Be Careful What You Wish For

For a decade starting in my mid-twenties I earned a meager living as a mountain guide. I’m from New Hampshire and tromping around the mountains or ice climbing in any kind of weather seemed like a great way to make a few bucks before heading to the Alaska Range or the Cordillera Blanca.

Because I was new and said yes to anything, my boss assigned me to overnights in the mountains, including winter Presidential Traverses. I figured I needed to be good at suffering if I wanted to be a good alpinist. And you got good at suffering guiding the Presidential Traverse.

The guided Presi Traverse is a three-day slog up and over New England’s highest peaks: a trip of twenty miles, depending on variations of route, though the general idea is to keep to the muted spine of ridge all the way across nine peaks. Twenty miles spread over three days is trivial in good weather. In the summertime, locals run the traverse