Appalachian Mountain Club

Um, and yeah, plenty of circumstances like that.

And there's a lot of things where I think the, the whole White Mountains', um, and the Appalachian Mountain Club's, um, presence in, like, the land conservation of it is really tricky because it's, like, this big, vast mountainous area.

And a lot of other places in the country and the world you can just, like, have at it and camp wherever you want and walk wherever you want.

Um, but because there are so many people who travel through the White Mountains and hike there every year, um, there are so many, like, super rare alpine plants and other, um, parts of, of the natural elements up there that are severely damaged from [laughs] the sheer number of people up there.

He told his family that he was traveling to Provincetown, Massachusetts, for a business meeting, a meeting that he had no intentions of returning from.

According to witnesses, the Appalachian Mountain Club shuttle, which takes guests from the nearby lodge and hotels to tourist spots and hiking areas, dropped him off at around 12:30 PM.

The shuttle driver that day recalled that they dropped Robert off at the head of Zeeland Falls Trail in the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area of the White Mountain National Forest that's located in New Hampshire.

To those around him, it appeared as though Robert was making the most of his business trip, but inside his mind, there was something much darker going on.

His family were distraught and immediately contacted the authorities, who started the search for him.

Unfortunately, despite the combined efforts of the Vermont State Police, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, and search and rescue crews, no sign of Robert has ever been found.

Investigators did find that shortly before his disappearance, Robert had tried to make a booking for the Appalachian Mountain Club's Zeeland Falls Hut hotel, but the request never went through.

His car was later found at the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland House in Crawford Notch, but it appears no evidence was retrieved.

Also, the week following that, starting that Sunday and going through the rest of that week, is the AMC's Dark Sky, Seeing the Dark Festival, I should say, Seeing the Dark.

And that's up at the Appalachian Mountain Club, Meadowistla Lodge.

That's something that you'd have to sign up to them for.

But myself, John Meter, a number of others, we give regular presentations up there and do stargazing every night that the weather cooperates.

I mean, the Carolina Mountain Club had done a little bit of trail building.

earlier when they were a branch of the Appalachian Mountain Club, but it was nothing really AT related.

And so, you know, PAT started hacking out the trail south of the Potomac and the section north and south of route 66 that people hike on today was where they started.

Cause they could ride the train from DC out to the little village of Linden, Virginia and get off the train there with their shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and, and start making trail.

He told his family that he was traveling to Provincetown, Massachusetts for a business meeting, a meeting that he had no intentions of returning from.

According to witnesses, the Appalachian Mountain Club shuttle, which takes guests from the nearby lodge and hotels to tourist spots and hiking areas, dropped him off at around 12:30 PM.

The shuttle driver that day recalled that they dropped Robert off at the head of Zeeland Falls Trail in the Pemigewasset Wilderness area of the White Mountain National Forest that's located in New Hampshire.

To those around him, it appeared as though Robert was making the most of his business trip, but inside his mind, there was something much darker going on.

His family were distraught and immediately contacted the authorities who started to search for him.

Unfortunately, despite the combined efforts of the Vermont State Police, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, and search and rescue crews, no sign of Robert has ever been found.

Investigators did find that shortly before his disappearance, Robert had tried to make a booking for the Appalachian Mountain Club's Zeeland Falls Hunt Hotel, but the request never went through.

His car was later found at the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland House in Crawford Notch, but it appears no evidence was retrieved.

It's more like a small pond, but on a still day, I can see how it would reflect the sky above.

And just up the hill from the pond is the AMC Lakes of the Clouds Hut, AMC being the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Just like it doesn't seem fair to call that pond down the hill a lake, it doesn't seem fair to call this building a hut.

I get it.

Standing near the trailhead is 63-year-old William Curtis and his younger climbing partner, Alan Ormsby.

He's 29 years old.

Both are members of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Both are seasoned hikers who know their way around Mount Washington.

And it's originally it was back to the Fred Bar days and like the livery, like his livery business of like burrows on the mountain and everything.

Nowadays, it's basically kind of like one of the huts in Europe or like one of the, is it on the East Coast, the AMC huts, the Appalachian Mountain Club or whatever.

It's kind of like that.

People come and stay the night and get food and hike and stuff.

A meeting that he had no intentions of returning from.

According to witnesses, the Appalachian Mountain Club shuttle, which takes guests from the nearby lodge and hotels to tourist spots and hiking areas, dropped him off at around 12.30 p.m.

