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Memories of Trail Crew, 1951 In the spring of 1951, I was hired by Jack Boothman to be the RMC trail crew (all by myself), the first student-aged person to hold that job. My stepmother, Caroline Cutter Harris (Stevens), had convincingly vouched for my skills with axe and bucksaw and boots-on-the-ground, though I was still just a skinny kid and would be entering my freshman year at Yale that fall. I don’t remember the amount of my wages, but one of the benefits of the job was the privilege of taking my supper in the kitchen of the late-lamented Ravine House for 50 cents a meal. There were two alternating chefs: one thin and generous with the portions; one who was large and miserly with my fare. Another feature for me in that kitchen was a waitress from Gorham who was married to a soldier in training on Mt. Washington. For some reason she felt that she could unburden herself to me about her marital problems, which she regularly did between her trips to and from the dining room. I was scarcely qualified to advise her as she seemed to want, nor did I find her problems in the least palatable. For this reason, I took to avoiding the Ravine House kitchen on any regular basis, fending for myself in the (also late-lamented) “Ski Room” in “Cutterville” on then-Route 2, which my stepbrother Andy McMillan (also later an RMC trail crew member) and I had equipped the previous summer with running water, an electric stove, and a chemical toilet. In addition, Andy and I constructed a couple of new concrete footings to better prop up the front of the structure. As we were pouring the concrete into the form at the southeast corner, Bliss Woodruff, a talented practicing architect, happened by and opined that we had not set it deep enough to survive. When I looked at the site some 50 years later, about the only thing still standing intact was the concrete footing at the southeast corner of the ruins. For the RMC, I cleared trails up the Israel Ridge and down the Howker Ridge and as much as I could manage in between. One day when I was hacking briars on the Pasture Path, along came James Bryant Conant, then president of Harvard. When he asked me what I was doing, I replied that I was hacking briars out of the path. “Ah,” he said and went away. Mostly it was hard work, but I came to love it, though I’m sure my efforts were much inferior to what present-day crews perform. In the evenings there were square dances, some at the old Waumbek Hotel in Jefferson where I learned the rowdy “Randolph Swing” from an adept dancer, the vigorous and muscular Carolyn Lowe. I had workouts day and night. Early in the summer it was learned that the arrival of the Crag Camp caretaker would be delayed, and I was instructed to get the hut ready for visitors in his stead. Up the Spur Trail I went with what gear and provisions I could carry, feeling quite ill-equipped for the task. In hooking up the water supply from the nearby spring, I discovered that a section of pipe had burst during the winter, and I sent word of this problem to the valley via a passing hiker. The next day, up came Mrs. Furness, lugging a heavy pipe-threader — something I had never used before. Somehow I cut out the burst section of pipe, made threads on the cut ends of the good pipe, cut a new piece and threaded it to replace the burst part and, with nuts that came from somewhere, joined the whole thing together again — all done in the dense boulder-studded krummholz uphill and west of the hut. Luckily, somehow it all worked, and I was elated. A couple of days later, two Boy Scout leaders arrived from across the range, having shed their troop as well as their shirts, which gave them magnificent sunburns. The next morning they were so painfully immobilized that I broke the rules and offered to make them a breakfast of pancakes. With good reason, they were not thrilled with the cakes which turned out to be very stiff and undelicious but ideal for scaling, Frisbee-like, off the front porch and down into King Ravine. I often wonder if any hikers were down there and mystified by a rain of in-coming pancakes. It was a grand summer. I had learned a multitude of new skills and even a little, though reluctantly, about marital problems. I was also in fine physical shape -- so much so that when I entered college that fall I was one of a very few in my class who passed the physical fitness tests and was excused from the otherwise mandated bodybuilding course. Thanks, RMC! Editor’s note: Harris was on the RMC trail crew in 1951 and 1952. We thought readers might enjoy the following excerpt from Instructions to the 1952 Trail Crew now in the RMC archives. Excerpts from Randolph Mountain Club Trail Clearing: 1952 “In clearing trails for the first time in a season, the primary object is to remove all blowdowns and fallen branches from the trail so that one can go through without climbing under or over trees, or tripping over loose branches….” “So far as I know, there are no absolutely indispensable bridges on any of our trails. Hence, do not take time to rebuild broken or missing bridges at present….” “If you find a tree that is too big to cut with the tools you have, and it is possible to crawl under or over it without too much trouble, simply leave it. And remember that it is sometimes easier to relocate around a bad windfall than to cut it out (there is one on the lower part of the Short Line where this is true). Don’t hesitate to relocate where you feel it is less work than to cut through. And, finally, please note in your notebook any places where the trail seems obscure so that we may post arrow signs. Don’t be afraid to blaze liberally, but always remember that you must always blaze both sides of a tree, not just one!” Former members of Trail Crew
and Caretakers are invited to share their memories for the RMC
Fall Newsletter and the website.
Send them to Lydia Goetze, P.O. Box 429, Southwest Harbor, ME
04679 or by e-mail.
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