[SPEAKER_09]: So we woke up this morning.

[SPEAKER_09]: I was, of course, the first one to get up in the shelter.

[SPEAKER_09]: And my mom walks over and whispers to me that there's something wrong with her knee.

[SPEAKER_09]: I'm Matt Pedelsky.

[SPEAKER_09]: In twenty-twenty-two, I tried to throughhike the Appalachian Trail with my mom, Kidney.

[SPEAKER_09]: We were [SPEAKER_09]: looking at backup options as she kind of stretched out her knee and walked around a little bit and tested it out but she opted to keep going to push on and see how she feels today.

[SPEAKER_09]: Where do you think about for a target today?

[SPEAKER_12]: I was looking at it, and literally just pulled out the next page, so we were going.

[SPEAKER_09]: That's KFC, one of the members of our newly formed Trail Family, or Tramely.

[SPEAKER_12]: My good news is, we got one big steep climb, like we've had, but that, and it's descent, it's very, like so.

[SPEAKER_12]: I don't know about her, but for me, it's descent that kills my knees more than anything, so.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, definitely, I mean, it looks on the map, looking easy today.

[SPEAKER_09]: My mom and I were right in the hearts of New Hampshire's white mountains.

[SPEAKER_09]: This is some of the most technically challenging terrain on the entire abolition trail.

[SPEAKER_09]: My mom had just rejoined me on trail after recovering from a partially torn Achilles tendon, so these rugged peaks were a shock to her system.

[SPEAKER_01]: There were a couple times where I had trouble getting my leg up and then I'm like, oh my knee can do this.

[SPEAKER_09]: The Appalachian Mountain Club, or AMC, has been building and maintaining hiking trails in the white mountains for well over a hundred years.

[SPEAKER_09]: But many through hikers have a love-hate relationship with the AMC.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were not there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Late the clouds was not built to accommodate the volume of through hikers.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was built, you know, decades and decades ago when there was very few people up there.

[SPEAKER_09]: This show is about more than just the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_09]: It's about the balancing act between outdoor recreation and ecosystem protection.

[SPEAKER_09]: This is Common Land.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm Nicole Zesman.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the president and CEO of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I am a total out of the box president and CEO for the AMC.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have been in the for profit world for almost thirty years as in focused in human resources as a chief people officer in a variety of industries, e-commerce, publishing, even the New York Yankees.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had made the decision that I wanted to focus the back half of my career in nonprofit in a [SPEAKER_00]: place that I strongly believe in their mission and that I'm passionate about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when I got the call about the role, it truly was a way for me to combine my professional experience, which has really been focused on bringing people together with my personal passion of the outdoors.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're probably most known for the huts in the whites, but we do so much more than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the Appalachian Trail would not be maintained without our, you know, we maintain hundreds of miles of it in our region.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's that opportunity to collaborate with our partner conservation organizations, our partner recreational organizations, our volunteers, so much of trail maintenance is done by our volunteers and our chapters.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, every chapter has a trails committee.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we differentiate ourselves from other straight conservation organizations in that we are the intersection of the people and the linens.

[SPEAKER_09]: New Hampshire's presidential range includes the most famous peaks in all of the white mountains.

[SPEAKER_09]: The range is iconic not just because it's the tallest in the Northeast, but because the climbs are just brutal.

[SPEAKER_09]: The weather is notoriously unpredictable and the trails are incredibly steep.

[SPEAKER_09]: But the views are simply unmatched.

[SPEAKER_09]: Alright, it's August, twenty-fourth climbing up onto the presidential bridge line.

[SPEAKER_09]: It is a narrowly climb.

[SPEAKER_09]: It started raining on us.

[SPEAKER_09]: So, got thoroughly soaked.

[SPEAKER_09]: But once we got about halfway, [SPEAKER_09]: up the climb to the ridge.

[SPEAKER_09]: The trail just started to get a lot more difficult.

[SPEAKER_09]: There's a lot of just being giant boulders that you got to scramble up.

[SPEAKER_09]: And the boulders are wet and slippery.

[SPEAKER_09]: I just not too far back.

[SPEAKER_09]: I just slipped as I was going up on and like slid back down and scraped my knee up.

[SPEAKER_09]: I'm up here on the peak and not Webster.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm up here for a little bit just waiting for my mom to catch up.

[SPEAKER_08]: But I'm in a flock of golden and ruby crowned kinglets.