The shuttle driver that day recalled that they dropped Robert off at the head of Zeeland Falls Trail in the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area of the White Mountain National Forest that's located in New Hampshire.

To those around him, it appeared as though Robert was making the most of his business trip.

His family were distraught and immediately contacted the authorities who started the search for him.

Unfortunately, despite the combined efforts of the Vermont State Police, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department and search and rescue crews, no sign of Robert has ever been found.

Investigators did find that shortly before his disappearance, Robert had tried to make a booking for the Appalachian Mountain Club's Zeeland Falls Hunt Hotel, but the request never went through.

His car was later found at the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland House in Crawford Notch, but it appears no evidence was retrieved.

chapter i of white mountain trails white mountain trails tales of the trails to the summit of mount washington and other summits of the white hills by winthrop packard to the appalachian mountain club whose paths made it possible this book is appreciatingly dedicated chapter i up jokorua the mountain and its surroundings in mid-may the smooth highway over which thousands of automobiles skim in long summer processions from massachusetts to the mountains coquets with jokorua as it winds through the sometimes it tosses you over a ridge

whence the blue bulk and gray pinnacle stand bewitchingly revealed for a second only to be eclipsed in another second by the lesser

near-by beauties of the hill country and leave you wistful sometimes it gives you tantalizing flashes of it through trees or by the gable of a farmhouse on a round hayfield hill but it is only as you glide down the long incline to the shores of shikora lake that the miracle of revelation is complete

on which they love to light when sated with the clover honey these too are gems of the mountain world which if not found elsewhere one might well come many miles to seek it is easy to believe too that the spangled fritilleries know the source of the silver beauty of their underwings and cunningly seek further nourishment for it you find them hovering in golden cloud swarms over bare spots of scintillant sand along the reaches of the river or in the paths of the roadside which rambles down from the hills with it anon lighting upon this bare and shining earth to probe with long proboscis and draw from the mica-flecked sand perhaps the very essence of its silvery glitter for the renewing of their wing spots the white admirals are with them not in such swarms to be sure but in considerable numbers eager also for the same unknown booty it may be that they too thus renew the silver of their white epaulets i found all these and a thousand other beauties on my trip up the wildcat to its source in carter notch through this region of mica made fairy gems they lured me from curve to curve and from one rapid to the next beyond always climbing by easy gradients toward the great v in the carter moriah range whose mysteries to me unknown were after all the chief lure the crystal-clear air out of the north which had swept the gloom from the high brow of mount washington made the mountains seem very near and sent prickles of desire for them through all the blood on such a day it is a boon to be allowed to climb nor can one satiate his desire for the achievement of heights except by seeking them from dawn till dusk little adventures met me momentarily on the way here in a mountain farmer's field was a great mass of ruddy gold showing its orange crimson for rods around a little knoll yet this was but fairy gold as the gems of the wildcat meadows are fairy gems a colony of composite weeds which no doubt the farmer hates but which produce more wealth for him than he could win from all the rest of his farm for a decade if he could but gather it the fritillary butterflies know its value and flock to it losing their own burnished coloration in it and the wild bees are drawn far from the woodland to it by its soft perfume to come suddenly on this was as good as discovering a new peak to hear a tiny shriek in the wayside bushes and on search to rescue a half-grown field sparrow from the very jaws of a garter snake sending the snake to gehenna with a stamp of a big foot and seeing the fledgling snuggle down again into the nest with the others was as pleasant as finding the way to a new cascade but after all the great lure of such a crystalline day is toward the high peaks the wildcat river has its very beginning in the height of carter notch and its prattle over every shallow teased me to follow its trail back to this high source and see what the spot might be to do this step by step with the falling water would be a herculean task for the gorges down which it runs are choked with boulders and forest debris and tangled with thickets as close set and difficult of passage as any tropical jungle but there is no need to seek its source by that route you may go within four miles of it by motor if you will up the good road from jackson that finally dwindles and vanishes on the slope up toward wildcat mountain but not before it has taken you through a gate and showed you the entrance to the a m c trail to the top of the notch All the way up to this point the outlook to the south has been growing more extensive and more beautiful.

