RMC Newsletter - Winter 2007-2008

A History of RMC Excursions
By Judith Maddock Hudson

Mountain climbing "excursions," or "trips" as we RMC members think of them today, have their antecedents in the early 19th-century, starting around 1830 in Crawford Notch, when a surge of tourists began frequenting hotels in the North Country. This movement peaked during the 1850s following the extension of the railroad to Gorham in 1851.i Mountain guides from the hotels led the guests, mostly on horseback, to the more prominent summits, especially to Mt Washington.

By the late 1870s and early 1880s, an increasing number of eager walkers, both male and female, were treading newly cut paths on the Northern Peaks.ii The Ravine House (1876) was the early gathering spot for AMC members; the Mt Crescent House (1883) attracted a somewhat less energetic crowd; Kelsey Cottage (late 1860s, becoming the Mt View House around 1898) was headquarters for a group of adventurous hikers - clerics, academics, their wives and families.iii From the letters of Lucia and Marian Pychowska in the 1880s and subsequently published recollections by Hazel de Berard,iv we get a picture of activities at the Ravine House. Informal excursions involving any interested guests were arranged by other "Raviners" or by innkeeper Laban Watson.

Depicted in Hazel Peek's albums are "Before" and "After" photos from around 1890 showing a group of climbers posed above the Ravine House meadow. It's not clear, however, if this was an actual hike or just a group making fun of climbers. It is likely that it was a spoof, since the Peeks and Cooks were known for their dramatic predilections. Clearly, there are changes in personnel between the two shots. Are the missing children in the "After" picture meant to suggest that the three young girls in "Before" perished en route?

When the Randolph Mountain Club was founded in August 1910, we can infer that the new club began organizing walking trips for its members. The first written reference to official RMC excursions appeared in 1917 in the first edition of Randolph Paths where Louis F. Cutter and Frank H. Chase wrote:

excursions are conducted without formality and without rigid rules of leadership.

Cutter expanded on this in his 1924 description of the club in Randolph Old and New:

Each season several excursions are made, some on foot to points in or near Randolph, some by train or by automobile to points at a distance. All persons...are invited....The excursions often break up into several parts for visiting different points. Each person provides his own luncheon.v

By the 1930s, excursions also included special, mainly social, events like the Rendezvous as well as regular work parties:

Of late, there has been increased emphasis on the club excursions, about ten each year, most often on Tuesdays. On Thursdays, often, there are work parties, to clear existing trails or to cut new ones.vi

Randolph residents who were children in the late 1920s and 1930s don't remember much about club trips. Louise Davis spoke about family hikes: climbing Pine Mountain at age 3 1/2, where she napped on a steamer rug while her family picked blueberries; and a hike up Tuckerman's to the summit of Washington and down the carriage road when she was seven. Children had lots of freedom, and often explored trails on their own. Louise recalled meeting RMC Secretary-Treasurer and maiden schoolteacher Lizzie Jones one day who seemed shocked that a group of children was allowed to walk without adult supervision.
Louise's younger sister, Marian (Woodruff), and Nancy Torrey (Frueh) reinforce the picture of a childhood unencumbered with adults. Children in families who stayed at or lived near the Mt. View House (today's Midlands) spent their largely unsupervised days with their peers, roaming around Randolph. The one cardinal rule was "Do not disturb your father in his study." Neither Marian nor Nancy seemed to recall organized hikes (with either fondness or loathing).

By 1942, club-sponsored hikes had assumed more importance. President Bert Malcolm, in his Annual Letter, promised a great summer of trips, necessarily kept close to home because of gas rationing:

We are planning to make this our greatest climbing and camping year and will have a splendid schedule for all degrees of ability.

From the 1940s to the present, excursions have generally been held twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The latter have been variously titled "junior walks," "children's climbs," or "short hikes," but were intended for a less athletic clientele than the more strenuous Tuesday hikes. Over the years, hike characteristics have varied in response to demographic changes. During the 1970s, Thursday walks were primarily aimed at families with young children. Great-grandmother Nora Joensson led walks to Blueberry Mountain or Mt Crag; Peggy Grant hosted an annual cookout at ponds or waterfalls where her granddaughters and other kids could wade around after eating their hotdogs. In his 1976 Annual Letter, President Jack Stewart expressed concern that hikes weren't serving those who wanted them, and a new format was devised: both Tuesday and Thursday walks would be moderate, with newly inaugurated Saturday hikes alternating between short and challenging ones.

Trips of special interest have a long history. In 1974, Marian Woodruff led a trip to the Old Man on Cannon's cliffs where we were shown the elaborate structure of chains that kept the face on the mountain for so many years. Dyk Eusden's occasional geology tours have discussed his latest research on the Presidentials. Doug Mayer and I have led "History and Trails “ walks that combine past memories with current crew practices. Joan Darlington's watercolor or sketching trips have nourished our artistic impulses. Canoeing with the Brintons and Tibbetts has appealed to still another group.