[SPEAKER_10]: Hey mom!

[SPEAKER_10]: Oh, we're here.

[SPEAKER_06]: Do you have memories of going down this?

[SPEAKER_06]: Is it easier to go into the going up?

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_06]: Really hard.

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I'm not wrong about that, right?

[SPEAKER_09]: No, it was.

[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, we're basically at the same elevation now as that hut missed the hut.

[SPEAKER_09]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_09]: But we do have to go down and then back up a little bit.

[SPEAKER_06]: After all that, you know?

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_09]: The presidential ridge line boasts by far the largest area above treeline in the northeastern United States.

[SPEAKER_09]: This exposure makes the ridge line one of the most dangerous stretches of the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_09]: This is why it's so wild when you come across one of the huts that the AMC runs up on the presidentials.

[SPEAKER_09]: Each hut is a little oasis from the extreme weather.

[SPEAKER_09]: Inside, hikers find many of the amenities of a modern hotel.

[SPEAKER_09]: Fresh water, bathrooms, snacks for sale, hiking maps, covering the walls, and bunk rooms where folks can spend the night.

[SPEAKER_09]: The staff serve family style meals for folks who pay to spend the night.

[SPEAKER_09]: But a lot of hikers use the huts to stop for a rest, escape the weather, and use the bathroom.

[SPEAKER_09]: The fact that this level of hospitality exists in these extreme high-alpine environments is kind of amazing.

[SPEAKER_09]: But the beginnings of the AMC's HUD system were a lot more rustic.

[SPEAKER_02]: The only reason that AMC built its first HUD on the presidential range was because a logging company needed us an acre.

[SPEAKER_09]: That Becky Fullerton, the archivist for the Appalachian Mountain Club.

[SPEAKER_02]: The first head Madison was built in eighteen eighty eight and opened in eighteen eighty nine and it was based purely on the concept of the European alpine hut.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it kind of a lonely stone structure up in the mountains.

[SPEAKER_02]: that was there for keeping you alive basically so that you could go camp out at this cool high alpine remote place and not die of exposure.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the modern kind of, the huts, the huts the way that they are today, I think, sprung up more in the nineteen thirties, so in the, the Joe Dodger.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Joe Dodger was the huts manager from, uh, nineteen twenty two all the way up to nineteen fifty eights.

[SPEAKER_02]: he made the HUD system into this idea where you could find hospitality and high places.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of their tagline and he was really instrumental in making the HUD crews what they are today, so this is like very welcoming, responsible, professional group of individuals that are there to run the HUD during the season and make you a great meal, but also [SPEAKER_02]: save you if you are out lost on the ridge at midnight in the rain.

[SPEAKER_09]: There are eight AMC huts in the white mountains, and sometimes people will turn them into a tour, going from hut to hut and spending the night.

[SPEAKER_09]: Booking them can be competitive, especially during mid-summer when the whites are a hugely popular tourist destination.

[SPEAKER_09]: For through hikers, the huts can provide relief too, but it's not always that simple.

[SPEAKER_09]: After our dramatic climb up onto the presidential ridge line, my mom and I met up with the rest of our tramily at Mispa Hut.

[SPEAKER_09]: We ate lunch, filled up on water, and kept moving.

[SPEAKER_09]: Traveling along the high ridge line towards the next and most well-known of the AMC Huts, Lake of the Clouds.

[SPEAKER_08]: All right, I'm up on the ridge line of the presidential range, less than a mile from Lake of the Clouds hut.

[SPEAKER_09]: Camping isn't allowed above treeline, and it takes most through hikers two days to traverse the entire presidential range.

[SPEAKER_09]: So, Lake of the Clouds Hut, with its position about halfway across, is an important stopover spot for AT through hikers.

[SPEAKER_03]: Facilities like huts actually allow more people to be up in the backcountry with less [SPEAKER_03]: impact.

[SPEAKER_09]: That's Nat Scrimshaw, the chair of the world's trails networks hub for the Americas and also a volunteer trail adopter for the Appalachian Mountain Club.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you're actually looking at impact, you know, the highest impact you can have is if people are dispersed camping.

[SPEAKER_09]: This is why the huts are so important to the white mountains.

[SPEAKER_09]: They provide access to some of the region's most spectacular scenic areas while keeping the impact on sensitive alpine ecosystems to a minimum.

