Good morning.

And it is a beautiful morning.

I just woke up from a great night's sleep here at Lakes of the Clouds Hut below the summit of Mount Washington.

Our plan today is to have breakfast and then take off above timberline on what's called the Presidential Traverse over to Madison Spring Hut.

I can't linger long here because breakfast is almost up, and it's one of those be there or be sorry situations!

So while I'm in having breakfast, you sit back and relax, because the next half-hour is one that you won't want to miss.

♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

We're presenting a series of programs that record the beauty, diversity, and character of New England's natural world.

Our hike today is going to take us from Lakes of the Clouds Hut across the Presidential Range to Madison Spring Hut.

It's quite a hike a little bit less than seven miles.

The easiest way to get there is to go about halfway up the cone of Mount Washington, take a left on the Westside Trail that goes around the peak, and do a junction transfer to the Great Gulf Trail that follows the Great Gulf across the Presidentials.

There are a few diversions we can take to climb Mount Clay, Mount Jefferson, or Mount Adams.

How many of those we’ll take depends on the time, the weather they are predicting thunderstorms and how much gas I think is left in the tank.

We're going to be climbing 1,650 feet today, but at the end of the day, we end up 1,400 feet lower than we started.

So, that seems to be a hopeful sign.

Well, that's enough for the description of the program.

Let's... let's execute.

♪ Oh yes.

I think this is the junction of Crawford Path and Westside Trail.

8:35 AM, which means we’re traveling just a little bit better than 1 mph.

1.2 at the moment.

We keep that up, we may get there by midnight.

♪ Way down below me here... are some strips of dead trees.

And I think that's what they may call spruce waves a microburst of wind knocks down a patch of trees.

That may be what those are.

There are other explanations.

And the wind does blow here.

So, that's a good culprit... to suspect.

Can't see the summit from here, but it's up there.

We must be just about abreast of it.

We go on by, cross into the railroad tracks, and hit the Gulfside Trail in a little while.

♪ All along here, little pockets of tiny white flowers diapensia.

An arctic flower... stranded here when the glaciers left 100,000 years ago and still hanging on here.

One of those things that we may lose with global warming.

That would be a shame.

It's still here now.

Beautiful little flower.

♪ I think I'm where I can almost see the Cog Railway.

It should appear.

And then we're on our way.

♪ There’s the railway.

And I could tell by the whistling going on down below that there's a steam engine on the way up.

We'll probably cross it before he gets here.

But just duck under it and go over to the Gulfside Trail on the other side.

We've made a little progress here.

Willem.

Willem.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

[Math[ieu]] and [Léa].

How are you doing?

Yeah, how are the legs doing?

Comme çi, comme ça.

Maybe I make it.

Maybe I don't make it.

All right.

We'll see.

You're taking it cool.

I have no choice.

♪ My newfound friends from Québec City, [Math[ieu]] and [Léa], just passed me.

They’re on the way to Madison Spring Hut.

And they say they hope to see me later today.

Oh my God, I hope to see them, too.

We'll see.

Well, here we go under the railroad.

This is where we got off yesterday.

Get my pack under there.

There.

Oh, God.

Oh.

That's a greasy mess.

And off we go into the Presidentials.

And I hope.

Well, we're headed for a junction over here.

I can see two lines of cairns converging.

It must be, maybe the Gulfside, I don't know.

We'll see in a minute.

This is nice open country here.

Not too rough.

And this is part of the 1,400 feet that we will end up descending during the course of the day.

Well, we've reached the beginning of the Gulfside Trail.

It stretches out ahead of us about five miles.

We've come a little less than two miles so far.

And I'm looking at maybe 6 or 7 hours more, by which we ought to be over there, if we get there at all.

But it's a beautiful day.

I can see where we've got to go.

And I propose to go.

♪ Well, we're making some progress, I guess.

♪ [wind rippling] How much further?

Well, I think about four-and-a-half miles, four-and-three-quarters, over to Madison Hut.

9:57 AM.

We've been going for... two hours now.

Not bad.

Slow, but steady.

We may make it.

We've just skirted Mount Clay, named, I presume, for the great compromiser, Henry Clay.

And we're about to tackle the Jefferson traverse, named for you know who... good old Thomas Jefferson.

Here we go.

♪ This bit of trail is [chuckling] largely unpaved.

Makes you really appreciate the parts that are paved.

I had to choose today between bringing a cane or my hiking poles, and I figured, Well, it's a fairly level trail.

I'll take the cane and see how that works.

That, I think, is going to turn out to have been a mistake.

I think the two poles a little bit better.

There are so many rocks here that you tend to teeter along the trail, and... two poles would have been a distinct advantage for me.

Oh, a trail junction.

What do we got?

♪ Oh, what do we got here?

♪ 3.7 more to Madison Hut.

