"Discard all your preconceived notions of hard trails. Huntington Ravine has earned a reputation as the most difficult regular hiking trail in the White Mountains for good reason. The trail ascends the ravine headwall, involving very exposed scrambling up steep slabs of rock with significant fall potential........and your first sweeping view of the massive headwall, riven by several ominous gullies separating tall cliffs." from: New England Hiking, Lanza.

October 20, 2003:

Taking two steps out onto the forty-five degree slab of rock and ice, I stop, trembling uncontrollably; not from the twenty degree temperature but from fear. That fear that is innate. That fear that runs deep in us all. That fear of falling. I step back again to my small, level platform and think. I look down below me to the bottom of the ravine. I've already past the point of no return. My skill was good enough to get me up this far but not sufficient for me to descend the same route. I must go up and over the wall, then descend an easier route. And the hard climbing has just begun. I am alone. No one is here to to belay me with a rope. I am a soloist on the headwall of Mount Washington's Huntington Ravine.

Two or three hours earlier I had started off the day from Pinkham Notch at around seven o'clock, following the Tuckerman Ravine Trail. It was a beautiful day; sunny, crisp, and about ten degrees with almost no wind. Perfect conditions for climbing in late October on Mt. Washington. I was happy for the fair weather. It put one aspect of the climb at ease in my mind. And that was important since I would be attempting what I expected to be my most difficult climb to date as well as performing it solo.

About a mile and-a-half up the trail, I turned right onto the Huntington ravine trail. I crossed a couple rushing streams, hopping carefully from rock to slippery rock. The trail was narrow and the markings were somewhat difficult to find in spots. It climbed steeply for a short while but nothing was difficult yet. In a little while I reached an open, flat area. This was the floor of Huntington Ravine. I looked up at the massive headwall before me, and knew I had my work cut out for me.

Working my way through a maze of massive boulders, I came to the base of the headwall. This is where the hiking ended and the climbing began. The rock was interspersed with ice and patches of snow, a most difficult combination. I had to decide whether to keep my crampons on or off. I could not waste time and energy putting them on for the icy patches and taking them off for the rock only areas. Since they were only instep crampons (4 points at midfoot) rather than full crampons (10-12 points), I opted to keep them on. I still had my toes and the ball of each foot free to "feel" the rock where necessary.

I worked my way upward, scrambling over partially frozen small waterfalls and cascading icy springs. I had to make good time. I wanted to reach the top of the headwall before the sun was high and had the chance to dislodge any rocks from the ice, or the ice itself. So far, so good. Just some easy scrambling. Then, I came to my first real test. It was a slab of rock and ice about forty-five degrees heading way up above to a sheer cliff with gigantic hanging icicles.

I stepped out several feet onto the rock, leaving my small, level rock platform below and to the side of me. Below me now was a very long, very steep, rock and ice wall. If I fell and didn't die, I'd probably wish I had. The fear was sudden and intense. It nearly blindsided me. I began shaking uncontrollably and immediately downclimbed the few feet over to my level platform. Stuck! I looked down. No way I'm going down that, I thought. Way too steep and icy. I have to go up. I looked around, desperately trying to find an easier line up the slab. It was easily over a hundred feet before I could see any easier spots to rest. I waited. I was alone. No one was coming for me. I had to climb this. I tried to psych myself up. "I know I can do this" I said aloud. "I know I can". I'd done wall climbing in gyms harder than this but I was always roped up. No rope here. No ice in the gym either.

If I slipped, it would be bad, really bad. I briefly thought about that. I had a horrible vision of me trying to drag my broken and bloodied body down the mountain. I was in a state of semi-panic. I again tried to see an easier line up. I thought hard on what to do. I again tried to psych myself up. I had to go. I couldn't stay here on this wall. It was too cold to wait for help. It could be days before anyone came. The thoughts ran through my head. I was trying to think. Think my way out of this. Get psyched! I was going.

