100th Anniversary of Program : Appalachia Backpackers’ Reunion Celebrates Huts

One hundred years ago, the Appalachian Mountain Club took $770 in donations and built a wood and stone cabin just above the timberline in the shadow of Mt. Washington.

Madison Spring Hut, an oasis for hikers 4,800 feet above sea level between Mt. Madison and Mt. Adams, was the first of a series of rustic cabins that have been a model for wilderness shelters as far away as Alaska.

Last weekend, former workers and patrons held a reunion at that hut.

Madison started out providing solid meals, a bed and wool blanket and first aid to hikers in the Presidential Range, which includes Washington and is known for some of the harshest weather in the world.

Mission Is Same

As Madison enters its 100th season, the mission and the weather haven’t changed--Monday’s forecast called for possible snow flurries and wind up to 90 m.p.h. But now there are eight huts throughout the White Mountains accommodating the thousands of hikers who flood in from Boston and other nearby urban areas.

Madison’s four-story bunk beds, which fill two small wood-paneled bedrooms, are booked months in advance by backpackers. The central dining room, with a picture window facing Mt. Madison, seats 60.

For the weekend gathering, opening the hut’s centennial season of providing “hospitality in high places,” the AMC invited hut caretakers from as far back as the early 1920s to a nostalgic party at the base of the mountains and a hike back to Madison.

For some, it was a pilgrimage.

‘Wind in My Face’

Thomas Deans, a former AMC executive director, as he recalled “the wind in my face, the aches in the shoulder when you take off a pack--a good ache--the smell of oil and of boot grease.”

Such sentiments were shared by most for whom the opportunity to work in the wilderness more than compensated for low salaries and long hours.

“Back then, we made $4 a week,” said Robert Monahan, 80, who worked at Pinkham Notch camp at the base of Mt. Washington in 1924.

The next summer, Monahan moved to another hut where his duties included carrying 100-pound packs of food and supplies four miles from a base camp several times a week.

Today, though helicopters drop tons of supplies into huts twice each season, packing still is the main source of fresh food. Pack weights and sizes are the stuff of AMC hut legends, and they seemed to grow as the weekend went on.

1983 Party Recalled

“I carried 165 pounds,” said Cary Hill, a 1983 Madison hutman. “There was a party and we needed a couple roasts and a watermelon.”

One recent morning, former hutmen and hutwomen converged on the 3.7-mile Valley Way trail which leads straight up to Madison.

“I think it’s been lengthened,” said Robert Ohler, 72, of the steep hike, which he knew well from working at Madison in the summers from 1936 to 1939.

Ohler recalled stealing chairs from other huts, cleaning mouse droppings from between the plates, heating the hut with bacon grease and eating porcupine livers.

“The nose of a porcupine got 20 cents from the town clerk. That’s where we got our beer money,” he said.

Ohler also remembered the death of a teen-ager from hypothermia during an August storm in which temperatures hit the low 30s. Ohler had the job of tying the boy to a pack-board and carrying him down the mountain on his back.

More than 100 people have died in the mountains. Search and rescue missions occupied 1,800 AMC work-hours last year, even though search communications have improved because of radios, huts manager Michael Torrey said.

“Things have changed, including our bodies. That’s what I noticed creaking up the Valley Way,” said Lincoln Cleveland, Madison’s 1979 hut master. “But the most important things are the same. The hut experience really was the best experience of my life.”