Black Mountain still lifts its broad ridge from pinnacle to pinnacle on the east side of the Wildcat, but Eagle Mountain, Thorn, Tin, and the little height between these last two have been dropping down the skyline till Kearsarge, Bartlett, Moat, and even the distant Sandwich and Assipi ranges far to the south loom blue and beautiful above them.

while the valley of the wildcat unrolls its slopes checkered with farm and woodland to where the river vanishes from sight around the turn at jackson falls fifty miles of sylvan beauty lie before you as you look down the narrow valley over the green heights that rim it to the blue ones far beyond and up again to the amethystine sky is a wide world of sun and it is good to look at it now for the path before you plunges to shade immediately and is to give you little more than a dapple of sunlight for five miles yet it is a wide and easy way for most of the distance for which the chance traveller may thank the lumberman whose road it follows and the appalachian mountain club the lumbermen opened it the appalachians have kept it up since the tote road was abandoned they even have mowed its grassy stretches each spring lest some fair appalachian pilgrim set her foot upon a garter snake inadvertently and without malice and henceforward abjure mountaineering a half-dozen brooks splash down the mountain side and cross this trail all for the slaking of your thirst and if you do not find the garter snake to step on you may have a porcupine indeed to judge from my own experience the porcupine is the more likely footstool just before you round the low shoulder of wild cat mountain to enter the notch is a burnt region full of gaunt dead trees and this neighborhood grows porcupines in quantity also in bulk one of them looms as big as a bear at the first glimpse of him in the trail ahead and if he happens to start from almost beneath your foot as you step over a rock giving that queer little half squeal half grunt of his you are momentarily sure that you have kicked up ursus major himself but though the porcupine may squeal and move for a few shambling steps with some degree of quickness he is by no means afraid of you he just moves off a few feet turns his back shakes out his quills till they all point true then waits for you to rush at him and bite him from behind waits with a wicked grin in his little eye as he leers over his shoulder at you then if nothing happens he shambles awkwardly away into the shadows of the forest if something does happen it is the aggressor that shambles away with a mouthful of barbed needle-pointed quills but then why should anyone bite a porcupine they do not even look edible and judging by the numbers of them that strayed casually out of the path round the shoulder of wild cat that day nothing has eaten any of them for a long time else there had not been so many in this burnt district you get a glimpse of carter mountain on the other side of the notch you are about to enter and then you plunge again into deeper woods on the west side under the cliffs of wildcat whose very frown is hidden from you by the high trees the cool shadowy depths here will always be marked in my mind as the place of great gray toads i saw several of these right by the path six-inch long chaps looking very wise and old and having more markings of white than i ever saw before on a toad besides a white streak all the way down the backbone the place is as beautiful as these bright-eyed curious creatures and as uncanny mossy boles of great trees rise through its gloom and through the perfumed air comes the cool drip of waters moss is deep and over it and the rough lichen-clad rocks grows the linea holding up its pink blooms fairy pipes for the puckwudgies to smoke here out of high cliffs have fallen great rocks which lie about the patch in mighty confusion here are caves little and big that might shelter all the hedgehogs roaming the fire-swept mountain side below and as many bears yet neither porcupines nor bears appeared or any other living things except the great white-mottled toads that would not hop aside for my foot but sat and gazed at me with the calm patience of woodland deities then the path swung sharp down the hill through lesser trees that give a glimpse of the high frown of carter cliffs swimming in the sky above and then i wonder if every pilgrim does not at this point laugh with pure joy and caper a bit on road-weary legs for here in the gruesome depths of the great notch at the climax point of its wildness is a little clear mountain lake where surely no lake could be set in thousand-ton fragments of mighty broken ledges to look north is to see a little barrier of wooded ridge stretching across from side to side of the place and between the eye and this a low barrier of wood growth among great rocks behind which is the air of empty space i pushed through this expecting a crater and behold here is another little round lake with lily pads floating on its surface and beyond this an open space in the woods and the a m c camp the time was early afternoon of one of the longest days of the year and the sun sent a cloudburst of gold a thousand feet down the perpendicular cliffs of wild cat mountain and flooded the highest source of wild cat river with it the north wind poured its wine over the ridge and set the surface of the little lake to dancing with silver lights such as had greeted me in the river far below in the boulders along the way and in the spangles of the thousands of fritillary wings that had fluttered and folded as i passed here is the crucible for the making of these fairy gems and i dare say the wise old toads from the shadows on the side of wild cat just above are the sorcerers whence the tinkering trolls learned the trick of their manufacture i had to wait but a little while however to know the difference stretched on the slope on the farther shore of the flashing lake i watched the sun swing in behind the high pinnacle of a wild-cat cliff that leaps from the water's edge almost a thousand feet in air its sheer sides embroidered by the green of young birch leaves i had left the full tide of early summer in the jackson meadows here it was early spring there the strawberries were overripe here the blossoms were but opening their white petals and the mountain moosewood and mountain ash there long gone to seed were here just in the height of bloom by the lake side the labrador tea offers its felt slipper leaves for the refreshment of weary travelers who may thus drink from fairy nor need one go to the trouble of steeping for the round heads of delicate white bloom send forth a styptic aromatic fragrance that is as tonic as the air on which it floats a drone of wild bees was in this air and looking up the cliff toward the sun a million wings of tiny fluttering insects made a glittering mist but even then the shadow of the pinnacle of the great cliff fell on the western margin of the pool and as i lay and watched it moved majestically out across the waters it wiped the golden glow and the fluttering sheen of insects from the air the glitter from the surface of the lake and spread a cool mystery of twilight over all things which it touched a chill walked the waters from the base of the cliff whose rough rock brows frowned where the birches but an hour before had smiled and all the hobgoblins of the wild notch showed themselves in the advancing shadows rock sphinxes and dead tree dragons suddenly appeared and as the afternoon advanced so did the shadows of wild cat mountain sweeping across the narrow defile and bringing forth all its weird and sinister aspects the way to the light of day lies down the stream southerly but there is no stream the waters of the upper lake flow to the other one beneath a great jumble of broken ledges and then go on to form the stream farther down under a titanic rock barrier of shattered cliff and interspersed caverns gnarled and dwarfed spruces climb all over this great barrier and so may a man if he have patience and will step carefully on the arctic moss which clothes the rocks and gives root hold to the spruces watchful lest it slip from under him and drop him into the caverns of unknown depth below it is a region of wild beauty of desolation even with the sun on it and after the shadow of wild cat has climbed it its rough loneliness has something almost sinister about it only when its topmost rock is surmounted and the valley below shows down the notch still bathed in sunshine and peaceful in its green beauty and its rim of blue mountains far beyond may one forget the weird spell which the shadows have cast on him in the very heart of the chasm