[SPEAKER_09]: So why do many in the Appalachian Trail through hiking community bemoan the presence of the huts?

[SPEAKER_03]: You're talking about, you know, hundred and twenty-five dollars or something, or two hundred dollars for likes, and I don't even know what it is anymore.

[SPEAKER_09]: Non-member rates for the two thousand twenty five season at most Appalachian Mountain Club huts are two hundred and seven dollars a night.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's it's only a certain class that is that has the ability to use that facility.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we're not bringing in the larger our larger, you know, community in the United States and I think part of that has to do with the cost.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, we are operating in a large in operation, and the costs have gone through the roof as they have anywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: You go up to eat, and it's three times as expensive.

[SPEAKER_09]: Again, that's Nicole's Usman CEO of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what are we providing?

[SPEAKER_00]: We're providing food.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to, you know, we do airlift in things a couple times every season.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to airlift in our generators, all the blankets, things like that, and you know, cause of diesel fears.

[SPEAKER_00]: So our costs have gone up exponentially.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's expensive, as is all hotel lodging these days.

[SPEAKER_09]: Most Appalachian Trail through Hikers can't afford to spend over two hundred dollars a night to stay at a hut.

[SPEAKER_09]: But the Appalachian Mountain Club does offer a work for state program, allowing a certain number of throughhikers to eat leftovers and sleep on the hot floor and exchange for helping with cleanup after dinner.

[SPEAKER_09]: But these work for state slots are limited and there's no way to guarantee a spot ahead of time.

[SPEAKER_09]: On our way there, we basically had our fingers crossed that we'd get a spot.

[SPEAKER_09]: So yeah, I'm just taking the quick break here before pushing on to the clouds hut.

[SPEAKER_09]: I'm hoping that we're going to be able to stay there.

[SPEAKER_09]: because if not, we got to hike down to the closest campsite, and then back up to the ridge line to continue our traverse of the presidential range along the AT.

[SPEAKER_09]: So that would be really not great if we had to do that.

[SPEAKER_09]: My mom and I arrived at the hut in the late afternoon, and we snagged the last two through Higrispots available for the day.

[SPEAKER_09]: I'll share more about our stay at Lake of the Clouds hut after a short break.

[SPEAKER_09]: We're back.

[SPEAKER_09]: I'm Matt Podolsky, and you're listening to Common Land, a show about the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_09]: We had an interesting stay at Lake of the Clouds last night.

[SPEAKER_09]: My mom and I got in just in time to do the work for stay program.

[SPEAKER_09]: We just did some like pretty minimal work helping clean up after dinner and got to eat some leftovers and sleep on the floor.

[SPEAKER_09]: There's a group of thru hikers that [SPEAKER_09]: have been calling themselves the trouble bubble and one of these guys who were friends with whose trail name is Seven Plates showed up at the hot and he was the first one so the first of the six to show up so he was sort of asking the caretakers if there was any room for him or his friends and they [SPEAKER_09]: very solidly like no there's no more room for any through hikers in this hut and they recommended that he go a quarter of a mile down to a stealth site so the rest of his crew show up they all hike a quarter of a mile down they get down there and realize that the stealth site they'd been directed to was flooded so they walked back up they arrived back at the shelter and [SPEAKER_09]: They basically just said, look, we don't have anywhere else to go.

[SPEAKER_09]: Like, you got to let us crash here and they did, they let them, they let them all just sleep on the floor.

[SPEAKER_09]: one of the members of the crew was doing a little program and taking questions.

[SPEAKER_09]: And yeah, one of the questions they asked was if they were a capacity that evening and to explain that they weren't and like they had like fifty something or maybe sixty something guests and they have ninety something bonks and so I'm just like how like you've got at least through hikers coming through [SPEAKER_09]: that need a place to stay and you have thirty open bumps and you're telling them to go like down the mountain to a stealth site where they're going to set up their tent in the alpine zone like I just it's utterly baffling to me [SPEAKER_09]: I didn't get a chance to ask Nicole Zassman why these open bunks weren't offered to thru hikers.

[SPEAKER_09]: But I did ask her about thru hiker accommodations at the huts.

[SPEAKER_09]: And here's what she had to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean at the AMC, we want to get everybody outdoors, but again, it's not getting everybody outdoors to be a thru hiker.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, we're kind of varying away from it's not about these massive milestones or waving your flag I did this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, just go outside for half an hour every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the bigger issue is that it's become part of our, you know, winning society so many through hikers now are doing it for very different reasons.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just become a trophy for a lot of people.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want that trophy, then it's a little harder to get because there are so many people.

