Trip Report: MITOC Presidio Franconia Ridge Death March Chrissy Guth, Robert Zeithammer, Hector 'Safety' Briceno October 11th, 1999

So it all started on a naive conversation with Robert 'I have had a cold and I am not in shape' Zeithammer during dinner one night. He tells me that he has a nice little intermediate short day hike in mind, and that I may be interested. Being an outdoor person, I further inquire in the details of his little opus.

The idea is to hike some 13 four thousand peaks in a big loop around the franconia ridge with Chrissy 'I like jogging the boston marathon route at night' Guth. Noticing that Chrissy, the famous MITOC marathon runner and hardcore sneaker hiker was involved, I am skeptical and prod more details from our friend robert. He says "well it is a long hike something like 31 miles, but don't worry about it, I have a cold and I am out of shape, you will be fine". I agree to think about it. The plan would be to do it on the saturday of fall circus.

The Fall Circus inevitably comes (I had been avoiding it), and the topic surges again. While waiting for Luke to pick me up and being a good MIT student, I ponder on the hike: alright 31 miles is like 50km, say you go at a rate of 1 meter per second, it would take 50000 seconds or like 14 hours...hmm, 1 m/s is not too bad, but sustained for 14 hours...hmm I need a good excuse, this is crazy. On the drive out, Luke 'who has the presidential travi under his belt' Sosnowski all mighty fall circus organizer suggests that we postpone the day hike until saturday and help out with the Circus. Robert's wanning cold corraborates the good idea, and the plan to convince Chrissy to move the hike for monday starts. After arriving at camelot on friday night, Chrissy is positively dissuaded. At this point I am trying to concoct a solid argument to get out of this preposterous absurd crazy idea. My plan is not working, Robert and Chrissy's persuassion is stronger than my will power, and still have me hooked onto the idea. I clearly state for the watching crowd, that I oppose the idea. Should something happen to Hector 'safety' Briceno, I have an alibi and I foretold it.

After two stupendous circus days, sunday night comes, and I have not manage to bail out yet. Elron 'FLG fountain drink winch' Yellin is my last option. He is staying at Camelot sunday night also, I figure there must be a way I can ride out with him on my two feet, rather than been ride out by Robert and Chrissy without my two feet. Still, everything goes on normally. Sunday night, we go to the supermarket to buy all the food essentials. Robert and Chrissy being professional hikers go for a Chocolate Chip Cookies Dinner (I still can believe that is what they had for dinner) with the added benefit of having the leftovers of these powerful energy boosters for the hike. I not yet figure out how I was going to bail, decided to devour as much food and energy as possible, two instant raman noodle soups, one can of tuna, a bagel, and one column of ritz crackers. For the hike, Chrissy chooses her traditional Gold Fish crackers, she goes for a whopping two bags!!!. Robert goes for something like 5 KitKats, 5 Granola Bars (which he later finds out does not like as much as he thought), and of course a couple of wrapped energy boosters. I after examining the different weight and Daily Recommended Allowances of a plethora of crackers and cookies like Oreo's, Pop Tarts, Ritz, Chocolate among others, settle with two rolls of Ritz (which have in addition to calories, salts) and 100 slices of pepperoni. I add a powerbar and a hershey bar as additional food safety margin.

At night, while eating packing goes on. I being scared out of my mind, and not being able to come up with a way to bail out, decide to pack ultralight. For the people who know me, I have yet to master the ultralight packing techniques, ultralight for me, means bring a crazy creek chair instead of a walmart chair; bring a 2 person tent for me, instead of a four person tent; bring a 9" bw tv instead of a 13" tv. This time, I really thought of everything out. My big issue was whether to bring fleece windstopper gloves or polypro gloves? (the weight difference was probably 1 ounce if that) [luckly in this case I was convinced to bring the 'heavier' fleece gloves which proved to be really handy]. The rest of packing consisted of a camelback, 2 qt water bladder, polypro long sleeve top, space blanket (part of the safety in Hector 'safety' Briceno), food. Althought I strived and actually felt I had packed lighter than the rest, Chrissy popped my bubble when I lifted her backpack (I really thought I had packed the lightest!! is not fair).

