I think when people think of mountaineering they mostly think of the climbing element
of it, they think of big, you know, shots of Mount Everest. I don't think people usually
think of that moment, your usual moment of mountaineering, when you're just putting one
foot in front of the other, over and over and over again.
We're the BU Outing Club. We love to go outdoors. We do it just about every weekend, and this
weekend we're planning on going to Mount Adams in New Hampshire.
It's my first real winter ascent of anything. Definitely the cold is something that concerns me.
I'm not sure if I'm prepared. Hopefully the weather will hold out for us.
Winter trips are ten times more complicated.
I hike in the windpants with something underneath.
I haven't put a lot of thought into my gear and the clothing that I'm gonna wear.
It's gonna be really, really cold. We gotta make sure that everyone is well-layered, has
the proper sleeping bags.
You can never go into a backpacking trip saying you're prepared. If we don't have the right
sleeping bags, you know, somebody could get really injured, so we really need to make
sure we have the right gear.
We're gonna take the Lowe's path and we're gonna be crossing the link path after 1.7 miles.
The plan for tonight is to hike 3.7 miles up to the perch where we'll camp, and then
tomorrow we'll make a summit attempt.
I think it will be a really great bonding experience between me and these guys that
are going, especially since I don't know some of them.
I just want everyone to experience the rush of getting to the top.
Even if we don't make it, you know, that's not the point. It's climbing up vertical feet,
just challenging yourself.
It's making that first step, like taking the plunge, into that situation where you're not
gonna be able to get out of that a lot of people don't take. Once you do take it,
it opens so many more doors.
You just feel like you're going up hill for hours and hours and hours, and you have no
perspective of where you've gotten.
We were sort of reaching the end of the day, and I think a lot of us were getting pretty
tired, and we just wanted to reach the campsite.
Everyone else is just trying to push each other to keep going.
When we got to the shelter last night, I hardly knew how to deal with anything just to keep
myself warm, let alone these guys who went to work cooking for all of us.
I'm wildly impressed. The fact that these guys can lug all this stuff up here, pull
out like miniature stoves and bowls and plates.
The best service that I've ever had in my life.
I couldn't believe that the other guys were working on our dinner because I was just so
cold and I couldn't really move.
We're using water that we used for cooking and for washing dishes, and we're putting it
heated into our water bottles, and we're gonna put it into our sleeping bags.
I thought I was gonna wake up in the middle of the night freezing cold, but man those
zero degree sleeping bags really kept me warm.
We're gonna get back on the Randolph path, head up the mountain onto the Appalachian trail, hit Mount Adams.
It's really been quite the adventure. I've been out of breath sometimes, I've fallen
a bunch of times.
It kind of puts you up against a wall and you've got all these obstacles, and it's just
about surmounting them with nothing but what you have kind of in your spirit, in your soul,
and on your back.
These trips actually put you in a super stressful situation. So, you really learn what people are about.
To me at the point of reaching tree line that was a little bit scary, but also exciting.
I could finally see sheer drop-offs on either side. You're much more exposed.
You watch the trees get smaller and smaller, and you watch the vegetation become more sparse
until you come to a place where nothing can live. On the one hand you really gain respect
for earth and for this place that we're really not meant to live or not meant to be comfortable,
and it's really pretty rewarding to be able to- even if not for very long- to be able
to visit such a place.
So when we got up there the weather was so perfect that the decision to take the summit
was made for us.
We were a little discouraged last year because we got up to tree line.
The wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't stand up so we had to turn back.
This could be difficult.
When you take yourself out of your comfort zone and you get into an environment that's
harsh, you really feel much more closeness to the people you're with.
It's really rewarding to know that I can do this, and I'm really proud of myself and everyone
here for having done it.
We're more thankful that we can find people that want to go out with us and do things like this.
You feel like you're on top of the world and you're seeing things that not many people see.
It's Adams so it's not a mountain to be taken lightly by any means. You know, we tried last
year and we got turned around, and that's what makes today really special is that this time, we made it.
[cheers]