Over there is the Great Gulf.

And we're doing okay.

We're almost halfway now at 11:00 in the morning.

We've been going for three hours.

♪ Let's go over and see what this sign says right here.

I hate to miss anything in haste.

♪ Oh.

Entering Great Gulf wilderness.

Welcome.

But be careful.

Closed to motor vehicles.

Quite a cliff here.

Pretty good rock climbing.

Solid.

Good traction.

Few nice cracks.

I don't think I'll tackle that today.

♪ Oh, I found a bit of a calm spot here.

Out of the wind a little bit.

Chance to sit down, take a load off my feet, reflect a little bit on the last time I came over this trail... [chuckling] 55 years ago in 1955... with a bunch of my buddies.

It was a... week called college week.

Before college started every fall, several university outing clubs got together and spent a week either at Lake Colden in the Adirondacks or Tuckerman Ravine here or Mount Katahdin over in Maine.

In the year in 55, it was here.

God, we jogged up Lion’s Head up to Washington and then ran the ridge over here and back up to Washington.

And the [photos] I took that day are still... still bright and beautiful, although all the people in them have pretty much disappeared, except one, thank God.

Well, we're about to tackle Jefferson.

I don't know how steeply up this trail goes, but we'll find out shortly.

♪ Boy, this is a day I'll always remember.

It's been 55 years since I hiked this trail.

I was a little hesitant to tackle it today.

I wasn’t sure I could make it the whole way.

Also, the weather forecast said a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon, so I'm always planning a tree line exit in case weather blows in here.

You know, weather can change really rapidly in this area, and finding shelter can be a real challenge.

♪ Well... Let's see.

What do we got here?

Oh, yeah.

What the American Indians called Agiocochook [The place of the Great Spirit].

[ Denali roughly translates to The tall one in Athabaskan].

Oh, yeah.

Clay.

And we are engaged with the flanks of Jefferson.

I see people way up on top.

[chuckling] Show-offs.

Okay.

♪ What do we got?

Gulfside Trail, Caps Ridge.

Okay.

We stick with the Gulfside... all the way.

♪ About what I figured.

As soon as I find a place out of the wind, I'm going to dine, hydrate, and medicate.

[chuckling] Okay.

♪ Okay.

Time to dine, have a little water.

Maybe half a liter.

The old 19th-century English explorers, whenever they took a break from one of their expeditions, they would write, We pause for two days to recruit.

Meaning recuperate.

That's what I'm doing recruiting.

Way over there is the Auto Road... going up the mountain.

Madison 2.7.

Yee-haw!

♪ For we are marching to Pretoria, Pretoria, Pretoria.

♪ We are marching to Pretoria, Pretoria, hoo-rah!

Yuh.

♪ Well, so much for Jefferson.

Now... John Quincy and Adams.

♪ We're not going to make our way over this trail so much as we're going to wear this sucker down.

[chuckling] If we can last four more hours, I think we'll have it at this pace.

What we've got to do is maintain it.

Boy, these boulders don't help.

God, they’re rough.

♪ Well that, my God, was the roughest bit of trail we've done today.

[chuckling] Jeez!

Let's hope it's the roughest bit we're going to do today.

What have we got now?

Lakes of the Clouds 4.6.

Yeah.

Madison 2.2.

Right up that way.

All we gotta do is cross that Everest over there.

1:02 PM.

We’ve been going five hours so far.

And we've come 4.6 miles.

Way down there is the motel at the foot of the... Mount Washington Auto Road.

To be sitting there right now sipping a cool Heineken's.

[laughing] Okay!

We go.

♪ One of the nice things about hiking these trails is the people you meet just great.

You know, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, young lovers.

They're everywhere, and you meet them all day long.

♪ We’re up that little bit.

Now, I guess we go to the west of Mount Adams.

Slab along that side of it.

Very nice.

♪ Well, we must be somewhere near the 1,600 feet of climbing we're supposed to do today.

And... about to find out where the 3,000 feet of descent is.

♪ It's very important when you're hiking like this up high with the sun and the wind on you to stop frequently and have a drink of water or some kind of liquid.

Whatever you're carrying with you, it's important to stay hydrated.

If you don't, you begin to make stupid decisions.

You can get hypothermic.

And this is far too beautiful country to miss because you haven’t been drinking enough.

It's very important.

There.

And isn't this just lovely up here?

♪ Save us a bunk!

Yep.

Well, by golly, I think that’s the place we've been looking for.

No AMC hut ever looked so good to me.

I’m more than ready for a hot meal and a bunk, and it’s all I could think of during these last steps down to the hut.

I hope you enjoyed today's hiking adventure.

I know I sure will once I get a little rest and a hot meal.

I’m Willem Lange, and I hope to see you again on Windows to the Wild.

♪