Strenuous hikes have always been part of the mix. In 1962, Klaus Goetze posted a notice entitled "Trip to the Great Gulf Over the Lip." The text read: "go via Caps Ridge to summit of Mt. Jefferson. Then down via Six Husbands to the GREAT GULF SHELTERS (lunch). Then up the Great Gulf to the Sphinx and up that one. Home via Gulfside, Cornice and Caps. It is only 9.17 miles, but there is considerable rise and fall." Trips Chair Nancy Frueh's report to that year's Annual Meeting is enigmatic: participants were listed as "11-9-6." Did the hikers drop along the wayside? Or merely refuse to go the whole nine miles?

Our family participated in a "walk" in 1980 that began in Evans Notch, ascended Eagle Crag north of the Baldfaces, went down into the Wild River valley, up the Rainbow Trail to the top of Carter Dome, over Hight, and down to Route 16. Total of 17.5 miles covered in about 8 hours. Sandy Malcolm, our daughter and niece galloped down the Nineteen-mile Brook Trail, while Chips Muehl, my husband Al and I sauntered behind.

Such walks are not a thing of bygone years. This past August Bill Parlett designed (but ultimately couldn't join) a trip up the Howker Ridge Trail to Mt. Madison and down Osgood Ridge to the Great Gulf trailhead – a total of 10.2 miles. Five hikers, led by Irene Garvey and Todd Moore, met the challenge.

As described in the 1931 Randolph Paths, exploration of "a mountain region at a distance" was one aim of excursions -- a goal abandoned due to gas shortages during World War II. However, ranging far a field returned in full force after the war. In 1946, trips went to "some places not visited in many years (Azicoos, Caribou, and Carrigain)."vii For many years Hawley Rising took us to unfamiliar summits, among them Pine Peak, Mt. Tremont and Sandwich Dome. Al and I have led trips for more than 30 years, and we are always pleased to introduce people to the likes of Mts. Garfield, Potash and Crawford.

Camping trips were a regular part of the excursion scene, often led by Bert Malcolm (who brought Randolphians to his beloved Adirondacks on several occasions). The Mahoosucs were another favorite venture. As a 14-year-old, I joined a backpacking trip led by Hank Folsom with Jack Stewart, George Furness, and my brother Steve, all much stronger hikers than I. Carrying an old Army surplus frame pack stuffed with a heavy sleeping bag and canned food, I struggled from Shelburne's North Road to the Carlo Col shelter in what I remember as uncommonly hot, humid weather. These were the days when nobody carried canteens, and all the brooks were dry. We began to worry that there would be no water at Carlo Col, and fantasized about drinking the liquid in our cans of peaches. Eventually we found an unsavory looking puddle some distance down from the shelter. Never had I been so miserable on a hike, and my male companions were oblivious to my despair. The next day, hiking to Full Goose shelter, was incredibly beautiful; we arrived at the shelter to find other RMCers preparing to camp in style. Bert Malcolm had one of his Waumbek employees pack in supplies (he came back the next day to Speck Pond shelter with another load of food). Phil and Sue Scott brought a reflector oven and baked blueberry muffins in front of the campfire. This was more like it! I thought. The next night we all sat around the campfire while people took turns entertaining with songs, poems and stories.viii Someone was at a dramatic climax in a ghost story. Suddenly there was a crash, as a startled deer poked its head into the fireside circle. We all jumped.

A number of trips visited Katahdin, like one in 1951 when the participants posed at the summit of Baxter. Jonathan Frueh and Klaus Goetze led 16 people to Chimney Pond in 1981 where Klaus regaled us all with his recitation of Robert Service's The Ballad of Dangerous Dan McGrew. The second night, after we had scaled the peaks and traversed the Knife Edge in swirling clouds, pouring rain began. The next morning, as Al described in our family logbook:

At 10:00 the local ranger reported that 6 inches of rain had fallen already, with no end in sight. A saunter to Chimney Pond revealed that the water level had risen 3-4 feet. A gloomy weather forecast for the following day, and perhaps a widespread disinclination to spend another night within hearing of the Goetze snores, led us to leave that day. The trail was everywhere awash, several raging brooks had to be forded, and the various lakes skirted by the trail were rising steadily. The last hikers reached the trailhead around 2:30 pm. The Hudson bus was used as a changing room as people donned dry clothes before departing on the long drive back to Randolph. [Subsequently we learned that this had been a record rainfall for the area.]

