Saturday February 5, 2005

Guy Waterman Memorial Hike

Today we joined a hike led by Sherpa John to Lafayette & Lincoln in memorial of Guy Waterman.

This is the route we took today up to the summit of Lafayette and Lincoln today.

Directions to the trailhead: Rte 93 north Past Exit 32 onto the Rte 3 Parkway. Go past Exit 33 and pull into the Lafayette Place parking lot on the East side of the Parkway.

This is the profile of the hike to the summit from our GPS.

A 3-D view of our hike.

We met up with Sherpa John at the Tilton Diner for breakfast at 6am! Then met Ken at the trailhead where we had a great view of Cannon in the early morning sunshine.

We started out at 8 AM with the temp at 23 degrees, this was 30 degrees warmer than last weeks hike!

Sherpa John adjusting his pack. John is the director and co-start of the movie "48" which he produced to raise money against the fight for Diabetes.

The trail was snow covered, but soft and well packed by previous hikers. We had abundant sunshine all day.

Ken and John enjoying the views 30 minutes up the Old Bridle Path trail.

Soon we get a view of our destination for the day.

Cannon Mountain viewed through the trees.

Go Patriots!!!

2 hours into the hike we reached the AMC Greenleaf Hut.

John with Lafayette in the background.

John on the stairs of the hut which is closed for the Winter season.

A small lake, now frozen over, is located next to the hut.

Geri and Ken enjoying a story that John was telling.

The view looking back at Cannon and the hut as we make our way up the slope.

John had put his crampons on in the parking lot, while Geri, Ken and I barebooted until just before the summit.

We are all smiles as we made our way above tree line. Still protected from the wind, we are very warm.

After watching a hiker fall coming down from the summit at one area of glare ice we stopped to put crampons on.

This section was steep and icy, but easy to navigate with crampons.

A view over to North Lafayette where Guy Waterman picked as his final spot to enjoy the wonderfull views of the mountains in February of 2000.

We reach the summit in under 3 hours and still have bright blue skies above.

We had incredible views from the summit of Lafayette.

The view of the mountains to the North East.

And to the South East.

The view of Franconia Ridge to the South - Flume to the left.

Ken taking a photo looking South.

John kneeling as he remembers Guy Waterman in his thoughts.

Who says you can't see the Old Man any longer! Temp was about 30 and winds were 40+ ... in other words - COLD!

John's 'Old Man' brought some cheers from a few other folks on the peak at the same time.

After he dressed again, John pull on his bear cap to warm up. For the record John is 23 years old. (Bob and Geri are much older, and wiser)

A view looking down on Cannon Mountain.

We decided to traverse the ridge to the South for our return trip.

Geri with Lafayette in the background.

Making oour way up to Lincoln Peak.

John believes everyone should leave their mark - but is this what he meant??

We descended via the Falling Waters trail enjoying the ice on the rocks.

The views were wonderfull - the snow soft.

Today was a Winter hike in Spring like conditions.

We were glad that we kept our crampons on for the descent.

Words cannot describe the scenery that we enjoyed today.

This natural ice sculpture has us mesmerized.

It's the begining of February, but the snow and ice were melting with the warm temps.

We had to hold John back from going for a swim. He did confirm that the water temp in the Whites is the same Winter and Summer.

Back at the parking lot before 3pm with the temp at 42 degrees. What a great day - hard to beleive this is the middle of Winter in the Whites.

Who was Guy Waterman ?

By Douglas Martin
The New York Times
Feb. 20, 2000

Guy Waterman, who wrote books about hiking in the New England mountains and the preservation of their purity, died on Feb. 6. He was 67 and lived in East Corinth, Vt.

Waterman climbed to the top of Mount Lafayette, a 5,249-foot peak in the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire, and sat down to die in below-zero temperatures. He had sent letters to friends telling them what he planned to do and where to find his body. Five friends retrieved the body on Feb. 11.

�He lived with such intensity that he couldn�t sustain it anymore,� said Rebecca Oreskes, a friend who works in the White Mountain National Forest. �He talked to us all about not wanting to grow old.�

Waterman�s death ended an accomplished life, but one with many abrupt changes of direction. At 16, he was a professional jazz pianist, and later was a speechwriter for three presidents.

In 1973, a year after his second marriage, to Laura Johnson, the couple moved to Vermont to live in a cabin that had no electricity, plumbing or telephone, and was a mile from the nearest road.

Mike Dickerman, a friend of the Watermans who also writes about the New England outdoors, said the couple were avid mountain climbers. They had scaled all 48 peaks in New Hampshire that are 4,000 feet or higher, �in the winter, from all four sides,� Dickerman said.

They also wrote four books seeking to add historical context and philosophical perspective to their wilderness activities. These were �Backwoods Ethics: Environmental Issues for Hikers and Campers, (Countryman Press, 1979), �Forest and Crag,� (Appalachian Mountain Books, 1989), �Yankee Rock and Ice,� (Stackpole Books, 1993), and Wilderness Ethics, (Countryman Press, 1993). Another book, �Mountain Tales: Tall and True,� containing 20 pieces, half fact and half fiction, is scheduled to be published this year by Mountaineers Books in Seattle.

Some of the Watermans� commentary was barbed, like the condemnation of hikers who bring their cell phones to remote, pristine forests. And some of the commentary was quite practical, like their 11 pieces of advice for winter climbing.

One example: �Don�t count on following your footprints.�

Ms. Waterman said that she and her husband tried not to preach, but instead emphasized �the spirit of how people should come to the mountains.� He expressed great disappointment to his wife in his failure to persuade others to leave the mountains unspoiled.

Waterman spent most of his life in New Haven, where his father taught physics at Yale University until being appointed as the first director of the National Science Foundation.

The younger Waterman attended the Foote School in New Haven, the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Mass., and the Sidwell Friends School in Washington. On vacations, he would hike and canoe in remote parts of New England with his father.

In his teens he began appearing in jazz clubs in the Washington area as a pianist with the Riverboat Trio. He married before entering George Washington University; by the time he graduated he had three sons.

Waterman then found work as a legislative staff aide and speechwriter, working mainly for the Senate Minority Policy Committee. A staunch Republican, he wrote speeches for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. Waterman later became a speechwriter for the General Electric Co. in New York.

The Watermans were married in 1972, after meeting while rock climbing near New Paltz, N.Y. She is the daughter of Thomas H. Johnson, who was chairman of the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, N.J., and edited the letters and poetry of Emily Dickinson.

The Watermans homesteaded on 27 acres near East Corinth, a village in east-central Vermont. Though they had no modern conveniences, their living room included a Steinway grand piano that had been lugged in piece by piece.

�They purposefully created a really amazing life for themselves,� said Helen Whybrow, editor in chief of Countryman Press.

Two of Waterman�s sons from his first marriage, which ended in divorce, were lost to him in separate incidents. In 1973, William, the oldest, wrote an enigmatic letter to his father saying he was going on an extended trip. He was never heard from again and is presumed dead. John, the youngest son, died in 1978 while trying to climb Mount McKinley in Alaska with grossly inadequate provisions.

James, the surviving son, lives in Longmont, Colo.

The summit of Mount Lafayette where Waterman died was like a second home to him and his wife. They carefully created paths to guide hikers away from rare alpine flowers. Nearby on another ridge, he had built a cairn, a conical heap of stones built as a monument or landmark. Inside the cairn he put a pair of his son John�s hiking shoes.

Ms. Waterman said she could not explain her husband�s decision to kill himself. �He stayed with us as long as he could,� she said.

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