Therese Marie

The day had a slow start.

We drove down the beautiful highway into the high peaks region of the Adirondacks in New York and watched the sunrise. My friend Jeff and I were going to hike some high peaks on what was fast becoming the coldest day of the year.

BUT! We were so excited!

And so, in recounting this absolutely insane day, I will take you through the highlights of the hundred lessons I learned.

Lesson 1: Mountains always make me feel at peace.

The trailhead we chose had a lodge and a gear shop and a parking lot. It also had a parking attendant, whom we did not see because she was huddled down next to the space heater in her little hut (temp was -11 at this point). Honestly, I didn’t realize anyone would be out working at any of these spots, it was just so god damn cold. Also, my experience with trailheads in the ‘Dacks was exclusively unmotitored pull-offs, so this was a change of pace.

Lesson 3: Heavy trail use warrants monitoring.

When I popped in the gear shop to use the bathroom, I struck up conversation with the Nice Lady At The Desk. … Things went south pretty quickly.

She asked what we were thinking of doing, and I said I really wanted to go for Wright and Algonquin. Her eyes kind of hardened and she said, “Honestly, I can’t recommend you do that…” She pulled up the weather forecast, read off the devastatingly low numbers, and added in, “plus it’s too cold so we’re not doing any backcountry rescues. If you get stuck out there, you have to be prepared to stay the night. These temps aren’t really conducive to human life, though. So.”

Lesson 11: Employees of the park just want to keep you safe, however they can best do that.

Look. I GET it. She didn’t want us to die. I would’ve said the same thing to me if I worked there. But I was still kind of upset about the interaction, I fumed about it for quite awhile, and I boiled it down to two things I could’ve done without:

1. She explained hypothermia to me in a way that felt condescending and way too detailed. I wanted to cut her off and tell her I’ve had my WFR for years, I hike a lot, I lived outside taking care of kids for 400 days of my life. But I didn’t say any of that. I listened while she did her bit to try to talk the fear of God into me. I was already afraid, but fear isn’t an excuse to not do something…it’s better suited as a motivator to properly prepare.
2. This suggestion: “Yeah so there’s this winter carnival happening, and there’s lots of things you can do with that where you have the option to go inside, and there’s even a concert tonight. Here’s where the concert is, you should do that!”

Lesson 18: Your experiences shape you, and shape your reactions to things. You can’t escape your past, but you can build a New You.

I shifted my stance and asked, “Ok. Yeah! Sure. Um…but I’m assuming there are a lot of trailheads here? Is there…one you would recommend for today’s conditions then?”

She sighed. “Well, yeah, if you’re absolutely adament about snowshoeing there’s the lake loop, or Marcy Dam loop, that hike will give you a great look at the peaks from a safe, low elevation. It’s much warmer down here than it is up there. But I would check out the Carnival and the concert, they’re a really great band.”

Then we freaking ran into a ranger

who was patrolling the lot, and she informed us that we had to have snowshoes (which we didn’t bring because we don’t like snowshoes) or else we’d get a ticket, which was something I hadn’t heard before, but I could tell she was definitely not joking because she watched us and was definitely going to chase after us if we started hiking. It was a little bit of a frustrating encounter, especially since the Nice Lady At The Desk didn’t mention anything about this law…

Lesson 24: You need snowshoes to hike (in high traffic trails) with more than 8 inches of snow in the state of New York.

Thhhhhhheeeeennnnnn the ranger said to me, “Oh, no, you don’t want to do Marcy Dam…The only trail you’re going to enjoy today is the lake loop. Just over a mile, no elevation gain. Nice and easy. If you really need to hike today, that’s the only one you’re going to enjoy.”

I smiled and said, “OK! Well, alright, I guess we’ll go get those snowshoes then.” I gritted my teeth so hard they almost shattered.

In the end, we needed the snowshoes for the hike. We really did. So it was fine.

By now it was like 10am and we were still mulling around the lot

and getting colder by the second because we had a lot of gear on but we were not hiking, so we had to go back inside to talk to the Nice Lady At The Desk to get some snowshoes. She filled out the log and asked us what trail we’d be doing. “Well, I guess Marcy Dam Loop, since you suggested it, and it’s cold?” “OK you’re gonna try for that? That’s fine, just be careful out there.”

