Summit Up NH

I celebrated my 48th birthday last month. A fact you will need for later.

For those of you outside the New Hampshire hiking community, when you read or hear about “the 48” or “the 4Ks” or any combination thereof, we are talking about the NH 48 peaks that are above 4,000 feet in elevation. 4,000 feet is a lot of feet, yes. We should not, however, confuse total elevation with the elevation gain during a hike. For example, NH’s highest peak, Mt. Washington at 6,288 feet has an elevation gain of between approximately 3,800 and 4,200 feet over a distance of 7-9 miles. To gain all 6,188 one would have to start hiking from Hampton Beach, which would be a lot more than 7-9 miles!

If you read my last post you know that I hiked my first of the 48 4Ks in 1998. I was ill-prepared and irresponsible so if you like hot messes and dumpster fires, feel free to give it a read.

13 years went by before I hiked another NH 4K, Mt. Moosilauke on August 2011. I had hiking boots, a decent backpack, some synthetic fiber on my body, a couple of Nalgene bottles filled with water, and lots of snacks. I had just learned about the list of 48 4Ks, I was going through a rough time in my life, and I thought this would be something I could do for me.

My 2011 hiking journey occurred at a time when my life was in a bit of turmoil. My kids were little, 6 and 4 years old, and their dad and I were getting a divorce. Going from spending every moment of every day with my kids, to spending only 50% of the time with them was gut-wrenching. It was a hurt I had never felt before.

“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ”

Elizabeth Stone

I felt this quote with every fiber of my being when I first read it, probably around 2008. I got all those feels just now when I typed it. On the days I didn’t have my kids I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I was completely lost. Years later I joked, and still do sometimes (because humor is sometimes my coping mechanism), that if you truly want some time to yourself, just get a divorce and split custody. Funny stuff. Yep, I had a lot of time to do a lot of hiking, but it always was, and still is, completely gut-wrenching to be separated from my kids for extended periods of time. In different ways now that they are older, of course, but painful nonetheless. So I needed something that I could do that would distract me from my current situation.

My second 4K was also my first solo hike, Mt. Osceola on July 18, 2011. That fall I had hiked solo more than I did in groups. Over the next year I completed sixteen peaks. A year after that I was up to 28, or so, but I’m not sure because I stopped. I stopped blogging, I stopped hiking, I stopped knitting. I stopped doing most of the things that I loved. If you want to know a little more about why, I talk about it briefly here, which brings me to the rest of my story.

I began again. In the summer of 2021, by the grace of God, I found myself in an amazing community in the mountains. Whenever I talk about that summer I say “it saved my life”. I will write about it soon, because it deserves it’s own post or two or 10. To sum it up in a few words, I had found my people and finally felt seen. I was filled with a renewed energy and sense of self-worth. On July 10, 2021 I decided I was going to start over and hike all 48 of NH’s 4000-foot peaks before I turned 48. Because everyone really does deserve a second-chance (or third or fourth in my case).

The reboot started with Mt. Adams (5,774 ft.) and Mt. Madison (5,367 ft.), on July 10, 2021, pictured above. It was a gorgeous day. Breathtaking. I remembered why I started doing this in the first place. It’s one thing to drive past the mountains and take in their stunning and powerful presence, but when you step on that trail and you spend hours among its trees, and rocks, and soil, slowly climbing and quickly sweating, to a wide open summit surrounded by nothing but more mountains as far as you can see, stunning and powerful are not strong enough words anymore. Mountains are magic. They call to me. I know that others feel the same. Maybe it’s a sense of wonder, or danger, or the fact that they make me realize how small I am, and therefore how small my problems are in comparison to the world. The mountains teach me so many things. On this reboot day, the mountains taught me that I definitely overestimated my physical abilities, going from zero hikes in seven years to hiking two of the five highest peaks in the White Mountains in one day. Humbled to say the least. Some conditioning was in order.

Over the next thirteen months I made too many new friends to count, became certified as a Wilderness First Responder, met and fell in love with my most favorite hiking buddy, and (spoiler alert) completed all 48 4Ks with a grand finish on August 11, 2022. Stay tuned and I’ll continue to tell you all about that journey, along with the other things the mountains taught and continue to teach me. First and foremost, it is never too late to begin again.