48 on my 46th

Yesterday I had the biggest hike of my life. The many different methods of tracking disagree wildly on all these, but it was about 20 miles, definitely had 7 distinct summits, required about 6000 feet of elevation (both down and up), took 13 hours, clocked 60k steps, and involved approximately a bajillion rocks and two good friends. When we stumbled into the parking lot a few hours after dark, Anthony said, “Congrats. You have OFFICIALLY completed the 48 New Hampshire 4000 foot mountains.”

I wrote back in July about my history and love of hiking – and my struggles with a bum knee that threatened to end my career. I thought a lot about how this has all evolved. On my 46th birthday, I finished my 45th, 46th, 47th and 48th peaks as part of the NH 48. This hike was left to last because there’s NO GOOD WAY to get to the Bonds in less than 20 miles of hiking. I talked a few of my friends into joining me (one who has done it before and the other of whom didn’t ask enough questions ahead of time). We came up the day before, and did a fun little 5 mile hike up Mt. Hale and over to the AMC Hut at Zealand. (Of Mt. Hale my friend was like “I hope the summit view is worth the hike!”. Friends, there is no summit view at all on Hale.) We laid in the middle of the river to watch night overtake the sky and the Milky Way emerge, and were in bed asleep by 9 pm. Up with the sun the next morning for an AMC hut breakfast, and out the door by 8 am already in a hurry. Up, up and up on the rocky trails, with the first view (and cell signal) at ZeaCliff.

Right before Zealand (also no views), we got a visit from a friendly grayjay looking for a handout. More surprisingly, we encountered a flock of ~7 blue grouse blocking the trail and strutting their shockingly good camouflage – which broke up a very long and rather undifferentiated UPHILL. Zealand was disappointing, but Guyot was surprisingly alpine and beautiful, with a gigantic block of quartz the size of a head marking the cairn at the summit. We were ready for lunch, but not even a third of the way through our mileage. We slammed in some sandwiches and moved on.

We passed right by the trail marker for West Bond, and pushed up the hill to Bond. The summit there was glorious – in the very middle of one of the greatest wilderness areas of the Northeast. No matter where you look you see nature, not roads or buildings. It was amazing. The Presidentials behind, the Twins and Garfield and Galehead to the right. Across the Pemi Wilderness you have Franconia Ridge, and in the middle isolated Owl’s Head. To the left hard-to-spot Carrigain with Chocorua behind stands across from the Hales. Every single one of those mountains I have hiked up with my own two feet as part of my quest for the 48 – they are old friends filling panoramic views. I think my favorite part was looking back into the mountain ranges we’d already traversed. Hale was blued with distance, and it seems impossible that person in a morning could have come as far as we’d come. And ahead? To the left, Bond Cliff. To the right, West Bond. The only two that remained to me.

I wish I could have spent more time on Bond Cliff. The iconic photo taken on the edge of a cliff was absolutely terrifying and made my already shaky legs tempted to wobble. We took pictures and chatted with a hiker who’d last been there in 1983 via a bushwhack who got all three of us in a photo. In the lee of a boulder, Anthony lit a candle for my birthday cupcake. Tradition dictates the wind blows it out for me, but this time I got to blow it out for myself.

But we couldn’t linger long – daylight was already waning. The push BACK up Mt. Bond was the most grueling of the trip so far, and my legs were already burning along with my lungs. It grew quiet on the trail as we focused on foot placement and breathing. We barely had time for any summit yoga on Bond before we pressed down the trail. There was still one more to go. We dropped our packs to lighten the weight as we took the half mile spur up to the West Bond summit – in the still heart of the wilderness with mountains and valleys and rivers and slides on every side. Anthony had brought balloons saying 48 – but we had neither breath nor time to inflate them. We celebrated the completion with a prosecco toast and sat in a place you cannot get to without walking for miles and miles and miles. My heart was light, but my feet were heavy, and we still had a long trail ahead.

I know people do these trails FAST but I don’t understand how. I need to carefully pick each footfall to prevent breaking my ankles or wrenching my knees. There’s only so fast I can go on that terrain. And so we began the long march out. Several times we calculated the distance, hours apart, and each time we figured it was about five miles. It stayed five miles for at least five miles. The light failed just after we turned down the hill from ZeaCliff, and by the time we hit the hut and our overnight gear it was full dark – which it probably would’ve been smart not to leave my headlamp with the overnight gear. I had a momentary thought that after 12 hours of hiking and 17 miles and 7 summits maybe we should just admit that we were toast and spend the night – but the lure of “showers” and “our own beds” was too strong. The last 2.9 miles out in the dark were blessedly flatish and smoothish, although “15 minutes” became the new “five miles” in terms of misleading estimates.

Today, I am so sore I can hardly walk. But mostly my heart is happy. Doing this on my birthday might seem like a weird celebration, but growing older can sometimes seem like growing lesser. I could not have done this hike last year (due to knee issues). Ten years ago I could barely do a hike half as hard. Even twenty and thirty years ago – I was not in the training and position to do this hike. Here at 46 I’m doing the hardest thing I’ve done – successfully, and with friends. It’s so affirming to see this as growth and progress.

What next? I plan on hiking mountains for fun, and not because they’re on a list. Maybe I’ll do some lakes and waterfalls. We’ve already started brainstorming weird and unusual routes that will show us things we haven’t seen. Maybe a few bushwhacks. But I’m already missing the wild winds and rocky heights of Bond Cliff, and know I’ll be back again some day.