We got to the trailhead, looked at the map again, and after a moment of silence Jeff looked at me and asked, “So…You still wanna try for Wright?”

My quick, tight-lipped reply: “Yep.”

“Cool. Let’s do it.”

We finally started snowshoeing

and I definitely held onto my anger for too long. I felt bad about having to use snowshoes when Jeff and I both hate them, about taking so long to get ready, and I felt angry about what the Nice Lady At The Desk and the ranger said to me, I wish they had come at me with curiousity instead of telling me what I’d like to do, and then I fell deep into thought. I started thinking about my life and my parents andallthetimesIcomeupwithsomethingandtellpeopleaboutit becauseI’mseekingvalidationbecause Idon’ttrustmyselfbecauseoftheresponsesIwasgivenbymyanxiousparents whenIactuallydon’tNEEDotherpeople’svalidation Icanjustdecidetodosomethingforthesakeofdoingitand Icanalwayslearnfromitandthereisnorightorwrong justlearningandgrowingblahblahblahblah

It was bothering me. So, I said all this outloud instead of keeping it in. I’ve been told it’s helpful to do that. I have a hard time letting things go, and I like to shove feelings down. But, by some miracle, I DID let it all go. Eventually. I think that was due in part to the beauty of the nature, having a good friend that listens, but also in part to my body going into pure survival mode, which I will elaborate on soon. But that’s why I’m so happy and free out in the woods. You go out and just…nothing matters.

It was cold cold.

We were moving at a decent pace and our bodies warmed up. Our extremeties definitely suffered, though. There didn’t seem to be a way for us to keep them warm. We made sure to stop for water and snack breaks, but learned that the contents of our packs were quickly freezing. Within an hour of hiking, our bottles iced over and the sandwich we brought had frozen solid.

Have you ever bitten into a completely frozen sandwich? It’s an experience I never thought about having, and won’t forget – and won’t repeat. It’s not like we had any other choice, there was literally no way to thaw it.

Lesson 33: Frozen deli meat has a strange consistency, but is still easy to bite through.

On the ascent we learned that we couldn’t stop for long periods of time. Every time we stopped moving, our toes went completely numb (if they weren’t already), my body lost heat at an alarming rate, and we couldn’t keep our extremities exposed for more than a minute.

Upon reflection, the skin exposure was something that really drove home just how FREAKING COLD it was out there. I thought I’d get frostbite on my face. When we took our fingers out of our second layer of gloves, the heat left immediately. And then you felt the cold overtake your whole hand. Except…it wasn’t a normal cold. It was a cold so intensely deep and quick it felt more like burning, like ice fire. And when you put your hands back in your gloves, the pain that overtook them felt like someone ripping the skin slowly off of you, felt like they were on fire, felt like someone squishing your hands with metal spikes. It felt like they were breaking. After 30 seconds.

Lesson 39: Frostbite can occur within 5 minutes in certain conditions, especially with a wind chill.

We frequently checked in with each other. How are you feeling, how are your layers, do you need to adjust anything, can you feel your fingers, can you feel your toes?

To be honest, neither of us could feel our toes for most of the day. I noticed an unstoppable cold begin to grip my thighs and the other fatty areas of my body. It settled in and I just couldn’t warm myself enough to stop it. I began to imagine what my feet and legs might look like once I took my clothes off. I did squats, I talked to my toes, “Ok guys, stay warm, take the warm blood from my body, you’re going to be ok you’re going to be ok.” My toes did not reply.

Lesson 42: In a pinch, plastic bags will help insulate your feet. But there is a temperature threshold where that simply doesn’t make a difference.

With each step, I could feel my body move into overdrive. I was hyperfocused on how much sweat I was producing, knowing that if I got too damp I could end up in a deadly situation. I was especially worried about Jeff’s toes. What if we got insane frostbite and had to go to the hospital?

I found more and more things to worry about as we got closer to the top,

and I tried to rush. Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t possibly move fast enough to keep us safe, like I couldn’t move fast enough to save his feet. Every part of me labored in the cold. My body couldn’t keep up, and I felt like I wasn’t going to make it. Everything in me started screaming to give up.

