:36] As a summer gig at Monadnock State Park, I grew up in Jaffray in the shadow of that mountain to with no upbringing in the outdoors. My parents are from Brooklyn. They felt that being in the Monadnock region, having Mount Monadnock in the background was nice.

[00:52:07] They couldn't imagine why anyone would want to walk up there. And so my upbringing didn't really have a traditional New England upbringing in the sense of appreciation of but really just being pulled into the outdoors. I didn't grow up camping, hiking or anything else.

[00:52:26] And it was that mountain, it was Monadnock that really not only brought me to into my career path in the park system, but really into my love of the outdoors. And it was a story and a trajectory of discovery of self.

[00:52:46] The mountain was in my backyard, not literally. I could see it going out on a bike from the neighborhood. My eyes were always drawn to it, to that mountain, even as a young person. But it was as a teenager, I started hiking the mountain very poorly, but successfully.

[00:53:09] I didn't have a mentor to show me the ropes. It was trial and error. It was, oh, Doc Martens aren't a hiking boot. Oh, it gets dark at this time. So Monadnock is a tough mountain.

[00:53:28] It can be unforgiving and it can act like a much bigger mountain than it kind of is. And I've seen it also over the years be pretty fierce, but it also can be sometimes more forgiving

[00:53:42] than some other mountains can be when you're not prepared or really know what you're doing. And in cases where it's not forgiving, you have park staff there to bail you out.

[00:53:57] But yeah, Monadnock kind of gave me that avenue to access to the outdoors, to access to a mountain. Monadnock was a symbol of home, traveling out of the area, whether it was to New York City to see family or elsewhere.

[00:54:14] I knew on the way home when I saw that mountain in the horizon that I was home. You know, even if we weren't in the driveway, I was home. And I still feel that way. That mountain's taught me a lot. It's been one of my greatest teachers.

[00:54:31] I had the privilege of not only working there, but eventually becoming the park manager and helping to not only take care of that mountain, but to take care of the people who are also there enjoying it,

[00:54:44] to the people who are there discovering it, to the people who are there with their family. That mountain is steeped in tradition with families and grandparents hiking with children, with their grandkids, when they themselves hiked that same mountain with their grandparents.

[00:55:03] It really is almost a definition of public service because you're providing not only the opportunity to share the mountain and to share its history and to share its lore and its pull with present-day individuals,

[00:55:24] but you're also setting it up for the future, for the people who haven't climbed it yet. When you were younger, I'm assuming you got together with friends after school or on a weekend, and you would go up and hike. How did you end up actually formally working there?

[00:55:38] Was that just hanging around so much eventually? You get to know, obviously, somebody's father works there, and then, hey, we found out there's a job opening. Is that pretty much how you landed in there? That was precisely it.

[00:55:52] I was looking for a summer job, especially early on in college. I had a family friend working there, so that gave me a foot in the door. Even though I'd hiked Manatnock before that, joining up with the park crew,

[00:56:11] it wasn't as motivated by the location as it was by convenience. Yeah, I'll take a job here for the summer. Seems like fun. People have that romantic notion of working in parks, and sometimes it has fruitful moments,

[00:56:33] and there are other times where you're chiseling ice in an outhouse, you're plunging a urinal. You're also dealing with a lot of other things that come with outdoor recreation, cleaning campsites. It also taught me some work ethic.

[00:56:49] I was fortunate to work under a staff and to come out of a place where I was able to look and learn from the people around me and use that as, oh, this is what we do. I don't have to be directly told I'm seeing what we do.

[00:57:06] I see the work ethic. I'm also fortunate, not just for Manatnock, Mount Washington as well. These are iconic places. These are places that mean a lot to people and that doesn't evade the people who work at those places.

[00:57:25] A place like Manatnock State Park, a place like Mount Washington State Park, you're going to get chewed up and ground out pretty quickly if you're not there for the right reasons,

[00:57:39] and the right reasons is to be there for the park and to be there for the location because that place means something to you. You want to help share it. You want to help protect it.

[00:57:49] You want to help provide that access because you're sharing it with people who also have that enthusiasm for it and have that awe. These locations imminently draw people and retain people who love the place just as much as the people who visit it,

[00:58:14] and I think that's really valuable. I'm interested in Manatnock. I was actually curious. You started there, seasonal work, and then I'm assuming you went to college. Did you major in forestry or some sort of outdoor focus? No. My major is basically management, almost business management,

[00:58:39] which was my alternative to basically not understanding the computer science degree that I initially signed up for. So I've gotten real lucky in my career path in that sense.

[00:58:52] I moved over in my degree to management because that gave me the most amount of credits to transfer without having lost so much time and just having to start from scratch.

[00:59:04] A lot of the computer science degree I was in was in programming, and boy, was I awful at it. So I quickly realized I was not doing the right thing. So that management degree, packaged with experience, really provided gradual experience.

[00:59:23] I started from the ground up, and not that it's changed. I still clean toilets today. But you start from the ground up and you keep going, but I found that the more time I spent at that part, the more I wanted to be there,

[00:59:39] and the more I wanted to be involved in its success and its protection and its future. And Manatnock continues to be really just ingrained in so many ways in my life, even though I've been away from it now for 10, 11 years professionally.

[01:00:01] It's a wonderful mountain, and there's a reason why that mountain has the history it does, has the literature, art, and just general appeal.

[01:00:13] I've been at the summit of Manatnock, I don't know how many times, but it's interesting because Manatnock has had a long history in regards to recreation and access and development.

[01:00:27] And when you stand at the summit of Manatnock, not to harp on Manatnock the whole time, but when you stand at the top of that mountain, you're seeing an unobstructed 360-degree view of many places and other mountains.

[01:00:43] And you see places, not just Mount Washington 105 miles to the north, but you see Mount Ascutney, you see Mount Wachusett, you see Crotchet Mountain, you see Pack Manatnock, Miller State Park.

[01:00:59] What do those mountains have in common? They have the touch of man. They have infrastructure. They have roads. They have other towers. They have other developments.

[01:01:10] Manatnock doesn't. Why does it not? Not because someone never thought of it. It's because that mountain seems to be so important to people that grassroots efforts multiple times over the decades have eliminated that threat, that has pushed back.

[01:01:29] The general public has viewed Mount Manatnock as so valuable that it should largely feel and look very much today like it did 150-plus years ago when Henry David Thoreau hiked that mountain.

[01:01:45] I think aside from what he sees in the surrounding area and changes, Thoreau would recognize Manatnock quite well to what we see today. There's some validation there.

[01:01:57] And that's not to say these other peaks and other mountains are not as valuable or not as important, but something happened at Manatnock where the general population around there and beyond just said no.

[01:02:10] And I think that is important. I think it's valuable. It's almost comical that I have that opinion based on where I work today.

[01:02:20] Right. Do you have, in your opinion, I actually love Manatnock as a Friday night hike. So in the summertime, I don't think there's a better act. If you live in Massachusetts, in my opinion, leave your house at 1.30, 2 o'clock, get to Manatnock at like 3.30, assuming you're a faster hiker.

[01:02:40] And you can be the last one down there before the sun. Obviously, bring your headlamp and all that stuff. You'll be experienced. But I love it on a Friday night and then go out to dinner afterwards. It's a great experience.

[01:02:51] But I've mostly done the Spellman to Pompelli and then down White Cross or White Dot loop. But do you have a personal opinion on the best approach or your favorite set of trails to do?

[01:03:07] Yeah, I've been all over that mountain, including abandoned, now abandoned trails, which is always an interesting activity. So personally, I love Cliff Walk. The Smith Summit Trail is special.

[01:03:28] Bald Rock is just a great location for a hangout. Pompelli as well, just the Cascade Link to Pompelli loop and kind of working your way back if you're starting from the headquarters area down through the old toll road network and eventually finding your way through is a great day hike.

[01:03:55] Manadnock's got almost 40 miles of hiking trails in 6,000 acres and 70 to 80% of it is on the White Dot, White Cross Junction along with the White Arrow. So there's quiet corners even on the busiest days.

[01:04:14] So I was more drawn to that and not that I'm anti-summit by any stretch. But also having worked there and managed there, sometimes when I was out on Manadnock, I would want to stay sort of isolated. I'd want to connect with the woods and the mountain and didn't want to be in a place where I was socializing or catching up with people.

[01:04:35] So sometimes the quieter corners of that mountain were sort of what drew me in on my days off. Also, my days off sometimes were spent doing trail assessment because that's the time I had to do it in regards to getting maintenance done and other needs.

[01:04:51] The search and rescue aspect of Manadnock, so I would say like Franconia, Mount Washington are probably the two biggest hotspots but Manadnock's right behind it. But the thing is, my perspective is from news media reports, I suspect in Manadnock there's so many rescues that go on that never hit the news. So I could be wrong about the volume. It could be that Manadnock has more than anywhere else. But in your role, were you involved in a lot of search and rescues?

