My apartment in Elam Hills, a small mill town in the shadow of the White Mountains, was about sixty miles southwest of Mount Washington—not the highest peak in the world, not even the highest in the United States, but one of the most treacherous. A confluence of competing wind currents and temperature zones, along with the proximity of the often-frigid North Atlantic, produces some of the most extreme weather in the world, and it does so on a fairly regular basis. Countless photographs of the rime-covered weather station and legendary tales of anemometers being ripped from their standards and blowing off onto the moraine have enhanced its mystique. That autumn—my only autumn in New Hampshire—became a magnet for unprepared hikers, overconfident backpackers, and even some impatient early-season skiers. Eleven of them died before Thanksgiving. Eleven! Not just brash and bulletproof teenagers, but adults too—the oldest having just retired from a municipal position in Concord. The last three died on the same day. In the phrase "Live Free or Die"—the New Hampshire state motto—the "or" could easily have been replaced with "then."
On Labor Day weekend, I lost two friends of my own (and almost myself) on the Presidential Range. One was Kurt Bevens, "Kurt from Keene" had been his alliterative nickname forever—brilliant student, math genius, self-proclaimed though not very proficient outdoorsman. We weren't close friends but his brilliance made him persuasive, and whenever he came up with a plan, nobody wanted to be the killjoy. The other was Stevie Marotta, a roommate my sophomore year until a convoluted series of botched dorm assignments separated us. He was an unassuming and docile kid, kind of the anti-Kurt.
Like me they had graduated the previous May, but they had both stayed in the Boston area hunting jobs in the business field and pondering grad school. Near midnight that Friday, Kurt called me with the plan. He was leaving at six in the morning and driving to Mt. Washington. You coming? I'll pick you up, he said in that imperious tone that implied that something was seriously wrong with anyone who wasn't coming. His plan came together as we spoke—you could sense his mind working—there by ten, on the mountain by eleven, back at the base by six, in some bar by eight, drunk by ten, laid by midnight, on the road back to Boston Sunday morning. The premise was rock-solid: there existed a drastic need to get in one more event for old time's sake. I had not received my coaching assignment yet, and Stevie would never say no.
The calendar may have read September, but the weather was mid-summer when we arrived in Conway and ate breakfast outdoors in the damp warmth of a Saturday morning, clad for the beach in t-shirts, shorts, good hiking boots, and all the paraphernalia scramblers would bring with them for a July ascent. We had heard the forecasts, knew of an approaching cold front, and prepared for temperatures that might drop into the forties at elevation. As a precaution against a worst-case scenario (though we planned to be back at the base well before dark) we each had laughingly packed a light fleece pullover, though the thought of that fabric rubbing against our clammy skin that stifling morning made me cringe.
We were not stupid people. Neither were the forecasters. But in the mountains, things sometimes go awry. Shortly after noon the sky, streaked with advancing cirrus all morning, lowered rapidly. The cold front slid through with a quick burst of rain that hardly even dampened my shirt and a noticeable wind shift, but instead of clearing the area and cutting off the light showers that had accompanied its passage, the front hung up along the coast just long enough to extend the precipitation and allow the incoming cold air to mix at high altitudes. I say this not from any great meteorological expertise, but because I practically memorized the subsequent explanation. All we knew at the time was that it was getting cold.
We welcomed the initial reprieve from the heat—hiking on a hot day is a killer— and dug out the fleece. We were surprised at how ineffective it was at stopping the cold, but we were still working hard and keeping warm. No problem—until the tapping of sleet brought us up short. I read later that partiers in the valley smiled as ice pellets bounced off their gas grills on Labor Day weekend. I didn't smile. My Cape Cod weather sense told me to get the hell out. I felt miserably uncomfortable, and because the climb had taken us longer than expected, we were losing daylight fast. But Kurt said no—we had another half mile to the point he wanted to reach.
I'd like to say we discussed it, but we didn't really. Kurt and I were both dug in: he wasn't going back; I wasn't going farther. Kurt never liked being contradicted, and when Stevie hesitated too, Kurt berated him for "wanting to retreat with your buddy." Retreat worked better on Stevie than me: I had been willing to retreat an hour earlier. The two of them continued up. When I reached the base, found a phone booth (cell phones were rare), and called the police as a precaution, the department had already been overwhelmed with similar panicky calls about loved ones.
At the lower altitude, the period of sleet lasted ten minutes at best, engendering talk of a hard winter. But for the two boys on the mountain, the sequence of tragic events was subtle but inexorable: first the rain soaked them, then the wind chilled them, and finally the sleet—once it covered the ground—made the footing especially treacherous. Stuck on a west-facing crag, unable to find shelter or even rig a makeshift tent out of the extra clothing they did not have, they pushed some rocks into a small windbreak which rescuers later found, then waited for the weather front to clear the area. It didn't happen fast enough. At dusk the sleet turned to snow and coated the ground. When it tapered off an hour or two later, the sky cleared, the wind died, and the temperature plummeted. Around midnight a reinforcing cold front blasted through and by dawn it was blowing a gale. The sun rose to a temperature reading of -8 Celsius—about 10º of frost—not brutally cold by any measure, but cold enough to chill wet skin into hypothermia.
The next afternoon a rescue team found both of them, found them on a day of defiant clarity and sunshine when the temperature hovered near 50º and gentle westerlies blew over a talus of treacherous debris. Stevie was dead, his body cut and bloodied from what may have been a last desperate attempt to run somewhere, an effort culminating in one final plummet onto some jagged rocks below. His flesh has been ripped open, but he could just as easily have died from exposure, lying tattered and still in that cold. And Kurt from Keene, the mathematician who had calculated a way to survive, had lapsed into a near catatonic state. His clean and unbloodied body—tangible proof that panic had never quite penetrated him—was airlifted to a hospital in his hometown, where the medical staff was able to save most of his fingers and toes.
I visited him twice, and both times he upbraided me for leaving him there. He never asked about Stevie and I was never sure if the doctors were keeping the news from him or if he knew and it didn't matter. After all, Stevie had proven himself, and maybe in Kurt's mind had shown true friendship and passed the ultimate test—the one I had failed. My being alive and whole was proof. So I lost two friends—both losses were permanent, but only one was final.
People often claim to have nightmares over events like that one. I never did. Maybe that's because the event occupied enough of my waking hours that year to allow my nights to pass unencumbered. Not a day went by when I didn't replay that afternoon and think about the decision I made. "You did the smart thing"—that's what everyone said, but aside from my parents, I always had the feeling that most of them were quietly criticizing my cowardice for leaving two friends to die. At Stevie's wake his father took me aside and assured me that his family bore no ill will towards me. "Ill will"—his words. And I thanked him, though my gratitude made me seem somehow complicit in their deaths. I'm not. Kurt was there too, battered and bandaged and sitting alone. We didn't speak.
I rehashed the entire event on my first night in Sage, not because I feared dying of exposure—that concern had disappeared when I knew for sure I would not be sleeping under the cowboy sign—but because Walter Trucks's comparison of my arrival to an impulsive jailbreak preyed on my mind. Kurt Bevens had been impulsive and he was dead. Carelessness doesn't always lead to a dramatic and tragic end, but it seldom leads to anything good either. And I didn't know that night that three decades after the Mt. Washington debacle, another friend's death lurked—another death for which I would not be responsible but would feel so anyway.
But temporarily at least I was safe in my charmless motel room. I had dug through my bag and pulled out a pair of boxers and a terminally wrinkled gray Red Sox t-shirt that would serve, actually had served for most of my adult