The Cleary Axioms on What is Crazy

This past March I turned 54 years old. My knees, ankles, and even a quick glance in the mirror reminds me that I am every month of those 54 years. However, I don’t always feel that way. Sometimes, I feel much younger and in those moments … let’s just say that I’m not always as cautious as I should be. Maybe I'm crazy.

I show my hiking pictures to people at work. They ask to see them, honest, really, they do ask … ok, they ask out of politeness. Yes, I’m one of those that when you ask “How was your weekend?” … I actually answer! Yep, I’m one of those.

A few weeks ago, Matt and Maggie stayed the weekend with us at our house in New Hampshire. They had decided to hike the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail up to or at least toward the Lake of The Clouds Hut. Despite an evening looking at Google maps, when they got there the next day, they couldn’t find the trail. It might have had something to do with the 4 feet of snow covering most of the signs but I’m not sure.

I felt bad about them not finding the trail. The following weekend, I awoke early and drove up to the White Mountains arriving to a biting wind and 12 degree temperatures. “This is nuts,” I thought as I climbed out of the car and checked my gear, found the trail head and then headed in.

Every 4^th or 5^th step, one of my feet sunk in to my calf or my knee. Note to self: I should have brought snow shoes. Soon I was huffing and puffing like an old steam engine … which is just what I do! The benefit of this huffing and puffing is that I was toasty warm from the effort. The wind had died down and I removed and stuffed my jacket into my backpack. I was that warm.

Stumbling through the crunchy snow I came across a waterfall and a pretty, but frozen pool. I crossed the stream but struggled to find the trail. After 10 minutes of hunting around, I found the trail going vertical between a set of trees. I looked up and realized that it was too dangerous to go up there without snow shoes. Plugging my headphones in and cranking up some Maroon5, I turned and trotted down the trail enjoying the gentle downward slope and how the soft snow was gentle on my knees.

At work, I showed the pictures from the hike to the usual chorus of …

-          You’re crazy to go up there in the White Mountains! You know it is winter, right?

-          How can you go up there by yourself? What if you got hurt? You shouldn’t hike alone, that is just crazy!

Matt was happy to hear that I was able to find the trail head. I was happy to get off that mountain but wondered how far I could have gotten if I had my snow shoes.

For some reason, I had taken the following Friday off from work. There were many things to do around the house but I slated the day for hiking. The night before, a winter weather advisory posted that a storm of freezing rain and ice pellets was moving into the region and would be upon us at 5am on Friday. I went hiking anyway but at least I took the Subaru instead of the rear wheel drive RX-8.

Inside the canopy of evergreens, the snow drifted down as if in a part of a warm winter dream. I had brought my tripod and snowshoes and marched through the woods stopping at streams and waterfalls to enjoy the moment and take pictures. I felt calm and peaceful, alone and yet belonging at the same time.

I got to the frozen pond and crossed it and found the steep part. I looked up as the angle. It was an incredible challenge. I started up at a steady pace stopping at defined intervals to ensure I took in water and energy bars. The snowshoes worked well and after much effort, I found myself at another major waterfall where the trees had diminished due to the elevation. The wind whipped upwards of 35 to 40 miles per hour. With my back to the wind, I sat and took in the vista of mountains and swirling snow. I’d not reached the Lake of the Clouds hut but I’d gone pretty far … but this was far enough so I turned back.

Going down hill was much more difficult than I expected. I slipped and slid down the steep hill finally taking off my snow shoes so my feet would sink in and slow my momentum. At the car, I recognized something … I wasn’t just hiking the mountain alone; I was the only one hiking the mountain!

At home, I got similar reactions of my craziness from some of my family. Hiking alone was much more dangerous than hiking with someone! Indeed, I was in agreement but sometimes hiking alone is better than not hiking at all. 

There is risk in all that we do … even crossing a city street or driving to the grocery store. Do we sit cowering in our basements? No, we cross the street and we go to grocery stores. It is a matter of perspective.

At work, people told me of all the people who had been injured or even died from hiking alone. I was told that they had seen articles in newspapers, magazines and on the internet … of hikers who had gotten injured while hiking alone. “Have you seen,” they asked, “the movie 127 hours? He was hiking alone and had to cut his arm off ... with a pocket knife!”