[01:05:17] Absolutely. Yeah, Mike, Manadnock, I don't know, again, I haven't been there in 10 years in regards to a professional role but Manadnock always felt to me like the search and rescue center of New England because of the setup of the park, the accessibility and the fact that Manadnock is an isolated peak.

[01:05:42] So throughout the years there hasn't been that strong search and rescue volunteer effort as their, his here are the lights and now growing elsewhere to the lakes region and beyond which is great.

[01:05:56] But a lot of the times a call for help would come in for a hiker and we might have a CO from Fish and Game who's a 60 minute drive away from the base of the mountain, let alone getting up and getting going.

[01:06:10] So the state park staff at Manadnock and continues to be sort of at the front line of search and rescue there. And that was no different when I was there.

[01:06:19] And I would say that because certainly Fish and Game has the policy in their agency to issue press releases for responses where New Hampshire State Parks doesn't, there's a lot that goes on unreported. Because the state park staff does a lot of the heavy lifting.

[01:06:42] Fish and Game is extremely valuable as is every other entity that assists down there. So that's not to knock anybody because it's always a team effort no matter what mountain you're on.

[01:06:54] It just happened to be that Manadnock had the availability of park staff who not only were accessible but knew the mountain best in regards to how to evacuate.

[01:07:06] When you're dealing with a litter carry, depending on the time of year and the time of day sometimes it could change your path as to how you want to carry the person down in regards to your choice of trails.

[01:07:21] And that was always given basically to the park staff to say, okay how are we doing this and what trails are we using and what's the best way. It speaks to a really great collaborative effort between our agency and the Fish and Game department.

[01:07:37] And I had a lot of experience there with that and I bring that to Mount Washington and our staff's involvement in the search and rescue community on the Rock Pile.

[01:07:47] The White Dot Trail, that's got to be a horrible place for people to slip and fall when it gets wet. Especially because you've got a population of people that are not hardcore hikers.

[01:08:02] They may get pulled there by a friend, they may not have experience going down those sort of chimneys.

[01:08:07] Did you ever think of potentially doing some sort of more drastic trail maintenance where carving steps into that section or trying to limit some of the steeper parts of that trail to make it even put in rebar or something like that.

[01:08:24] I know we always hate to talk about that, we want to leave nature natural but the amount of rescues there, it seems like that might be a potential for putting in some mitigating features. It could. Yeah, Adnox is unforgiving in some places. It's only 3,000 feet.

[01:08:47] That mountain is a challenge and certainly with a litter carry it can be. There haven't been sections in my experience that we've altered strictly on a search and rescue component.

[01:09:03] I've done enough litter carries on that mountain, we know where the challenging portions are and we kind of have our methodology down through certain ledgy sections with belays and other things.

[01:09:16] We also have problems in areas where people fall that we do our best to maintain but ultimately are more susceptible to people losing their footing. I used to joke that Adnox was the home of the underprepared hiker.

[01:09:32] I don't know if that tradition has changed much but accidents happen to all of us, however prepared we want to be it happens.

[01:09:42] But we've had certain times where we wanted to station our responders or our mountain patrollers in certain trail sections just to keep an eye on people in problematic areas.

[01:10:00] But Adnox has benefited since I've left as a lot more focus on trail maintenance, more resources, not necessarily just focus but resources to be able to tackle some things.

[01:10:14] Adnox trails week continues to be an annual tradition in conjunction with the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. Five days of trail maintenance on Adnox every year that we do in conjunction with SPNF and there's other resources that have been going down there.

[01:10:32] And I'm happy to hear that, you know, I don't want the staff or the management at Adnox to have to necessarily go through some of the same motions and hurdles that I had to during my time.

[01:10:43] The whole point is to try to set the place up better for the next person. So that, you know, they have less challenges than maybe you had and but the challenges will never go away.

[01:10:55] And some of them will continue and that's, you know, carried me forward to how I view Mount Washington as well and how we manage the summit. It's not with an eye just to make it through and tread water every day.

[01:11:08] It's also how can we improve the summit, the access, the experience for the people who haven't arrived yet. Yeah, and then so with your work at Monadnock, you eventually transitioned into a different role. Can you talk about like the transition between Monadnock and then getting to Mount Washington?

[01:11:31] How did that happen? That transition for me, so I left Monadnock in, like I said, I think 1862.

[01:11:43] I think in 2014 and then I took on the role of the volunteer program for the New Hampshire State Park System and managing that program, which was really almost resurrecting it and repairing it.

[01:11:59] Our agency lost a lot of relationships around the state, particularly with some friends groups, because we did not do a good job in supporting them.

[01:12:10] And there were a lot of places around the state where friends groups, I want to say took over, but you know, they were essentially feeling like they were managing properties that our agency had a responsibility for.

[01:12:25] So in my role at that time, I moved out of park operations and into more of an organizational relationship role. And I had to step in to some scenarios that people had no interest in seeing me or our agency.

[01:12:45] Showing up to friends groups meetings, wondering why I was even there. There was a lot of relationship repair to do and that takes time and that takes trust building. And it's important to not get into a struggle at that point with organizations and groups.

[01:13:06] It's important to try to align yourself with them because you know, why are they there? Why are they giving the most valuable time, the most valuable thing they have, which is time dedicated to certain properties.

[01:13:18] And it's because they feel about it like I do about Menadnock and that I do about Mount Washington because we have a tremendous bond with these natural locations. It means so much to us.

[01:13:27] And so it was cultivating those relationships and making sure that they knew that, you know, at least for me in my position and for our agency, we were back in a serious way.

[01:13:40] Not to take over or push them aside, but to work with them, to empower them and to help them help us take care of some of these properties. Yeah, I think the listeners, maybe you can explain this better than I can.

[01:13:54] But like I hate to use the word jurisdiction because it sounds so official, but maybe stewardship's a better example. But there's 70 plus New Hampshire State Parks and then you've got the National Forest and then you've got local communities that have a stake in their local town forests.

[01:14:10] So you've got this whole intertwined web of stakeholders that in trails cross, you know, trails don't care about jurisdiction. They cross everywhere. So then you've got these volunteer groups that are that are supporting it.

[01:14:24] So can you sort of and maybe this is an impossible ask, but can you just briefly explain that network of the state parks and the national forest and local community stakeholders? It's multi-layered. It can be confusing and understandably, it's confusing just for the Summit of Mount Washington.

[01:14:46] I'm sure we have a lot of people listening to the show now who are discovering that the Summit of Mount Washington is actually a state park. And that it's state employees who are up there as the main caretakers of the top of Mount Washington year round 24-7, 365.

[01:15:01] In regards to the park system, you know, we're not isolated. We work hand in hand with private, also nonprofit, sometimes for profit and other government agencies, whether it's state or federal as land abutters.

[01:15:18] There can be a lot of layers to these. The default is who's responsible for the land, which was how we kind of approach things on a basic level with some of our friends groups to remind them that,

[01:15:31] what they do affects us because the New Hampshire State Park System is responsible for the properties that, you know, they're trying to make decisions on or even, you know, do certain work on.

[01:15:43] So we want to make sure that that's done in a way that protects everybody, including those people doing the work, the volunteer work. There's a lot of work to be done there to evolve and to work hand in hand with folks and that work continues today.

[01:16:00] You know, so for the park system, which is actually 93 properties around our little state of New Hampshire that the park system is responsible for,

[01:16:09] it's kind of called a monopoly on some of our most beautiful locations in New Hampshire that our park system is thankfully involved with, if not outright caretaking for.

[01:16:21] From Hampton Beach State Park and the other amazing seacoast parks in New Hampshire all the way up to the highest point in the Northeast, you know, Mount Washington.

[01:16:32] You talk about Monadnock, you talk about Cardigan, even Mount Major has acreage that's a state forest, you know, that many people adore. Patuckaway, Bearbrook, it's a great, dynamic, amazing little park system we have in New Hampshire.

[01:16:49] And for me, with the summit of Mount Washington, it's part of that and I think people should be proud of that in this state.

[01:16:56] So then your role before you took over responsibility for Mount Washington, so you had to go into work with different stakeholder groups that may have been not as engaged.

[01:17:10] With in the past, so did you find that building those relationships back was, you were able to find a way in and build that trust back up?

[01:17:20] I feel like I did a lot of heavy lifting there. I don't know how much I finished. It continues. Andy Crowley, who's our volunteer manager now, that program is doing a great job.

[01:17:32] So it was for me, it was putting it together and to kind of start building these relationships back and then eventually handing it off, which is sort of the approach. It wasn't any different at Monadnock. We have a great management team down there.