[SPEAKER_09]: Are there too many people through hiking the Appalachian Trail?

[SPEAKER_09]: It's all relative, and while Lake of the Cloudsut felt crowded to me at the time, it was nothing compared to our next stop along the trail.

[SPEAKER_09]: From Lake of the Clouds, Hiker's ascends to the highest point in New England, Mount Washington.

[SPEAKER_09]: As my mom and I climbs to the summit, we were surrounded by a dense fog.

[SPEAKER_09]: Giant boulders emerged from the mist as we scrambled across a landscape that felt otherworldly.

[SPEAKER_10]: Point six to the top.

[SPEAKER_05]: I'll take it.

[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_10]: Well, you just did, we just did it about a mile.

[SPEAKER_05]: I know, that's amazing.

[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, it didn't seem like a mile.

[SPEAKER_05]: One faster than I thought, but I seem to remember that as you get to the top it gets a little bit.

[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, I remember the last half mile you're just doing the boulder scramble type thing.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_05]: But I'm still happy with the problem.

[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, me too.

[SPEAKER_10]: Me too.

[SPEAKER_09]: We scrambled through a maze of boulders guided by white blazes that emerged one after another from the fog.

[SPEAKER_09]: But then suddenly we were walking on pavement, and a large concrete structure loomed alongside us.

[SPEAKER_09]: We made our way to the visitor center, and were greeted by fluorescent lights, linoleum floors, and a cafeteria-style lunch line.

[SPEAKER_09]: At first, the building was mostly empty, but soon, the first group of people arrived on the cog railway, and we were engulfed by crowds.

[SPEAKER_09]: All right, I'm down in the basement of the Mount Washington Visitor Center.

[SPEAKER_09]: I was super foggy and wind really, really windy when we arrived on the peak and interesting experience to then walk into the Visitor Center and see the large groups of people.

[SPEAKER_09]: So I'm just going to go up and leave the recorder on and get some ambient sounds like [SPEAKER_09]: The train is gonna arrive pretty soon here.

[SPEAKER_09]: After spending months on the trail, seeing so many people crowded onto a mountaintop was a shock.

[SPEAKER_09]: From within this mass of tourists at Mount Washington Summit, my beef with the AMC's Hutsystem started to feel a bit petty.

[SPEAKER_09]: Compared to the commercial interests that have taken root on the peak, my experience at Lake of the Clouds hut feels pretty tame.

[SPEAKER_09]: and what's wilder is that none of this is new.

[SPEAKER_09]: The cog railway has been bringing people up to Washington Summit since eighteen sixty nine and the Mount Washington Auto Road first opens to horse and carriage in eighteen sixty one.

[SPEAKER_09]: Today, it costs almost a hundred dollars to ride the car railway and access to the auto road isn't cheap either.

[SPEAKER_09]: These commercial operations are well funded and well maintained, unlike many of the region's hiking trails.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's not enough funding to take care of the trails in our whole public land system.

[SPEAKER_09]: Again, that's Nat's Grimshaw, the chair of the World's Trails Networks hub for the Americas and also a volunteer trail adopter for the AMC.

[SPEAKER_03]: the resources for recreational trails in the White Mountain National Forest relative to the needs, just decrease in decline.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then there are groups like the AMC, they've been taking care of the trails since before the White Mountain National Forest existed.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they've used the HUD system that they've developed also to help bring an income to pay for their organization.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's their strength and also their weakness.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Forest Service really depends on groups like the AMC and also the smaller clubs to do trail work and there isn't enough money to really do the work that we need to do on the trails.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this dependency or this working with partnerships, I feel is good and not good.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think we really need more resources for our public lands as well as the wonderful partnerships so that we can adequately take care of the trails because you start making compromises.

[SPEAKER_03]: The AMC is partially dependent upon their hot system for some piece of their income.

[SPEAKER_03]: If they came to the conclusion that they should lower prices for ethical socioeconomic reasons, they would have a hard time making that decision because they're dependent upon their business models and part dependent on that.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the whole system is kind of falling apart right now for trail maintenance, unfortunately, including depending upon the AMC.

[SPEAKER_09]: Oh hey, what's happening?