After thinking a few moments, I wondered if anyone would make a movie of a hiker walking through the woods alone and surviving without some sort of heroic event? Would anyone write an article in the newspaper if a hiker had gone into the White Mountains alone and walked out the same day? Wait, I do that all the time and no one is writing about me (except this blog!) Of course no one does! That doesn’t sell newspapers the way an article about the grizzly and lonely death of a hiker in the woods does. The fact that the hiker might be alone makes the reader feel comfortable that this wouldn’t happen to them … because the reader isn’t crazy enough to hike alone!

There are two Cleary axioms that have come to mind. Actually, I just made them up. The first is the “Axiom of relative craziness”. It was first observed while driving through Crawford Notch while attempting our first ascent to Zealand Hut via Ethan Pond Trail. That trip would start with hiking up a steep incline with skies and heavy packs on our backs. This seemed pretty crazy to us. However, then the moment of relative craziness occurred.

“What’s that up on Frankenstein Cliffs?” someone asked. We peered at an ice flow hanging vertically from the cold granite slab that is the cliffs. The specks on the ice flow were people, yes people using crampons and ice climbing equipment to scale the monstrous ice flow. Suddenly, a simple walk up a hill in 15 degree weather through 9 miles of snow to a hut that remains cold until a fire is lit at 4:30 in the afternoon didn’t seem so crazy. It was a perfectly reasonable case of relative craziness. We were less crazy than those people on the ice flow and therefore … not crazy at all.

The second axiom is mathematical in nature. One Cleary alone will suffer from the above axiom of relative craziness, however two Clearys will surely hike something that one Cleary will not. Thus the second is the “Axiom of Compounding Cleary Endangerment.” Where one Cleary might withdraw when faced with an obstacle, adding another Cleary just increases the likelihood that each will encourage the other to do something neither would do on their own!!

As example, with all the doubts around me hiking alone, I invited Matt to hike with me on my next adventure toward the Lake of the Clouds Hut. I don’t think I had finished my question before he was already saying that he’d go.

We had a fantastic breakfast at Tilton Diner and were on our way very early in the morning. The temps at the base were around 40 degrees and much of the snow had melted away making streams into raging and flooding torrents. We decided to forgo the snowshoes until Matt sunk into the snow up to his thigh just by stepping slightly off the trail.

Our first obstacle was a good sized waterfall that flowed into a pool which had previously been frozen. The prior week, I had walked across the snow that covered the stream and now it was an 8 food crossing. Had I been by myself, I would have stopped here, had lunch and headed back. However, having two Clearys in attendance means a discussion, a debate, or a discourse, if you will, about the merits of going forward or turning back.

Where I would have turned back, instead I found myself following Matt’s lead and scampering across water covered rocks and diving onto a shelf of snow before getting dragged off the edge by Matthew. The first case of the Compounding Cleary Endangerment axiom was clearly in evidence.

We put on our snowshoes and proceeded up the extremely steep hill. I cannot express in words the steepness of this hill except to say that there were moments when I felt as if I was going to topple backwards and slide down the entire length only getting stopped by the waterfall at the bottom!

The steep incline brings rapid ascent and soon we were approaching the area where the trees grow short and the wind picks up. It was at this time that we encountered another waterfall and since the water flow was so great, there appeared no way to cross the raging 8 foot divide. Matt seemed ready to turn back when I noticed that the water flowed under a chunk of snow. Yes, the second axiom, the Compounding Cleary Endangerment axiom reared its head again … I convinced Matt that we could go off-trail and cross the stream a ways down the hill. We did and had to climb the side of the mountain using trees and shrubs to pull ourselves up toward a return to the path.

 

We plowed our way through the snow and ice with the snowshoes gripping sometimes and missing others. We fell and we crawled at times but we found ourselves on the exposed slope along a ridge.

There was no defined path. We could go up to the right or go up to the left. “Which way would you go? Up to the left or Up to the right?" I asked Matt.

“Up,” he responded followed by a slight smirk and a twinkle in his eyes.

We proceeded on yet again when had either of us been alone, we probably would have turned back. Finally, I had had enough, “time to turn around,” I said. “I can do one more ridge and if that is not THE ridge then I’m done.”

Fifty yards later Matt spied the chimney of the Lake of the Clouds hut!! We’d made it!

I’d like to say that we enjoyed our Subway sandwiches in the hut itself but the hut was frozen solid. 50 mile per hour winds howled around us as we examined the possibilities of hiking the last 1.4 miles to the top of Mount Washington. I looked at him and he looked at me. If there was a third Cleary in attendance then perhaps the axiom of Compounding Cleary Endangerment might have taken hold but with only two of us … we were done.