[01:17:48] I'm very supportive and happy about Will and Mary and our managers down at Monadnock because it's a place that means a lot. But I recognize that I've handed that place off and it's theirs now. And I feel good about that.

[01:18:05] So that's the other thing with this role that we have such personal relationships with these locations that sort of recognizing what our capacity is there.

[01:18:16] And you're there for a moment of time and you hope to make a difference. And your name may not be carried forward, which is fine. But what you do affects what happens tomorrow and in years going on.

[01:18:32] So for me, I packaged my operational experience at Monadnock with my relationship and program management to the volunteer program through our park system. And that brought me, I think, a pretty good platform to stand on for Mount Washington.

[01:18:51] I landed at Mount Washington because I took advantage of an offer by previous management on that mountain. Mike Pelchat left some pretty large boots to fill at that park, extended the opportunity for others in the park system to come up and spend nights up there.

[01:19:13] Mount Washington State Park is staffed 24-7, 365 by our state park staff. Of course, people know the observatory is up there as well. And we could talk about who does what at some point.

[01:19:27] But our park staff's up there. So I said, geez, I've got an open invitation to go spend a winter overnight on the summit of Mount Washington just because I work in the park system.

[01:19:35] That's a no brainer. I got to go do it. And I did that for a number of years. Just going up one or two nights, doing some grunt work to kind of pay the rent, so to speak, and spending time there.

[01:19:48] So I got to learn the mountain a little bit in the off season. I got to spend time with Mike and to learn a little bit more about the management, the staff and the role.

[01:19:57] I created my personal relationship with the mountain at that point. I've been, you know, hiked it a few times. I find busy mountains and manage them, I guess. That's quite a niche you found there.

[01:20:13] It's really, I want to say unique. It hasn't been done in regards to somebody managing the Mount Adnok and Mount Washington. And I don't put that as a braggart feather in my cap. Both mountains mean a lot to me.

[01:20:28] And I know we spoke about Mount Adnok a lot before. Mount Washington is just as valuable to me.

[01:20:34] And that mountain means so much. To be given the opportunity and the privilege to be a part of its, not only operations management and part of the vision of the future is just an incredible privilege in a public service sense.

[01:20:53] It means a lot to me. It means a lot to the people who work with us at the State Park at the Summit. We know what our role is up there. We're not up there to answer to a group of shareholders.

[01:21:08] We're not there to maximize profits. We're there in a public service sense. So that comes with a lot of sacrifices. It comes with a lot of lack of certain things that other people might have in their jobs.

[01:21:22] But it means a lot to us because the mountain means a lot to us. I love mountains. I can't even begin to describe how flooring that is to me.

[01:21:32] I've been able to give back in a professional way to two places that are so near and dear to me. It sounds like a dream job to a lot of our listeners, I bet.

[01:21:44] I try to, on Memorial Day weekend, I try to get up there usually by like nine o'clock in the morning. I think one year I actually got there too early and I couldn't get in the door. But I loved getting in early and I was like, oh no.

[01:21:57] And it was kind of cold. I was like, all right, I'm not going to wait a half hour. But I do get in there and I've experienced it a few times where you can feel the buzz on that first weekend amongst the staff.

[01:22:08] I sit there at the table and I'll just watch everything going on. And I think there's still some unpacking that's happening and everything's moving, but you can feel the buzz. So can you talk a little bit about preparation for the busy season and what goes on before that?

[01:22:24] It's a mad dash. Opening the summit of Mount Washington is not an easy task. Yeah, there is a buzz to it.

[01:22:31] Mount Washington State Park and the summit facilities, it takes a lot of work that I don't think people really understand or appreciate to get a little village in the sky ready to go for the season.

[01:22:45] So the staff works diligently to get the park turned over from winter mode to operating mode. So there's a lot that goes on and a lot that's involved to that.

[01:23:02] Sometimes I joke that we serve, and it sounds counterintuitive for Mount Washington's weather and its reputation, but sometimes I jokingly say that we survive the summer to get to the winter. Because in five months, we see 350,000 people come through our doors.

[01:23:24] There's three ways to get to our park. You have the Mount Washington Auto Road, you have the Mount Washington Cog Railway, you have the hiking trails. We don't control any portion of those entrances. Essentially, those folks land at our front door and become our guests.

[01:23:41] So we take them on and hopefully do a good job in regards to providing the services and the experience people are looking for. But it takes a lot of work to get the place open.

[01:23:54] I will say that by the end of the winter, I think we're ready to socialize with people other than ourselves and Nimbus.

[01:24:03] It's kind of exciting to have the first visitors through the door again and to be able to engage with the public, to share the mountain with them, to answer their questions, to help them have a good time up there and to advise hikers on what they should be doing or not doing.

[01:24:22] There is sort of an opening day type of optimism and buzz in the air when we finally get the place open and we're ready to welcome people from all over the world back through our doors again. It's a fun time. Yeah, yeah.

[01:24:49] I tell people like go up Memorial Day weekend. It's really interesting to just sort of see, you know, just sense the vibe there. But question for you on the coordination across all the stakeholders. So you've got the Mount Washington Observatory. You've got the COG. You've got the autoroads.

[01:25:10] You've got your staff. How does all those stakeholders, is there like a central committee that all gets together to talk through things or do you just, do you act as the conduit between all the stakeholders? It's kind of both.

[01:25:24] We have the Mount Washington Commission, which is a legislatively established group to help advise the state on the management and the operation of Mount Washington State Park that includes stakeholders. I like to view Mount Washington as more of a community collective.

[01:25:44] So there's, because there's so many entities and it's evolved over time, there's understandable confusion and a little bit of misunderstanding about how the summit works and how the mountain works and who has what role.

[01:26:04] For Mount Washington State Park, we are the 60 acres of the very top of Mount Washington. Our state park staff is essentially responsible for everything that goes on at the summit. We are the 24-7, 365 caretakers of the top of Mount Washington.

[01:26:22] So that's the state parks role in a nutshell. You have the Mount Washington Observatory. The Observatory, a 501c3 nonprofit weather research organization. They are not an extension of the federal government, although they do report and work with NOAA and others. They're a standalone weather research nonprofit.

[01:26:44] The observatory is a tenant of the state park. They don't own anything up there. And their role is what their mission is, which is to record, report the weather and to carry on scientific research. The work the observatory does is vital.

[01:27:01] It is essential, as you know, and as you have shared and expressed to the safety and also understanding of Mount Washington and its weather. They have a very valuable role on the summit.

[01:27:15] So it's not to take anything away from the observatory, but that's the focus is the weather. So we have a tenant-landlord relationship really with the ops, but it's a lot deeper than that regarding the state park and the observatory. It's a great partnership with them.

[01:27:37] And they share the summit with us. The observatory, of course, is also there 24-7, 365. So they share the facility with us in their rented space, but we're there with them communally. The Mount Washington Auto Road provides the access to the summit. Private road, private tourist attraction.

[01:27:59] And so they're certainly ingrained in the mountain's history and the access, the state park and the observatory use the road for access at all times up and down the mountain. So that relationship is very important between the state and the auto road.

[01:28:17] The Mount Washington Cog Railway, since 1869, world's first mountain climbing railroad. They are another player. Their guests, like the auto roads, essentially become our guests once they step off the train. But we have a more dynamic and involved relationship with them as well.

[01:28:40] The United States Forest Service, the White Mountain National Forest is our land of butters. The forest is outside of the park boundary, an invisible line that is important for taking care of the mountain as a whole.

[01:29:03] And so we work hand in hand with the Forest Service at Mount Washington, as we do in Franconia Notch State Park, Crawford Notch State Park. There's a boundary there where hiking trails go across the state into federal boundaries. People don't really notice and that's okay.

[01:29:21] But certainly we want to keep a good relationship with the US Forest Service and we continue to, Mount Washington and elsewhere. Something that state agencies sometimes struggle with in other parts of the country. But the Forest Service is an important stakeholder for us.

[01:29:38] And then you have other tenants in the park, communications tenants, both private and governmental. The Appalachian Mountain Club is an important relationship for us up there. And I'm sure I'm forgetting more. Is there a post office service up there? That's not the official US post office.

[01:30:01] For some reason I have it in my head that you can actually do meal delivery there or you can send meals. You can, yeah. That's a good question. There's so much to talk about with Mount Washington and its history and the dynamics and the ins and outs.

[01:30:15] Mount Washington is home to, not a formal US post office, but what it has is space occupied in the Sherman Adams Summit Building, which is a state park facility by the Cog Railway. The Cog Railway has a carrier's agreement basically as a contractor from US Postal Service.

