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'It's not cold outside': Winter
2007-08 at Gray Knob
I was pretty confident when I accepted the job. I had a decent amount of time spent in the really cold already under my belt, I was a caretaker with five seasons of experience, and, moreover, I had already spent a spring at Gray Knob. I felt more than capable. Why didn't anyone seem to believe me? After the constant barrage of comments, I became a little apprehensive. But as a seasoned caretaker, once I went into the woods I felt comfortable again and those doubts didn't matter. I hiked in on November 5th, and the next day it snowed nine inches. Then the mercury fell. My water pots began to freeze. Winds picked up above timberline. And you know what? I was OK. It was a particularly snowy winter this winter, as was the pattern in New England overall. At Gray Knob, we didn't receive as much snow as some places, but our snowpack was nothing to be sniffed at. Cycles of thaw and freeze compacted the snow so by late December I no longer was wearing protective kneepads for my clumsy stumbles over hidden rocks. Since the snow arrived early, I didn't have any harrowing icy trips up and down Lowe's Path, at least not until April when things started thawing.
It was also a particularly busy winter, at least in my opinion. November and December granted me the quiet mid week, with no one arriving until Friday. I did have one Saturday with an empty cabin, and that was not a pleasant occurrence. Although I do like my time alone, it's nice to have a bit of company on the weekends. From January until the end of March, there was at least someone in one of the camps every night, a constant flow of pairs and singles. In fact, in March there were only two nights that I had Gray Knob to myself. In my daily life in managing the cabins, the rule is 'everything freezes.' Failure to keep on top of the little things can come back to haunt you, in the forms of frozen gray water buckets, incomprehensibly large cones in the outhouse, and blocks of ice in the jugs used to carry water from the spring. Mike's and my constant vigilance paid off because water flowed out of the spring pipe all winter (additional protection came from the deep snowpack, the insulation layer over the stream, and the occasional period of thaw), and we didn't have to resort to the drastic measures regarding the outhouse (did you hear the one about the guy who used a flamethrower?). Once you let these things slide, it's impossible to catch up. So how did I stay warm? Without thinking, every morning I would put on layers of insulation that puffed me out to the size and shape of the Michelin Man. I protested wearing gloves inside, so my hands became cracked and wrinkled. I also kept the cabin cold, which helped because I didn't subject my body to that temperature differential going from a warm building to a cold outside. I kept moving, going for walks, and roving among the camps doing chores. On a slightly random note, I acquired a callus on my left thumb from my frozen mitten rubbing against my hiking pole. In April when things warmed up, the caretaker room became cluttered and messy; eventually I figured out that the mess was just my abandoned layers.
My woodstove practices were relatively strict and I never lit the stove when I was alone and never when it was above freezing. Since the woodstove is there primarily to remove moisture from the building, I tended to light it when midweek guests showed up rather than a full house that releases more moisture into the air than it would remove. Anyway that cabin heats up to 40F most weekends with a full house. What makes all this life in the cold worthwhile is the opportunity to experience winter wilderness intimately -- limited visibility and mitten-snatching winds, watching the ebb and flow of the snow pack and iced trails. My breath froze my facemask into a stiff edge, my sweat a layer of frost inside my jacket I brushed off when I got back inside. I reveled in the gloriously clear days, the sky the kind of blue you only get in the wintertime. These things get into you and become part of you. When I hiked down for the last time on April 25th, I started to cry before I even made it to the Quay. Remember the board members who were taking bets on when I would quit? This spring while discussing caretaking with one of them, he said 'oh it's easy to be a Gray Knob winter caretaker. All you have to do is not mind being cold and alone.' Now, was that so hard to admit? Sally also kept an online journal for the RMC, which can be found on the RMC website, right here. A caretaker for the AMC huts and backcountry tent sites, Sally was the Gray Knob spring caretaker in 2007, and will be serving as the AMC's 'Mahoosuc Rover' this summer before hitting the streets of Berlin and Gorham as a reporter for The Berlin Reporter. At the time of this writing she misses Gray Knob already.
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Folks
in Randolph love torturing new winter caretakers. After word
got out that I was signed up to be the next winter caretaker
(trading weeks with Mike Street), the wolves ran to the fresh
meat. Almost every day throughout the summer and fall, at least
one person would say 'you know, it's pretty cold up there' or
'you think you'll make it?' or 'are you sure you want to do this'
or 'you will struggle with depression.' It also didn't help when
in October two RMC board members were taking bets for when I
would quit (they were joking of course, but there's many a true
word spoken in jest).
There
weren't many big storms, rather it was a constant accumulation;
our snow stake crept up from 6" to 22" to 36"
and then eventually to 44" where it held, give or take a
few inches, for the rest of the winter. It was exciting to break
out the yardstick in late March when the stake topped out at
63".
It
also wasn't a terrifically cold winter. We did get our share
of subzero weather, but it would only last for a few days before
rising into the single digits again. The coldest internal temperature
was 9F, but the winter average for me was 15-25F. You do acclimate,
evident in one January morning when I thought to myself 'huh,
it's a bit chilly out.' When I checked the mercury, it was -20F.