[SPEAKER_09]: This is a nice little sight.

[SPEAKER_09]: I didn't find it either.

[SPEAKER_09]: My mom and I just camps like right along that river.

[SPEAKER_05]: I was with a tater and we were looking and we found one with a bear box and the sights were just garbage.

[SPEAKER_09]: That's Kuzzi, another member of our Tramely.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, totally.

[SPEAKER_09]: It worked.

[SPEAKER_09]: I slept.

[SPEAKER_09]: We're all going to meet up at the visitor town.

[SPEAKER_09]: Sounds like it.

[SPEAKER_08]: Wait.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_09]: At the visitor center, we laid out our wet gear to dry in the sun, then hitchhiked in groups of two into the town of Gorham, New Hampshire, where seven of us shared an over-priced hotel room.

[SPEAKER_09]: We were almost through the white mountains and about to cross the border into Maine.

[SPEAKER_09]: Our sites were beginning to narrow on that beacon of grandeur that sits at the Appalachian Trail's northern terminus, Katata.

[SPEAKER_09]: All right, it's August, twenty-eighth.

[SPEAKER_09]: Push me in this, I've been on trail for exactly five months.

[SPEAKER_09]: As of today, I've been waiting here for my mom to catch up.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm hoping she's gonna catch up pretty soon.

[SPEAKER_09]: At this point, I've been standing here, sitting here, standing here, hanging out at the spot for [SPEAKER_09]: quite a while about forty five minutes and I'm just antsy, just ready to go.

[SPEAKER_09]: I want to keep walking.

[SPEAKER_09]: When my mom caught up, she was in rough shape.

[SPEAKER_09]: Both her knees were now bothering her and she had already decided that she needed to get off trail and give them a break.

[SPEAKER_07]: If I could make it to the shelter in time, I would go with you to root too, but [SPEAKER_07]: I don't think that's smart with too sore knees, you know.

[SPEAKER_11]: I mean, yeah, I think if you think if you're thinking you need to get off for a few days, I mean, this is the way to do it.

[SPEAKER_11]: The fastest and you could be your house by the end of the day.

[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, you know, yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_11]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_11]: Good luck.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: And take me when you go down.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: I will.

[SPEAKER_07]: You don't have for me.

[SPEAKER_07]: Just keep them.

[SPEAKER_07]: You're out.

[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: You might have to come running down and rescue me as I fell into a tree.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_11]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: All right.

[SPEAKER_11]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_11]: Good luck.

[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_11]: I'll see you in the craft too.

[SPEAKER_11]: All right.

[SPEAKER_09]: Although I knew that my mom was frustrated to be forced off-trail due to injury for a second time, she had accomplished one of her goals, walking home.

[SPEAKER_09]: My mom lives in Western Maine just a forty-minute drive from where we were.

[SPEAKER_09]: So I picked up my pack and I pushed on towards the border.

[SPEAKER_09]: Alright, well it's August, twenty-nine.

[SPEAKER_09]: I just crossed the border into Maine, standing right here in front of the sign, acknowledging the border.

[SPEAKER_09]: It says Appalachian Trail, New Hampshire Main State Line, and then we've got some distances here, which probably aren't.

[SPEAKER_09]: A hundred percent accurate, because these are always [SPEAKER_09]: Changing a little bit here to here, but it says spring or mountain, one thousand nine hundred and eight miles, Katatin, two hundred and eighty two miles.

[SPEAKER_09]: While it may seem strange to some, at this point, in my Appalachian Trail hike, two hundred and eighty two miles felt like nothing.

[SPEAKER_09]: It would take a while for me to catch my first glimpse of Katatin, but the closer I got, the more I felt it's draw.

[SPEAKER_09]: In our next episode, I reach Maine's famous one hundred mile wilderness, and learn about how the Appalachian Mountain Club is using the White Mountain National Forest as a model to protect this unique area.

[SPEAKER_09]: Commonland is a production of the Wildlands Collective.

[SPEAKER_09]: This season was produced in partnership with New Hampshire Public Radio.

[SPEAKER_09]: This episode was produced by me, your host, Matt Penelsky.

[SPEAKER_09]: Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

[SPEAKER_09]: To listen to the next episode in the series, just search for Common Land.

[SPEAKER_09]: In Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[SPEAKER_09]: To learn more about the show, and to see a full list of credits, go to commonlandpodcast.com.