[01:30:35] So the Cog is authorized to take mail up and down the mountain, mostly down. But one unique aspect about Washington that ties into that is it has a tradition of that, but also the Summit of Mount Washington has its own unique zip code.

[01:30:54] 03589 is a zip code for the Summit of Mount Washington. It is not shared with any other municipality or any other location.

[01:31:05] And the benefit of that, I guess, or the novelty one might say, is the ability to mail things from the summit, usually postcards, but that comes with its own unique postal stamp. Do you sell that zip code, like shirts or anything like that in the gift?

[01:31:28] We have not marketed that yet, no. That's going to be a new tattoo for the hiking community, I'm sure. 03589, yeah. Yeah, that's Mount Washington's unique zip code.

[01:31:41] So if you've mailed anything off of the Summit of Mount Washington, which like I said is usually postcards at this point, you do get a unique postal stamp that states that.

[01:31:51] The Cog Railway brings the mail down on the last train of the day, they transfer it over to the Postal Service in Twin Mountains and off it goes to wherever around the world postcards are being sent from the summit.

[01:32:04] The post office and that function, that's how it works. Wow, so we talked about the Sherman Adams Building, but there's also the Tip Top House.

[01:32:15] Which I've been in there before, like it is open during the summer season, but do you go in there at all during the winter? Yeah, we will to check on it. That usually involves taking the boards off one of the windows and hopping in.

[01:32:30] So the Tip Top House is another unique aspect of our state park and the Summit of Mount Washington. The Tip Top House was constructed in 1853, it's the second ever structure built on the Summit of Mount Washington.

[01:32:43] As the tourism industries, especially the Grand Hotel era started to get traction and boom in the mid 1800s, someone had in 1852 the bright idea to build a stone overnight structure at the top of Mount Washington.

[01:33:01] In 1853 somebody said, oh yeah that's a good idea and built a competing stone structure right next door. And thus the battle for dollars on the Summit of Mount Washington was started.

[01:33:15] So the Tip Top House is currently closed, obviously not just because of the time of year, but it's been closed since 2020 for renovations. The Tip Top House last got significant renovations in the mid 1980s.

[01:33:35] That's 40 years, which doesn't sound so long ago, but for a structure at the top of Mount Washington it is. Even a stone structure. So the Tip Top House got a little tired.

[01:33:49] Our park staff went in there in 2020 when we couldn't make it available to the general public because of some pandemic.

[01:33:59] And tried to use the time to start freshening up the place and unfortunately we started peeling back layers so to speak and found that there were deeper problems in there than we anticipated.

[01:34:13] It's like any other construction project, right? You pull back a wall and then you find more and more problems. My recollection of going in there is that it had a very Lord of the Rings vibe. That's how I recall it. Absolutely. Yeah, like Rohan.

[01:34:30] Yeah, the intention for Tip Top and will continue to be is that you feel like you're stepping back in time.

[01:34:36] So we're not trying to capture a snapshot of a particular year, but we're really trying to reflect the early days of the setup of the Tip Top House when it was initially set up for overnight accommodations.

[01:34:48] And to bring our visitors back to a point where they walk through the door and feel like almost a portal that they're in that time period to kind of reflect and learn what summit life was like back then.

[01:35:04] But the Tip Top House has gone through, it's really got an interesting history.

[01:35:10] It's got, not only was it set up for overnight accommodations initially, but a daily newspaper was printed at the Tip Top House after the Summit House Hotel was built and Tip Top had an alternative usage as a printing press.

[01:35:26] So they would not only print a daily newspaper, it's called Among the Clouds in the Tip Top House, but it would then be distributed in the morning off the mountain and to the hotels in the area.

[01:35:40] And obviously they were able to sell quite a bit of advertising in there, but they would report on what was going on in the summit, who was visiting. And that was a neat part of that building's history.

[01:35:54] A lot of people also don't really think about, and I haven't, I can't say I've verified this through research, but I will say with utmost confidence that building's been there since 1853.

[01:36:07] I am fully confident that the Tip Top House structure has seen more 100 mile per hour winds than any other building on the planet. I challenge anyone to find otherwise. That's impressive. Is there any modern maintenance that goes into reinforcing that, like rebar or concrete that's been put in?

[01:36:29] That building, I don't call it tight, but structurally it's pretty sound. What's needed right now and what we're focusing on is really interior renovations of the interior walls, building out new displays and just trying to set the building up for the next 40 years for visitors.

[01:36:50] So we're hoping, and probably not going to be available in 24, but it's really of utmost importance we make that building accessible again. But we want to make sure we do this project right. We're doing a lot of great research.

[01:37:03] So the Tip Top House has been there since 1853. It's got a lot of history recorded, but that history is scattered.

[01:37:10] And so over the last few months, we've been, you know, while the construction season can't happen, doing a lot of research and trying to pull together the Tip Top House's history in regards to its information that's available.

[01:37:32] And trying to source it into one location and organize it. We've been going through and verifying some famous people that have stayed there.

[01:37:45] I mean, it's got to be the ultimate building where if these walls could talk. The amount of history and the amount of... I can only imagine people crawling in there in the early 1900s, late 1800s, just like almost dodging death and making it to survive.

[01:38:06] We're trying to, for sure. Yeah, so I mean, we've had ex-presidents stay there. Mary Todd Lincoln and Robert Lincoln stayed there. I mentioned him earlier. Henry David Thoreau spent a night there.

[01:38:21] And I think that's an important part of the history. Not that, you know, the well-knownness of individuals is solely important. But when we're able to share information like that, I think it brings the importance of the building more to the forefront as you're standing in there.

[01:38:41] And you're saying, wow, I'm standing here in the same place that these individuals also stayed. You know, and you kind of reflect upon a little bit about where we came from.

[01:38:53] But the Tip Top House feels a little bit like the Summit's unspoken hero. And historically, it's got such an interesting history. It's such a neat building. It's one of the oldest surviving mountaintop hostels in the world. And we have it right here in the Granite State.

[01:39:12] And so we want to not only organize and pull together some of that information and history, but we want to be able to share that in a meaningful way with everyone who's able to visit once we're able to get those doors open again.

[01:39:26] Yeah, I'll be first in line to buy a book if you ever write one about it. I'll have to get started. So again, I'm going to put on my representative of the hiking community hat and I'm going to ask you another question that needs to be answered.

[01:39:43] What exactly are you using for hot dogs on the Summit? Because there's something about the hot dogs in the Sherman Adams building. And then also something about, even though it's bottled Coke, there's something about the Coke that is just like, it's the best Coke that you can imagine.

[01:39:59] And then the hot dogs are better than what you would find at Fenway Park. So I don't know what your procurement specialist is doing, but I need to sort of understand what's going on. It's the elevation, Mike. Come on.

[01:40:13] I think so. I think it's, I will say, I challenge anyone to find a better hot dog at 6,000 feet in New England. Lack of oxygen.

[01:40:22] Oh, that's amazing. Amazing. Maybe it has something to do with like that, you know, 3,000 foot climb or 4,000 foot climb that makes it seem better.

[01:40:30] I think it could be some of that. I will say that our staff works really hard on providing that. The food service at the Summit of Mount Washington is provided through the State Park staff.

[01:40:43] We have our retail or gift shop up there in the Sherman Adams building as well. And our State Park staff and our retail managers take a lot of pride in what they do.

[01:40:54] They do so much with so little in the sense that, you know, we're in a building that's 40 plus years old that wasn't really set up to service the amount of people that we have or to provide.

[01:41:11] You know, we have a kitchen that doesn't even have great ventilation. It's one of the most unforgiving places in the park for our staff to work during a day. And that's being said from a park that also operates a wastewater treatment plant.

[01:41:27] So, and everything that gets up there is not dropped off. No one's making deliveries. It's what goes up must come down and vice versa.

[01:41:38] So the State Park staff, you know, those hot dogs have got to come a long way to get up there before they're even prepared. Chili, pizza, other things. It's a heavy part of the thing that keeps the lights on.

[01:41:53] Mount Washington State Park is self-funded in and of itself. The park doesn't run on anything except our retail sales and some of our tenants. But there's no other revenues coming in. There's no charge to get into the park.

[01:42:13] So it's a delicate balancing act. Thank you for buying those hot dogs. It helps keep doors open. Oh, I love them. I love them. Now, do you have any big capital projects that are lined up in the future at this point?

[01:42:27] We're finishing one now. Thankfully, you know, capital projects have provided some outlets for the park to operate. It's a, you know, I'd like to say I joke, but sometimes I don't.

[01:42:41] When we're looking at the State Park expense up there, you go, well, how many sweatshirts do we have to sell to get that? How many chili dogs do we have to sell in order to get that park truck or to get something else that we need to function?