here is the scintillant world of the wildcat river valley

once more still bathed in sunshine though the shadows of the range to westward creep rapidly toward its center i have seen the heart of its beginnings at the moment when the toiling trolls were at their work i had seen the weirder spirits cast their mantle over the place and far down the notch i could hear the little river calling me to come down to it again as i scrambled off this giant's causeway to the friendly leading of the path and went on down through the region of great gray toads to the slope of a thousand porcupines and on to where the footpath way enters the road the smile of sunshine had gone from the face of the valley and the night shadows of wildcat and its spurs were drawn across it but only for a little was it somber with the darkness came a million scintillations of firefly lights in all its grasses and out of the clear blue of the sky above twinkled back the answering stars chapter six chapter seven of white mountain trails up tuckerman's ravine day and night along the short trail to mount washington summit arch at the head of tuckerman's ravine holds winter in its heart all summer long in the sweltering heat of the early july weather it is an unborn glacier a solid mass of compacted snow and ice two hundred feet in vertical diameter and spreading fan fashion across the whole head of the ravine out from under it rumbles a stream of ice water and it still makes danger for the mountain climber on the upper part of the path which climbs the head wall of the ravine and goes on up to the summit of mount washington all winter long the north wind sweeps the snow over the round ridge between the summit cone and boot spur and drifts it down the perpendicular face of rock which stands above the beginning of the ravine there are summers when the heat of the sun beating directly upon this glacial mass melts

He told his family that he was traveling to Provincetown, Massachusetts for a business meeting, a meeting that he had no intentions of returning from.

According to witnesses, the Appalachian Mountain Club shuttle, which takes guests from the nearby lodge and hotels to tourist spots and hiking areas, dropped him off at around 12:30 PM.

The shuttle driver that day recalled that they dropped Robert off at the head of Zealand Falls Trail in the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area of the White Mountain National Forest that's located in New Hampshire.

To those around him, it appeared as though Robert was making the most of his business trip, but inside his mind, there was something much darker going on.

His family were distraught and immediately contacted the authorities, who started to search for him.

Unfortunately, despite the combined efforts of the Vermont State Police, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, and search and rescue crews, no sign of Robert has ever been found.

Investigators did find that shortly before his disappearance, Robert had tried to make a booking for the Appalachian Mountain Club's Zealand Falls Hunt Hotel, but the request never went through.

His car was later found at the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland House in Crawford Notch, but it appears no evidence was retrieved.