Morning came, and the alpine start began. 4am the alarm went off. 5am in the car after a large breakfast and full gear check. 5:50am trailhead. As you can tell, I did not manage to bail out. With flashlights, we kicked the first few miles of relative flat terrain. "Ok, I think I can manage this", I said to myself, "the pace of these guys was like fast walk, but this is not too steep, I should be alright". Now the first shocking news on the trip comes 2 hours into the hike, when I overhear Robert and Chrissy in the front talking about triathlons..."Hey guys what are you talking about" I interject. Chrissy replies "Oh, Robert use to run triathlons when he was younger". That is when I felt betrayed and back stabbed. So I thought, "ok Chrissy is a super runner, but Robert looks a little like me, it should be alright", now I find out that Robert and Chrissy are neck to neck. On the discussion of endurance we formulate a unit of strengh called a Chrissy (C); Robert qualifies himself as 0.8 C. I think he is somewhere in between 0.9 C and 1.1 C. I by the end of the trip become a Chrissy certified 0.8 C (good for me). Furthermore, to make matters worse, I also find that Chrissy used to pick up boulders and carry them around her backyard in her early Pennsilvania homey days. The lesson for you readers, is to ask few basic questions to your hiking partners like: "do you run marathons? how many 5-minute miles have you don? do you do triathlons? do you enjoy carrying heavy boulders?." I was naive and actually unaware that these might have been good questions to ask before the hike.

At the pace they were setting, and I was following without whinning (I mean how can I whine if they are 40 feet ahead of me!!), we passed Mt Flume [1-7:50a-5.6mi], Mt Liberty [2-8:20a-6.7mi], Little Haystack [9:20a-8.8mi] (I don't even recall going by it), and reached Mt Lincoln [3-9.2mi] by 9:30a. Ok, now remind me again why are we doing this in the fall? my arm was frozen due to the wind even having a shell jacket. I put on my long sleeve polypro, it helps. I grin at some people near us saying "How silly of my to bring shorts", I think to myself "Yeap, you got to be pretty silly to bring shorts above treeline". Well, not much time to think, being part of the MITOC Presidio team, means we dont f... around, three minutes of rest and we keep going (this is all a little game used to get the adrenaline going and somehow rationalize the hike, but it is pretty fun to play).

We push to Mt LaFayette [4-10:00a-10.5mi], this is a long exposed region, and I really wished I was heavier. The wind really picks me up. I get concerned, because at every flat piece of terrain, the pace goes from a fast walk, to a light jog (these damn runners!!). Oh well, I follow without complaining (in some masochistic way I am actually enjoying it). Soon we go below the tree line, and the wind stops. We bump into other hikers. Interestingly (a nice word to be polite) a woman asks about the fastest or easiest way to get down. She does not seem to have a map, and seems to belong to a group of two other hikers one minute up the trail. Robert resourceful on the area gives her some advice, but the truth is that the road is pretty far from where we are. At this point we have probably covered something like 12 miles or so. We hit Garfield Pond, I do not reach the shore of it, since it is very muddy, and my old tennis sneakers are not waterproof (unlike my other team members, lucky...). We then climb up a bit and reach Mt Garfield [5-11:50a-14mi]. Our effort is rewarded by an vast view of the pemiwasset wilderness. We can see at a far distance where we are coming from, but less encouraging, a much greater distance of where we have to go. We have only covered 14 miles, a little over a third of the distance. We take our first 10 minute break here; I whip out my pepperonis (now, now no bad thoughts here) and have them with the Ritz crackers.

The next section takes us through a deep saddle, to go back up to Mt Galehead. Whoever designs these mountains, why can't they just make the saddles very shallow, why do they have to be so big between peaks!!. I need to talk this Grand Designer... We proceed to ascend a steep trail to Gale hut. Here, is when I am realizing that these guys are animals, they chug along like nothing; I start my breathing exercises. We reach the being renovated gale hut, fortunately greeted with a large cooler with water (we were counting on good water being found here). We drop our packs (or for me the little yellow thing in my back), and do a quick one hour round trip to Mt Galehead [6-1:50p-17.6mi]. Now, here is the most depressing summit I have been to. When you reach it, there is a small puny cairn (if you can call 4 or 5 rocks a cairn) surrounded not by a gorgeous vista like all summits, but rather by some small pine trees and no views. Luckily, the outlook on the way down makes up for the depressing (or rather covered) summit.

Now we are now greeted by the crux of the hike. The ascend to South Twin. Its summit would mark the brain branded 18.9 mile of the trip. >From the beginning we are certain that if we can make it there, we'll be fine. I have avoided leads in the trip, so that I can lead this section, as for them not to kill me if they go up at their pace. The trail is 0.9 miles, 1150 feet elevation gain we have to do, and very steep, theoretically we are tired (Chrissy had done this trail in the reverse direction and dreaded going up it). I start a little too fast and soon I am running out of steam; fortunately Chrissy says "Hey if you guys want to rest a bit that is fine with me", faster than Superman (than a flying bullet) I agree and come to halt. After catching my breath, I restart the ascend at a somewhat slower but sustainable pace with a rhythmic breathing. Impressively and to my suprise we reached the summit of South Twin [7-2:40p-18.9mi] in 28 minutes from that point. It is 2:40pm, we still have 17.2 miles to go!!