[01:42:57] So that's a very real thing. But, you know, the park does the best it can with what it has. And our staff does a great job maximizing things. It's just an unforgiving environment to work in. And, you know, financially it's sustainably tough.

[01:43:20] But the capital improvement projects help from the general tax fund, which is not normally something that supports the park system in regards to its operation. We have a new wastewater treatment plant. We had a new water system project married together that I'm sure visitors noticed last year.

[01:43:38] A lot of construction vehicles in all of the high demand places like the summit cone and the observation deck. I think our staff, the contractors, all did their best to minimize the immediate impact. Some pictures that hikers posted were interesting.

[01:44:01] Some of the equipment in the background or the giant hole next to the observation deck where our new water storage tanks were.

[01:44:09] But, yeah, that's part of the reality of running a little city in the sky is some of these investments and some of these improvements can't be done on chili dogs alone.

[01:44:20] So being able to have the accessibility of some of these funds through our legislature is vital to the continuing offering. If you have no wastewater treatment plant, you have no state park up there, which you have no access.

[01:44:39] Yeah. And so I think the takeaway for the hikers listening is that, you know, don't even if you did pack that extra sandwich to save yourself a buck or two, like just go get the hot dog or the chili dog or the pizza or the soup.

[01:44:52] If you want to. Money's not wasted and it's not going into anybody's bottom line, you know. So I want to stress that, you know, the hiking community is just as important as any other user group on the summit.

[01:45:07] We appreciate everybody who comes up there and like to share the mountain no matter how you get to the top of the mountain.

[01:45:12] So, of course, if you want to buy something from the state park, from our gift shop or from our food service that keeps the lights on so they can feel good about that. I like that zip code idea, the Mount Washington with the zip code. I like that.

[01:45:30] Yeah. We'll see. Search and rescue on Mount Washington. So is it the same as Monadnock from your perspective? Like if somebody calls and you're up there, are you getting involved or is it more relying on fishing game to handle it?

[01:45:46] Depends what it is. Our staff assists people almost daily on the summit, especially in the summer season.

[01:45:55] A lot of it is basic first aid. It's different from Monadnock in the sense that, you know, for one, we're on a mountain top, not at a mountain bottom where Monadnock is really staffed out of mostly.

[01:46:10] And also there's no road or train to assist on Monadnock. So that changes how we go about things. But also we're in a tougher environment on Mount Washington and much tougher weather.

[01:46:25] The search and rescue effort is very communal. We default more or less, unless it's something that we're sure of in the state park boundary. We work very closely with fishing game though to make sure that we're doing the right thing and that we're all on the same page.

[01:46:43] Fishing game knows they can call us anytime and we'll provide the resources that we need to. But there are also times where we get word by mouth at the summit, you know, that somebody needs help somewhere.

[01:46:59] And while we may be first on scene or first responders, we're making sure that we're involving fishing game in regards to how we're doing things or to call other resources.

[01:47:10] The Androscoggin Valley search and rescue team and other rescue teams that are volunteer based are integral into the success of a response. So it's a little bit different. It's just a different environment, different location and different strategies.

[01:47:31] But the state park staff at the top of Mount Washington is no different. If we can assist, we're going to. And we will and have and will continue to. You win some and you lose some. And they've been involved in all of those responses.

[01:47:48] What you want to do is make sure that at the end of the day, even if you didn't get the outcome that you wanted, that you gave that person or those persons the best chance that they could have had.

[01:48:01] And you're not Monday morning quarterbacking too much in regards to, well, if I did this or if we did this, then maybe something would have been different. Yeah. And I'd imagine your staff probably heads off a lot.

[01:48:16] I would imagine that the most common scenario that you run into is somebody that's hiked up and realize that they've bitten off way more than they can chew or somebody there with, you know, maybe they bring a younger youngster up that really isn't feeling it.

[01:48:29] So you're giving them you're giving them the lay of the land around like, you know, here's a hiker shuttle. Here's the cog. Here's, you know, maybe the best way to get down. Yeah.

[01:48:37] Or not. That's more of what we see. We call it the witching hour when the front door is still open, but the cog and the hiker shuttle have ceased operations. Oh, wow. What happens then?

[01:48:51] That's up to whatever the scenario might be. You know, we're in a precarious position up there. What we've found, what happens sometimes hikers make poor choices, of course, but sometimes they do that based on the fact that there's perceived help or bailouts at the summit.

[01:49:19] And not that we turn people away, but sometimes they put themselves in worse situations and deadly situations trying to reach that rather than having made different decisions like they might have on another mountain.

[01:49:34] Like Mount Adams or somewhere else where there's no infrastructure where a simple turnaround might have made the difference. We've seen people put themselves at more risk because of that. Well, it's only so much ground to get to the summit. Let me just get up there.

[01:49:54] And then when people do arrive, you know, the state park staff is especially off hours, you know, tasked with evaluating and trying to figure out what the best way to help this person out is. But the motivation is to try to help them help themselves when possible.

[01:50:15] Yeah, it's a terrible spot for you guys because I mean, it's you sort of have to be even one time. One time you say like, you know, look, you can you have 100 of these cases and you say like, look, you know, go down Davis path.

[01:50:30] Don't go down, tuck them in and loop around. It's easier. But then if something happens, you know, how do you process that? Like, you know, it's not your fault like they ultimately but you don't have a choice.

[01:50:43] We set them up for success as best we can because we can't turn into a bailout taxi service either. But we do want to help people and we want to help them when there's an emergency.

[01:50:52] But sometimes that might be as simple as I've done it where I've said, all right, I'll give you a ride down, but I'm getting under the clouds. Once you're out of the weather, you're out, you know, here's how to get back to your car.

[01:51:06] But it's up to us to assess those situations and assess those individuals with their gear, their ability, what they have, what they don't have.

[01:51:13] And sometimes you're giving somebody an assessment that they don't agree with and they're already in a high stress situation and they just want to get back to their car.

[01:51:21] And those interactions can not always be pleasant, but, you know, it's up to us to stay professional and to do our due diligence to make sure that, you know, we're setting people up for safe hikes back. You know, however it looks, but it's very stressful sometimes.

[01:51:41] And it's not an easy spot for us to be in individually every time to go, okay, what is the best course of action for this person?

[01:51:50] And how do we get them to a place where we know, you know, that they're set up to successfully get back to that ultimate goal? And that's the car. That's not optional. That's the goal at the end of the day, not the summit.

[01:52:06] But yeah, it happens frequently and it can be stressful. And I'll tell you, that place will strip away your compassion very quickly when you have individuals who make a rash of poor decisions one after another. And now it's your problem where maybe it shouldn't be.

[01:52:26] But that's the role we signed up for and that's what we do. And, you know, we want to make sure people are safe, but we're also people. We're normal humans and sometimes that can be stressful on us and it can be frustrating for us.

[01:52:41] And I think last year, I think I bailed out some hikers last year who usually if I'm helping folks out, you know, once we get to a place, it's, you know, we're not charging them money.

[01:53:01] But I'm charging them a classroom fee in the sense that we're going to talk about what you did today. We're going to review things before I leave you and we're going to make sure that you're better educated to make better choices in the future.

[01:53:14] That's the, you know, more of the goal because you don't want to discourage people from not coming back and not enjoying the outdoors. You want to empower them and educate them to be better than they were on that day.

[01:53:27] And I think I went through a whole entire hike from leaving the house to the point where they landed at our door and I told them, you did not make one correct decision today. You had seven different decisions and you made the wrong choice every time.

[01:53:53] And I didn't say that or give that information to them in a way to shame them or make them feel bad.

[01:54:02] You know, but you want to make, you have to do it in a tactful way to say, here's what could have been done and here's why this is bad. Some people don't understand that Mount Washington is not a beginner's mountain.

[01:54:14] Some people don't even know about that mountains deadly history. We have a fatality list for Mount Washington that's at 171 people and will continue to grow. What we want to do is minimize or slow that down.

[01:54:31] And believe me, that list could be a lot longer if it wasn't for the entities involved, Mount Washington State Park, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, AVSAR, you know, PEMI, Search and Rescue. And even the assistance that we get from the Auto Road and the Cog Railway.

[01:54:50] That list would be way longer. So it's just a point of being up there. And like I said, after hours, there's no hiker shuttle, there's no Cog Railway. Guess who they're talking to?

[01:55:08] It's our staff and it's our staff to make the decision about how to set them up the best. Yeah, it makes me think twice.

[01:55:15] Like we've talked about this a lot on the show around, you know, how do you interact with other hikers where you sniff out that, okay, they may be struggling and they may be out of place.

[01:55:24] And a lot of times we sort of say like, okay, let's just mind our own business. Like, you know, they'll get down, whatnot. But I wonder like on Mount Washington, like maybe it's a different perspective if you're up above Tuckerman and you see somebody that's struggling.