One function served by RMC hikes - and other walks by groups of Randolphians - is social. Thornton Page reminisced about his father Leigh who hiked with his neighbors, a group of senior physicists (H. M. Dadourian, Percy Bridgman and John Quincy Stewart). He writes:

The oldsters were a bit ponderous and discussed the philosophy of science. J. Q. Stewart was the more youthful of the four, hopping around and bursting out with dramatic ideas not fully thought out. For instance, he posed an elaborate theory of the number of out-of-state license plates to be seen on cars along the road, and often pressed us into service recording our counts...to demonstrate that the numbers were proportional to the states' populations and inversely proportional to the states' distances away.ix

RMC hikes gave young and old a chance to be together; children were inculcated, by adults more sympathetic than their parents, into the ways of mountain walking. Joan Rising often brought youngsters like Mark Parker along on hikes; my kids held endless, serious discussions with Chips Muehl as they walked. I particularly remember a conversation that developed between our son Geoff, his good friend Tom, and physics Nobelist Ed Purcell. “If there were water on Mars, how could we bring it to Earth?” the boys asked. Ed treated them to one of their first real scientific discussions.

If RMC excursions were to be described by a single characteristic, it would have to be their leadership style. Leaders assume that most of us are experienced, and they expect us to be somewhat familiar with (or to have read about) the proposed climb. Nonetheless, running an RMC trip is a little like herding cats. Groups have always splintered into those traveling at the same pace, and there is often considerable distance between the fastest and the slowest hiker. The leader often comes last, and may appoint an assistant to travel at the speed of the more rapid walkers. Occasionally someone does get mislaid, as Goetze pointed out in his 1955 Annual Letter:

Since young and old go on these trips, more people than usual got lost - not permanently - but there were moments of anxiety.

Al, leading his first RMC hike up Goose Eye in the late 1960s, had diligently scouted the trail, even creating a log barrier to keep people from taking a misleading logging road instead of the actual path. His participants included the over-60 crowd of older women. Led by Miriam Underhill, talking all the while, the group crashed through his barricade, complaining about how poor the work of AMC trail crews was. Al went after them and brought them back to the proper trail. On another climb, we even lost our son when he was seven or eight -- much to our embarrassment. However, he figured it out when he reached the next trail junction, and retraced his steps.

Changing lifestyles over the last 20 years have diminished the number of families who are able to spend several weeks or a month in Randolph, and more hikes today are keyed to leisured retirees. The availability of regular hikes, however, allows single individuals or newcomers to the trails an opportunity to hike in the company of others. Today's Randolph community includes year-round inhabitants who engage in very strenuous mountain activities (range and trail runs, skiing and snowshoeing). Many of these younger people are active in the RMC, but because summer excursions are scheduled during their working hours, they are unable to participate.

In the late 1990s, the RMC board became concerned with the size of club trips, which frequently exceeded the White Mountain National Forest's suggested limit of ten participants. Overly large groups can diminish the experience of other hikers in addition to being a threat to the fragile alpine zone. It seemed ecologically unsound for the RMC to encourage excursions, like the annual gourmet hike, that had often attracted as many as 50 or 60 people. It is a problem that has yet to find satisfactory resolution. Just as RMC trips have evolved throughout the last century, this too will find a resolution.

I am interested in any additional comments, corrections, anecdotal materials, or relevant photographs that my readers might have. Please contact me at 111 Amherst Road, Pelham, MA 01002; (413)256-6950; or by E-mail.

Judith Hudson has been coming to Randolph since the age of four or five. Her parents, the Drs. Stephen and Charlotte Maddock, first visited Randolph in 1923 or 1924 at the invitation of the Cutter family. Active members of the RMC, Judy and her husband Al have served in a variety of RMC jobs, including the presidency. Al is currently the Club’s Archivist and Judy is working on a history of the RMC.

i See Guy and Laura Waterman, Forest and Crag, Boston; AMC, 1989, pages 79-87.

ii Charles E. Lowe listed the names of 21 men and 11 women whom he guided to the summit of Mt. Jefferson on July 5, 1885, part of an "A.M.C. Excurtion." See The Notebooks of Charles E. Lowe, Randolph, NH: Randolph History Project, 2007, pp. 18-19.

iii George Flagg delighted in lampooning the walking excursions of the Mt View House's guests; in his sketchbooks, there are numerous cartoons, especially of the ladies at the hotel.

iv For the letters, see Mountain Summers, edited by Peter and June Hammond Rowan, Gorham, NH: Gulfside Press, 1995, and Hazel de Berard, "Memories of Randolph," Appalachia:31;29-35 (June 1956).

v Cutter in George N. Cross' Randolph Old and New, Randolph: Town of Randolph, 1924, p. 187.

vi Cutter in Supplement to 1931 Edition of Randolph Paths, Randolph: RMC, 1934, p.3.

vii Annual letter by Klaus Goetze, 1947.

viii This tradition goes back to early RMC picnics, when Professor Edward Y. Hincks told the story of "Rollo in Randolph." See my article on the charades, RMC Newsletter Winter 2004-05.

ix From a typescript, "Leigh Page 1884-1952" in the RMC Archives.