We rejoice and are pleased of having come so far. The rest of the way is mostly downhill, except that we need to detour to North Twin, since Chrissy has not ticked this four thousander. Since we are her friends we comply to her request (if she wasn't it would have been so easy to say no). One hiker asks us "where we were yesterday" and is suprised to hear "Oh no, we started from Lincoln Woods this morning". We leave our packs and quickly take a one hour RT peek at North Twin [8-3:20p-20.2mi]. Ahh, Chrissy is very pleased, she can tick one more mountain in her list of four thousanders (for me, almost all peaks that we are doing are new). Back at South Twin [3:50p], Chrissy cracks her Gold Fish bags open, now it is when she is warmed up and ready to start hiking. Mt Guyot [9-4:50p-23.5mi] is next, the wind makes its appearance again. It proves nothing for Chrissy and Robert 'goat hopping' Zeithammer, for me it reminds me of my days in Antartica (I have never been there, but it must be very similar). I quick picture of the summit, allows us to move on. Mt Bond follows; of course this would be the normal path, except for the second detour, Mt. West Bond [10-5:10p-24.2mi]. All in all, we are doing like 5 miles of detours, these people can't get enough!!!. The side trip is worh it, the views afforded by the summit are splendid. On the return from the detour, we take a little breather at Mt. Bond [11-6:00p-25.8mi].

We reach Mt. Bondcliff [12-6:30p-27mi], the last summit of the trip a little before sunset. The red sun rays cast a magic shadow on the wilderness, as if we had timed this almost mystical event. The Bondcliff trail sometimes comes to the edge of the cliffs, so if you suffer from vertigo be on watch (or if you are a climber, maybe come in winter for some ice climbing). The night befalls on us, and time comes to whip out the head lamps. We still have 9 miles before we can call it a day. The watching crowd wonders if MITOC Presidio will make it back by midnight. Mr Roberts scoffs at the idea, and dismisses it by saying "of course we will, no problem."

The descend is tedious and long. The use of flash-lights and gentle slope slow us down. Every 20 minutes I question if we are in the right trail or not. After two hours or so, we reach the basin. We are practically safe except for the last 4.7 flat miles. Chrissy flashlight dies, and she leeches off Robert's head lamp. Robert enjoys how he can orchestrate Chrissy by shinning his headlamp in the direction he wants her to go. At this point, I was not going to go into autopilot, if it wasn't for the monotonous night scenery, I can only think of two images from those miles: one - a wide flat trail; two - a wide flat trail with mud. On the latter, the autopilot choose the path of least resistance, or shortest distance between two points, i.e. a straight line, mud or no mud. At one point, just for the heck of it I asked Chrissy if she was tired, and she replies "Mentally I am a bit tired, my feet are burning, but my legs are fine." Can you say Energizer!!

Eureka, at 9:55p we cross the final bridge, and Robert and I sprint to the car. He beats me because he knew the way (or at least this is a good excuse for me). I remind him that he left Chrissy lightless!!. On his way back, Chrissy enters the parking lot after following in pitch darkness the wooden rails.

After celebrating the fact that we are (or rather I am) alive. I was very impressed by the fact that Chrissy was able to drive back to Camelot reasonably well after a 36.1 mile 16 hour 9000ft elev gain hike . Initially I assigned myself the task to watch out for the road, I even said "BEEP" twice as she crossed the shoulder line; but sleep was stronger. I didn't think I was tired or unalert, until I woke up from my sleep, looking a the pitch black dashboard of the car, and starting to scream "Chrissy, Chrissy!! you are driving without lights, with the lights off!!!" After the panic, I raise my chin to realize that I a little confused, and that everything was ok.

We had dinner at the pizza place in Plymouth, and headed back to Camelot. The next day, we had a pleasant breakfast at the Overflow. Thinking that is was named for a place that people go when other places are full, I realized from the flooding pictures of the town where the name originates.

So in retrospect, all went well. I bagged a bunch of summits, enjoyed marvelous vistas and had a good time in the company of friends,

Hector 'Safety' Briceno

PS: Thanks for Robert 'the statistician' for computing all the times and mileage in a pretty Excel spreadsheet.