[01:55:35] Like maybe that's a place where you do have a conversation with them. If you're a hiker and just say like, you know, hey, how are you doing? You know, what's your plan? You got to be careful about that stuff.

[01:55:46] Men don't want to ask women where they're going and stuff. But it maybe it does make sense if you're later in the day in Mount Washington.

[01:55:52] Maybe hikers should start changing their mindset a little bit and save you guys a little bit of the hassle of having to have those conversations. Yeah, they could. And that's up to the individual and the circumstance and how comfortable they are.

[01:56:06] We're not looking for the hiking community to, you know, change things that drastically. If you feel comfortable and it makes sense, that's great. I also have talked to a lot of people, especially female friends of mine who are solo hikers that are fine.

[01:56:25] But, you know, inevitably get into interactions with people offering unsolicited advice that are needed. So, yeah. That's the hard thing is who, how do you know? You don't. And we know that. What we don't want and I've had happen.

[01:56:44] You know, our hikers trying to be positive and encouraging people to continue on where maybe they shouldn't be encouraged. I think it's important for people to remember that the summit of whatever you're climbing is your halfway point.

[01:57:02] There's still the hike down, whether it's gear, weather, time of day, supplies. Wherever you're going, your destination is your halfway point until you return to your car. But yeah, we've lost hikers that we know were encouraged to continue on into conditions. You're almost there. Keep going.

[01:57:27] Oh, you can do this. And it's good spirited and we know it comes from good places. Because you don't want to be the person to tell someone they need to turn around. It's a delicate balance. So, it's difficult to navigate. But yeah, it's... Mount Washington is tough.

[01:57:48] We've been called an attractive nuisance at the summit. It's that help is just up there rather than the turnaround. And it leads people to make decisions that sometimes aren't the best. Yeah, I feel like between the cog, the hikers, the state park, the auto road,

[01:58:08] the people that produce the Northwoods Law, they could just park a crew up on the summit for three months and they would have probably two seasons worth of TV shows. Probably. Just seeing the interactions we have at the information desk,

[01:58:22] especially in the afternoon with hikers, in regards to advising them and trying to get them down or, you know, unfortunately telling them that they face their whole day on the assumption that the hiker shuttle or the cog railway was going to be available to them and it's not.

[01:58:38] And now they're not sure what to do. You know, those are interesting interactions to have. And it's important that, like I said, you can very easily have your compassion stripped away. It's very frustrating, but you got to retain it. You got to retain some semblance of it.

[01:59:00] You can't beat people up. You know, they're already in a tough spot when they're interacting with you. And believe me, once they've hit you guys, like they're not feeling it. No, and they've let us know. So I've worked for the park system for over 20 years.

[01:59:17] So being yelled at and called names has not ruined my day at this point. It's happened enough. But, you know, at the end of the day, you got to just keep your head.

[01:59:28] You got to be professional and you got to do your best to get them back to their car, to set them up as to do that. And that looks different based on the time of day, time of year, what the situation is.

[01:59:43] And, you know, we're there in a public service, but we don't want it as a bailout reputation. We don't want, oh, don't worry about it. State parks will give you a ride back to your car.

[01:59:53] We've had situations where people have rolled into the building, pleading their case, limping, you know, and you tell them what the price of the hiker shuttle is. And, huh, that price seems to have fixed that limp a little bit. And, oh, I guess we can hike down.

[02:00:10] So you try not to get too jaded. You know, we're there to help people out. Like I said, we're in the public service realm. And it's just a tough spot. And I don't know. I still, I don't understand it.

[02:00:26] I don't understand where somebody goes, I'm going to hike for the first time ever and I'm going to choose Mount Washington. I don't know if the draw is some kind of personal, like I conquered the mountain mindset or, you know, I don't. That's not where I come from.

[02:00:42] That's not where I came from in my hiking. And you run into people that look like they were, you know, you expect it sort of at a place like Menadnock. But sometimes you see people on Mount Washington that are, you know, dressed for the mall.

[02:01:00] And I feel like my theory on a lot of these is like one person will go with, you know, maybe they go with a couple of experienced hikers and they hike Mount Washington like two years before. And then they decide like, oh, I'm going to go.

[02:01:12] And they grab their two or three unsuspecting friends or relatives and then they drag them all up and say, oh, I know what I'm doing, but they don't. And then they meet you. Yeah. And that's not to say everybody.

[02:01:26] I'm not trying to place a general emphasis on the hiking community. The hiking community is largely good. And we enjoy the hikers we see on Mount Washington. We are through hikers. Sometimes we smell before we see.

[02:01:42] But there's an interesting mix up there and hiking is an integral part of the mountains history. The Crawford Path. The Crawford Path reaches the summit of Mount Washington, and it's the oldest continuously maintained hiking trail in the country. It's been open and accessible and maintained for over 200 years.

[02:02:06] So, you know, that's just one little snippet of the mountains history, but it's an important one. It's just as important as the cog in the auto road is that hiking access.

[02:02:17] And we want to support that community as well as best we can because as I said earlier, it's a big democracy up there in a way. For us, we don't care how you got up there. You're up there. You're in the park. You're our guests.

[02:02:31] And we want to see you have the best experience and to take home those memories and share them. And that's what it's all about. Well, we appreciate all the work you and your team do. What is the number of employees that are working at Mount Washington State Park?

[02:02:52] Our state park staff during the summer months where we're open, you know, mid-May to mid-October, we're running probably about 30 total employees. We've got about six or seven that work through the winter months, including some seasonal snowcat operators as they are pilots for shift change.

[02:03:12] The state park is staffed in the off season this time of year by, you know, one or two people at a time, just keeping the place maintained, keeping the systems running. You know, it's been making sure that things are going smoothly up there. It's always interesting.

[02:03:31] Obviously, we see it more in the summer. We'll get that guy or that woman that walks up to the front desk with a look and they'll go, how do you have electricity up here? Yeah. Where does your water come from?

[02:03:47] It's sort of that, wait a second, none of this belongs here. How is this functioning? Those are always good conversations to have. You tell them it's secret tunnels underneath the building? Well, that's the staff access is the elevator down to the bottom of the mountain. Yes.

[02:04:08] But the reality is, you know, it's important infrastructure at the top of the mountain and the staff is maintaining it, running it, the fuel systems, the heating, the electricity, water systems, communications.

[02:04:21] So even though we're not open in the wintertime to the general public and offering those services and amenities, we have a very important caretakers role at the top of the mountain. And our staff takes it seriously, takes a lot of pride in it. And we love the place.

[02:04:36] I mean, some days it's a tough place to love, but there's other days because we have access to the summit and to every root of that mountain. And we see, you know, some pretty amazing things up there between cloud activity, undercast, sunrises, sunsets.

[02:04:56] Granted, are they daily? Not even close. That mountain is in the clouds more often than not. And I've spent entire shifts up there without ever seeing the sun. But I think that makes some of those sunsets and sunrises a little bit more special when we do get them.

[02:05:11] Yeah, it's a beautiful place. And I've had some of the best experiences of my life on top of Mount Washington and the presidentials. And I love the infrastructure up there. And like I said, I love the hot dogs.

[02:05:25] As a matter of fact, I've had some great conversations with thru-hikers sitting in that building. So as much as people will say, oh, I'm a purist and I'd love to see nothing up there. There's a lot of benefits. It's a great experience for people.

[02:05:38] Yeah, that's what we try to make it. That place isn't going to get re-naturalized. It just isn't. But it hasn't been since the 1850s when the tip-top house opened and started competing directly for dollars with the original summit stone structure. So the tradition that lives through to today.

[02:05:59] But I think for people, hopefully they can take some pride in the fact that the summit, the 60 acres on the top of Mount Washington is a state park. It's public land. It's not private.

[02:06:15] And there's private entities that are stakeholders and have a tremendous amount of interest in what goes on up there. But at the end of the day, it's public land.

[02:06:25] It is the state of New Hampshire as part of a wonderful and diverse and amazing state park system that is up there. And the state park staff is doing our best to make people proud and to continue providing the best experience we can to the summit.

[02:06:46] A setup that has evolved over time that wasn't necessarily envisioned and carried forth. But the Auto Road, the Cog Railway all predate public lands. We now have public lands surrounding them.

[02:07:00] And we work hard in our Mount Washington community with the Auto Road, the Cog, the observatory, the Forest Service and the AMC and others to make sure that those relationships are balanced. And that when people come to the summit, they have the best experience they can.

[02:07:18] And if you don't want to stand in line for a summit picture behind people in flip flops, you don't have to. It's not a requirement. And it's okay. But maybe chat with some of those folks.