I again stepped out onto the slab. My fear was at its peak. I knew I had to attempt this. There was no turning back now. And then, something happened. Something completely unexpected. One second I was shaking scared. Then, in an instant, I was completely calm. I stopped thinking. My heart slowed dramatically. It had happened. I had heard the saying once before: "The cage door opened and out stepped the animal". Businesslike, and without emotion or fear, I began climbing almost effortlessly. I jammed my foot into a crack and put hand-over-hand above as I worked my way upward. The primordial animal in me, the true primate, had come out. I had gone up and over the fear threshold, and was no longer being controlled by it. Now, the animal within was in charge. No more intense concentration, just doing, just climbing. Like it was hundreds of thousands of years ago. He's still in there, I thought, almost from outside my body. Still there after all these aeons.

I was shocked back into my modern-day self by something that whizzed past me, missing my head by mere inches. Rock? I looked up and ahead to the sheer cliffs still over a hundred feet above me. No, it wasn't a rock. It was the huge icicles being dislodged from the overhang by the heat of the sun. Though it was still only about twenty degrees, the sun was intense and, being that these frozen daggers were five and six feet long, their own weight pulled them off as the sun hit them. Another one came down, breaking into dozens of pieces and gaining tremendous velocity as it approached me. I leaned into the steep slab, set both feet, held onto the crack in the rock with one hand, and threw my other arm over my head as I looked away. Icy shrapnel swept over me as I cringed. Shit, shit, shit. Don't crack my head open now. It passed, and I continued on.

I was getting tired now. I was high on the ravine headwall. It was about eleven o'clock. As I dipped my way up between rocks, and scrambled around "aretes", or outside corners above the abyss, I wondered how much farther it was before I would reach the top of the wall. I came to a steep pinnacle gully, or couloir, that I attempted to scramble up. My instep crampons weren't enough to hold on the steep ice. I searched for another way. I looked to the left of the narrow gully. A several hundred foot dropoff loomed there. I scrambled around to the right. Just as bad. I tried the gully again. No way. I peeked again around the corner to the right of the pinnacle gully. There, about ten feet up was a split in the rock, bisecting the gully perpendicularly. If I could reach that split, maybe it is wide enough to cross into the gully high up, where there wasn't much ice.

I scrambled ever so carefully out onto the mini ridge, so high above the ravine below. No more fear, though. I was through with that part. Keep going. Keep going. I reached the gap in the side of the gully. It was narrow but if I took my pack off I could lay down in it and wiggle over into the top part of the gully. I took off my pack and pushed it ahead of me in the crack. Then I got in and shimmied over the eight or ten feet to the center of the gully. I took my pack and threw it to the one spot it had to land on. If it didn't land on that spot I'd lose it to the void below and have to go without water for the remaining hours of the climb. Perfect throw. I jumped down next to it. Now it was an easy scramble a few more feet up and out of the pinnacle gully.

When I got to the top of the gully the slope eased off greatly. I hiked a minute longer and was on top! I had made it to the top of the headwall! "Yeeeees!!', I shouted into the now increasing wind of the Alpine Garden. It was now about twelve noon. It had taken me five hours to get up this far. I looked at the easy slope of the summit cone. I could make the top in forty minutes or so, but I was really tired from my exertions. I decided not to summit the cone. I'd been up there many times before anyway.

I traversed the Alpine Garden, a distance of less than a mile from where I was. I took my time, moving slowly. I was beat but happy. I moved over the frozen snow and ice of the flat, rocky Garden and headed toward the Lion Head Route, my escape route, my way back. In another couple hours I would be down, back at good old Pinkham Notch. I turned my face into the wind and looked across the Alpine Garden, and far across Tuckerman Ravine to the mighty shoulder of Boot Spur, and to the right across the frozen flats until the grade once again rose up into the summit dome. What a beautiful mountain. The icy wind blew on me in a merciful manner as I continued on, smiling, a lone figure enjoying solitude on a majestic mountain.

I am the man on the mountain, and these are my continuing adventures.