Chapter Nineteen: The Whites

Day 110 October 8, 2020 Thursday

Garfield Ridge Shelter, NH to Franconia Notch, NH

I got up at 5:30 in Garfield shelter. It was a very cold night, with heavy rain and high winds all night and into the morning. I made a hot breakfast under cover with my other comrades and was on trail with Fenway by 7:30 am. Strong winds accompanied by a persistent cold rain followed us all morning on our way up to Mt. Lafayette. Despite the bitter morning cold, I was working up a sweat climbing the steep rocky trails, so I took off my puffy coat and rain jacket, just wearing fleece and woollies. Even with both jackets off, I continued to perspire on our approach to the alpine zone. We were both eager and in a rush to see what lay ahead. Just before the end of the tree line, I put back on my puffy coat, rain jacket and Gore-Tex mittens to prepare for the next part of our journey.

When I emerged from the thick krummholz zone, I immediately felt the harsh sting of the icy wind hit me from the side, and I caught my first glimpse of what was in store for us. Above the tops of the frosted dwarf-spruce trees, all I could see through the blur of blowing snow was shimmering icy rock in every direction. Looking up the mountain, I could see the first false summit of Lafayette above us. We were being assaulted by horizontal snow and ice and 60-mph winds. I suddenly began wondering what on Earth I was doing here. Fenway and I looked at each other for assurance and in question of whether or not to proceed, finally conveying nonverbally a resounding, “Lets do it!”

We began our ascent onto the gigantic slabs of Mt. Lafayette granite, with every surface covered in a glaze of slippery ice. Every move of the hand or foot was carefully calculated, making it a very slow process. I was being over cautious so as to not lose footing and slip or slide. It was hard to see the white blazes, now obscured by the raging ice storm and coatings on the rock faces. I was moving excruciatingly slow, sometimes crawling up rocks. It was a toilsome exercise to stay balanced with the high wind and my top-heavy pack. Fenway was somewhere ahead navigating the same set of seemingly impossible obstacles. The fierce winds would eventually tear away his pack cover, sending it sailing across the mountain, never to be seen again. In addition, the gale force winds eventually would shred his Frogtog rain pants so that all that remained was the linen under-layer beneath the now-absent rubber coating.

After about 90 minutes, and what seemed at the time an eternity fighting my way to the summit, I came to a sign for a cross trail, completely ice covered. The frosted crust obscured the cryptic message beneath, preventing me from reading it. Here the summit elevation was 5,260’, and we were high up in the sky in a dense, fierce cloud. Several times I attempted to capture this madness digitally, but my iPhone blinked off instantaneously each time it was exposed to the harsh, frigid wind. For the next 20 minutes, I hunted for just a morsel of indication of where the southbound trail might be, as this was not obvious while I scouted around massive boulders to find my route in this endless blizzard. On one of my attempts to circumvent those icy behemoths standing in my way, I spotted someone with a yellow hat coming up from the south. I waited for him to reappear so I could see the trail and follow his footsteps. He never showed again so I chose a narrow path to the left—presumably the easiest route—and carefully followed it along the rock ledge…