[02:07:33] As I said, I've talked to people who came up off the train in the Auto Road or retired hikers, essentially. They have some amazing stories. There's some great people who come visit the top of the mountain. They're not there to get in your way of your summit picture.

[02:07:48] They're there to share the mountain with you. And that's what we're there for. We're there to provide that. So we take a lot of pride in that. And I'm proud that the Summit of Mount Washington is a state park and that our staff does what they do.

[02:08:02] I guess I'm their supervisor, so I get to see more of the ins and outs. But I'll tell you that our state park staff is so dedicated. And that mountain means a lot to everyone who works up there. We're there for the right reasons.

[02:08:19] Yeah, and I will say, I remember one time I was running up the Auto Road Memorial Day weekend. And it was a cloudy day and the cars had just started going up.

[02:08:30] So I got passed by a couple of cars and then I went in the building and one of the guys that must have been driving the car said, you're that guy running up the road? He's like, how many screws are loose in your head?

[02:08:39] And I said, well, there's one interaction. We all have our hobbies. I've had my own experience as a hiker on the Summit of Mount Washington. You know, if you want to go up there on a good day, on a clear day, on a hike,

[02:08:54] and you hike and you want to walk around in your gear, if you want a little ego boost, just hang out for a little while. The people that come up there are astounded that anyone hiked the mountain.

[02:09:06] And they're so interested in hearing about it and hearing about the experience. And, you know, for the hiking community, you know that you are of tremendous interest to the rest of the public. And they admire you.

[02:09:26] Mount Washington's a tough mountain on any day, even the best of days. So we're happy when people get up there. We're happy when they have a safe experience. And if you want to hang out with your backpack for a little while and make sure you're sweating good,

[02:09:41] the people on the cog and the auto road will definitely look at you with admiration. Deservedly so. Yeah. Well, I appreciate the time here. So we're going to plug a couple of things here, Patrick. So we've got your Instagram, which is top of the Northeast.

[02:10:02] You've got some fantastic photos from the summit and all over the place from your hiking and your work. So we'll make sure that we put that in the show notes. So again, it's Instagram top of the Northeast.

[02:10:14] And in addition to that, you said it is New Hampshire State Park dot org. Is that the right URL? That's the URL for our park system and for any of our state parks and our wonderful New Hampshire State Park system. That's the general website address.

[02:10:31] Yeah, and for the Instagram, what I really try to focus on is sharing the moments of being at the summit of Mount Washington that people don't often get to experience. We were given the honor and the privilege to be up there.

[02:10:46] And to some extent, it can be a sacrifice. We're up there for days at a time. We're up there for a lot of things. Our park staff, because there's no holiday. So let's or no one can work Tuesday. So I guess no one's going to be there.

[02:11:01] And we're there in an important role, not just as warm bodies, but we have to be prepared for everything, taking on the responsibility for the summit. So the staff have to be ready to deal with any situation.

[02:11:13] But, you know, given that the keys to that allows us to also be present with the mountain at times that most people aren't there. And so for me, while it's uniquely special and valuable and means a lot to me, I don't want to keep it all to myself.

[02:11:38] So if I'm able to provide some of those photos, videos and other avenues to share the other sides of Mount Washington that the general public aren't up there for, that's usually my motivation on there. Yeah, no, it's beautiful.

[02:11:58] If you're a fan of photography, I mean, there's some beautiful photos and you've captured some awesome perspectives in different areas of the summit. So, like I said, we'll include that in our show notes along with the New Hampshire State Park.

[02:12:12] So you can go on to the New Hampshire State Park dot org site. You can look at jobs. You can look at information about the different parks that are around New Hampshire. And it's got all the information about Mount Washington on it as well.

[02:12:25] So Patrick, once again, on behalf of myself and STOMP, thank you very much. Thank you very much. And then STOMP, I think anything else we want to cover? We want to plug the Mount Washington Road Race lottery is opening up, right?

[02:12:37] Yeah, that is this Monday morning. I forget the date, but it's Monday morning at eight o'clock. And that's actually an interesting question. So what do you guys do to prepare for that? Those big races and all those people?

[02:12:51] Well, I would say that we do things a little differently based on last year's experience, which was very challenging for our staff given the conditions. Oh, it was like what? It was supposed to be like snowing?

[02:13:09] It was hypothermia central. The Sherman Adams building at the end of the day, but by the end of the race, after we got the overcrowding dealt with, it looked more like a mass casualty scene. We had a lot of hypothermic runners bringing up the end of the race.

[02:13:29] But, you know, from that challenge, we worked closely with the Mount Washington Auto Road to debrief, to talk through things and to make sure that we were setting people up to have a safe experience as a whole.

[02:13:45] Because while the auto road is the avenue and providing the access for the race, it's everyone's entering in the state park and making demands of our park and our park staff once they arrive.

[02:14:02] And that includes guests as well. And that environment that day was very difficult, especially for runners on the back half.

[02:14:11] So there's a lot of things that could have gone better. But I will say that, you know, the auto road is very responsive to that, as well as some of the other GORM EMS and others that were involved.

[02:14:25] And so we had really good meetings afterwards to make sure that, you know, we were able to learn what we needed to from it and to apply that to future events.

[02:14:35] And it occurred with the bicycle race, which unfortunately, you know, the bicycle race later in the summer last year, we had to make a last minute cancellation of.

[02:14:47] But a lot of it was because the day looked exactly like it did for the foot race in regards to the conditions. Yeah, that's incredible. And what date was the bike race? July, August. I don't know.

[02:15:03] Oh, see, that's the thing. It's like it's fascinating up there. You do the best you can, but I know you guys are on top of it and adjusting and whatnot.

[02:15:11] But I just want to just to close out here. This is the home of the world's worst wind. What? 231 miles an hour? Yeah. Lest we forget that Mount Washington's weather isn't always good.

[02:15:23] Oh, no, no. It's like I was while you guys were chatting, I was doing some digging and the you know, the Sherman is built for 300 mile an hour winds.

[02:15:33] And if in February 2023, we had that stint where it was like minus 47. So if you're going to these events, you know, you're gonna run into some adversity. I think you guys are doing a hell of a job with all that, given the circumstances.

[02:15:48] Yeah, that's the other challenge. Not just the public, but the environment that our park staff works in as well.

[02:15:55] And that's where the work of the observatory is so valuable to us because everything we do revolves around the weather, whether it's our day to day work at the summit or our staff transportation and shift changes. I mean, that's at the core of everything we do.

[02:16:11] But yeah, so the foot race I expect we'll have a good experience this year.

[02:16:16] But you know, and I really appreciate the Auto Road and their staff coming to the table and working with us to make sure that we're providing safe environments on a place that's as unforgiving as Mount Washington.

[02:16:30] But, you know, I've participated in races and you don't, I don't know for me as a participant, my faith is put into the organizers that they're setting me up to be as successful and as safe as I can.

[02:16:44] And so I take that role for the state park and with the Auto Road for those events.

[02:16:49] And we've worked with the observatory, of course, on Seek the Peak and the Hike for Mental Health and that organization. Our park staff works through a lot of events through the year.

[02:17:02] And my last question here is, do you think that you would host the podcast for our half a million download show live at the summit? I think we can do that. You know what? I know a guy.

[02:17:17] I think we can organize that. We've had media at the summit, we have governor and executive council at the summit before. Why not? Sounds like a search and rescue. I think it'd be great to have you guys.

[02:17:33] Pulling your leg, but I mean, maybe we could turn it to something beneficial for the summit or who knows. Hey, let's do it. I'm all about it.

[02:17:42] You know, we enjoy the access to the summit, but we enjoy sharing it as well. So yeah, I think the foot race will go well this year. We'll see what the weather does. But you know, the mountains fickle.

[02:17:54] So we make plans and the mountain does what it does. And then we work around it. Right. That's our new motto is like the mountain doesn't care about your resume, your schedule, your fitness plans. Yeah, nothing.

[02:18:06] Does not care about any of it. And we know that. And like I said, we're as safe as we can be. But seriously, it's a dangerous environment. It's dangerous for us to be there. There are times where I'm wondering what the heck we're doing up there. So who put a state park up here? What are we doing?

[02:18:27] Do you ever like when the weather's crazy, like it hits over 100 miles an hour? Do you do you do you purposely say like, all right, I'm going to go outside and experience that? Or is that something you do with the very beginning and go like, all right, I've experienced this hundred mile an hour winds. And now it's I'm not I'm not interested anymore.

[02:18:46] It depends. You know, you can't it's exciting at first for sure. It's still exciting now. You know, if I'm not, I'm not excited about Mount Washington and what it's doing in regards to weather and conditions, and the uniqueness of it, then I'm in the, then I need to get out of the way and need to let the next person in.

[02:19:07] But it's so many questions. Gosh, especially having been so involved in search and rescue throughout New Hampshire throughout the years. I would hate to be in that litter.

[02:19:45] Just from a pride point of view, but it does change your skill for what you're, you're kind of used to. And I've been in some pretty gnarly conditions that I haven't been overly confident in, but I probably should have been a little bit more spooked in. So Mount Washington does that to you a little bit.

[02:20:03] I also had, I like relaying the story because it reflects how completely insane it is to work up there.

[02:20:12] We have a building that is not manned, that needs a daily check every day throughout the year, especially in winter. There was a day a few winters ago I was at the summit.

[02:20:26] Winds, I believe were sustained if not at least gusting well over a hundred miles per hour in the morning. And so I like to get that building check done as part of my morning rounds.

[02:20:40] And I had to, you know, I looked at the conditions and I said, all right, the observatory is forecasting for these winds to drop back a little bit. Let me go do some other things and I'll check back on conditions in a little while.

[02:20:54] So a couple hours passed. I went back to the board to look at the current summit conditions. And I had this moment of self-awareness where I heard my inner voice.

[02:21:04] And what I heard myself say in my head was the words, oh good, the winds are down to 80 miles per hour. Now is a good time to go step out. That is completely insane. That is the talk of a crazy person and that is not something that should be built into anyone's work day.

[02:21:27] But, you know, that's how that mountain changes you. So, you know, coming to Mount Washington I knew because I value and love that place so much that it was going to change me in a lot of ways.

[02:21:40] What I didn't necessarily anticipate was some of the, you know, craziness in regards to the weather and how you view it and what you're used to.

[02:21:50] I will say that, you know, being out in 80 mile per hour winds on the summit of Mount Washington in a place I'm overly familiar with is a lot different than being out on 80 mile per hour winds on the Franconia Ridge where nobody belongs.

[02:22:02] So, you know, it's recognizing that kind of difference but, you know, you don't want to get… you got to kind of check yourself in that sense because I've seen some of the worst weather that you can possibly experience in an environment that, you know, for us that work up there because of the familiarity and the access to shelter and other things that you get a little bit more lenient on.

[02:22:32] But it's still a dangerous place. I've taken some pretty good falls up there. I've gotten disoriented and lost on the summit campus, not in a way that I needed rescuing but I've tried to get to places and found that I was in a different place on the summit than I thought I was.

[02:22:49] And certainly the commute up and down the auto road, especially in the winter months and sometimes even in the summer months is a white knuckle day that you question, you know, whether or not this is worth it.

[02:23:06] Yeah, because if something goes sideways when you're taking the snowcat up, no one's getting to you very quickly. No, I mean, we're no different than hikers in that sense. That help isn't necessarily imminent and, you know, our staff has gone through some pretty hairy situations. Like what?

[02:23:28] You know… Because that was one of my questions. You know, the building is built like a Normandy bunker. I mean, pretty much, right? Almost prison like in its appearance.

[02:23:43] Even at like 220, 30 mile an hour winds, I mean, do you start worrying about the integrity of the walls? I mean, I look at the picture of the observatory and I just can't even imagine it lasting as long as it has because it's such a vertical blunt object against those winds.

[02:24:03] I mean, even the structure of the Sherman itself is facing east with the glass windows facing the sunrise, which makes sense. But can you just expound upon that? Like how safe is the building?

[02:24:18] It's pretty tight in its security. You know, sometimes you lose sense of what the weather is really like outside when you're in there. But there are other times, especially if the wind…

[02:24:30] You know, the Sherman Adams Summit building, which houses, you know, the main facilities for the summit and our living quarters and working quarters plus the observatory's living quarters and working quarters and the weather tower, which is an extension of the State Park building where the instruments are.

[02:24:48] You know, that's all thoughtfully constructed into the side of the mountain. We very purposefully designed that building not to have many, if any, west facing doors or windows.

[02:25:01] Not that that's exclusively where the wind comes from. That's predominant. But when the wind comes out of the northwest and it starts hitting the corner of the summit building, especially in our living quarters and in my bunk room, it sounds like a freight train outside.

[02:25:17] That's a reminder that there's, you know, just a little bit of concrete and some window space separating you from some pretty gnarly stuff. You start learning, spending time up there, the nuances of the building. So I've never felt insecure in the Sherman Adams Summit building.

[02:25:36] But with winds coming from a certain direction, nature reminds you about really kind of that it's right there. And under cold temperatures, some frigid temperatures, there's some loud pops in the concrete in that building and those air pockets. They can make you jump.

[02:25:56] So we had almost just over a year ago, you know, we tied the observatory's recorded wind or temperature low of 47 below.

[02:26:11] That storm, which our park staff is also up there for, also saw winds gusting up over 120 miles per hour, bringing that wind chill down to the newsworthy level of an estimated 109 below. During that storm, a door latch on the weather tower failed and the door blew open.

[02:26:34] I think one of our recent guests talked about that briefly.

[02:26:37] Yeah, so a door blew open and that was our park staff assisting the observatory staff. Multiple people fighting to get that door closed and reinforced to stay closed in those conditions to make sure that we made it through.

[02:26:58] So, you know, we all have our separate roles on the summit. The state park staff, the observatory, the Ottawa, the cog, everyone has their main focal points. But the thing that really is special about the mountain is that it really is a community.

[02:27:16] Our organizations and our entities don't always agree. Sometimes we disagree to the point that we're in court for things. But what it doesn't do is affect the notion and the confidence that we're there for one another.

[02:27:36] We've all had to help each other out to certain degrees. The Ottawa, the cog, the park, the observatory, every one of us have done things to help the other entity out in a time of need.

[02:27:50] And none of that has ever been affected by politics, disagreements or other things that happen at a higher or administrative level. And I think for the people that work on the summit, it doesn't matter what uniform you're wearing or who you're getting your paycheck from.

[02:28:09] There's a community feel. And you could walk in there and if you come up like in the Memorial Day weekend or any other day during the summer,

[02:28:23] you may see an Ottawa road van driver, cog railway staff and state park staff hanging out and chatting at the front desk, you know, or elsewhere around the building.

[02:28:35] That's so valuable. The mountain, we know, is not picking sides. So at the end of the day, we all need to make sure that we have the confidence to know that if we're in need, that we're going to be there for each other.

[02:28:49] Yeah. And I think with that, Patrick, I think we're going to wrap up here. This was great. We went, I think we went two and a half hours. It's amazing.

[02:28:57] I could listen to you go forever, but we get a storm's got to go to bed at some point. I have to edit. I warned you, don't let me go uninhibited or unchecked because I'll keep going. It's Mount Washington. No kidding.

[02:29:14] There's so much to talk about regarding the history, the entities, everything about the mountain, the weather, just Mount Washington. There's no shortage of things to talk about and there's so many ways to go about it. We'll definitely have you back.

[02:29:30] Yeah, I would love to be back and I really appreciate your time and letting me just sort of cut loose tonight. But I love that park. I love the mountain. And I value what our staff does.

[02:29:47] Mount Washington State Park staff is so unheralded. It's such a thankless job in the sense that we're the last ones, if we're even thought about at all. And I don't say that in a way to be insecure.

[02:30:03] But our staff truly is there for the right reasons. And they're so dedicated to that mountaintop and to its success and to providing the experience that people get as best we can.

[02:30:18] And for me, like I said, the mountain's done so much for me, like Monadnock has. And it's just valuable. I think about the mountain's future a lot and I want to be making sure that our state park staff and the state park itself is there in its role as the, I say protectors, but we're a public entity.

[02:30:42] We're not there for profit. You know, we're not profiting off the top of the mountain. We're just trying to keep the place going and we're trying to provide the ability for people to continue to share in Mount Washington's awe and to build relationships with our mountains and with one another and with our state.

[02:31:01] It's a great role to be in. So I really love being up there and I love what we do. I love what you guys do. And I appreciate the podcast, your listeners and your show. I'm a fan and I like being here. So I appreciate it.

[02:31:19] That's great. Thank you. Feelings mutual. Yeah, yeah. Feelings mutual. That was great. For more information on the show, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[02:31:40] If you want to learn more 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.com.

[02:31:53] You can also follow the show on Facebook and Instagram. We hope you'll join us next week for another great show. Until then, on behalf of Mike and Stomp, get out there and crush some mega heat.

[02:32:09] 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.

[02:32:23] He was hiking along the Appalachian Trail when the weather started to get worse. Officials say the snow was piled up to three feet in some spots and there was a wind chill of minus one degree.

[02:32:34] There's three words to describe this race. Do we all know what they are? The Holy One Hell! This is Lieutenant James Neelan, New Hampshire Fish and Game. Lieutenant, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having me.

[02:32:47] 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?

[02:32:51] 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 at all.