But then I paused. I WAS right about something: I wasn’t going to make it to the top if I rushed. My lungs burned. The air was too cold to breathe. I bent over my trekking poles and Jeff paused behind me. I had to take it one step at a time. “We’re going to do this, you got this,” he said over the wind.

I wanted to cry, but it was too cold to cry. Truly the only reason I didn’t cry was because I physically could not produce tears, they would turn to ice too quickly. But I was at the precipice of something outstanding, something extreme, something new for me…I was reminded of all the times I’ve stopped myself in the past. I kept putting one foot in front of the other. It was slow, but it was enough.

On a normal day,

hiking up the high peaks proves to be stupid steep and never-ending. A half mile feels like 1. You might remember this from my last post about how I was so sure I was near the top of Giant, only to find I’d barely made it half way.

On the coldest recorded day in history, though, a half mile feels like walking in place, and the summit becomes a major danger zone. We inched our way up each slope, the trees shrinking ever so slowly. The amount of snow in the branches increasing the further we ascended, in big beautiful elegant lumps. The wind got louder. The air somehow got colder. I felt like I couldn’t possibly be moving, yet I was still stepping forward, ever forward, into this white abyss.

I felt like I could take a bite out of the atmosphere. The wind was so cold it became a physical thing I could grab.

And eventually we broke past the trees.

Nothing but drifts and desolation, opening up before us…

Breaking above that tree line felt like…I don’t know. I might never be able to really accurately describe what it was like up there. The photos I took look like we were on a different planet. The success of knowing we had made it so much further than anyone wanted us to was overwhelming.

I CAN tell you that I heard the snow beneath me making strange noises. I can also tell you I have literally, truly never fucking experienced cold like that in my entire god damn life. When we looked at the temperature forecast later, it stated there was a -67 degree wind chill at the time we were up on the summit.

We probably spent 2 minutes up there before it became absolutey unbearable. And, I’m not going to lie, I don’t think we got to the True Top. It became stupid dangerous once we passed all the trees and were on exposed bald. I am too happy to be alive to have risked trying to properly bag that peak.

Lesson 56: Always have a safety plan, including a time or condition that warrants a turn around.

Jeff and I RAN down back to the trees, and it made a solid difference. But we were not out of the woods yet (oh, hah! Literally.). It was once we began our descent that I shared my realization out loud, “Oh…hey! We uh, need to make it all the way back down. Alive.”

Most of our hike down was silent,

carefully placing our feet so that we didn’t end up seriously injuring ourselves, privately assessing possible dangers, making rescue plans. This was when I entered Survival Mode in a way that I never have before. Death did not seem imminent, but it did seem like a very real possibilty. It seemed to join us on our hike, walking beside us. Death had joined our party, though thankfully it did not touch either of us.

Lesson 61: Condensation freezes quickly in sub-zero temps.

Jeff and I agreed, in all our days spent in the woods, neither of us had been on a hike where the stakes felt so high. Sure, we’d been in dangerous situations before. But nothing where the environmental factors were so thoroughly unrelenting that we could have died from inactivity. I’m serious, if we stopped moving for long enough, if one of us sat down and gave up…I mean. I don’t know. It seems unreal to say now, but that might have been it.

There was one point where we paused to eat the rest of the frozen sandwich and drink some more (ice) water. We paused for long enough that my toes lost what tiny shreds of feeling they might still have had, and then my body began to shiver. “I’m so sorry. I…I HAVE to move,” I told Jeff. He was still putting on his gloves. “Ok ok I’m getting my stuff together but I’m coming, you go you go.” I didn’t go far, but I did start hiking, and as I got moving I felt a violent shake start to quake through me. The beginnings of hypothermia.

Lesson 68: Communication and honesty is super important when monitoring safety.

Please don’t judge me for being stupid or unprepared. I DID prepare. I’ve done a lot of prep for this in my hiking career, and also in the week leading up. Granted I probably could have had better suited gear for this hike. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was fucking cold, and that this was my first experience out in the extreme cold. I learned so much. I learned so much from Jeff, too. And I am alive because of the prep and care we took while we were out.

But this was one of those moments when I realized just how dangerous it was to be out there. The shaking was mitigated as I moved more, and I talked myself down from anxiety. “It’s ok it’s ok it’s ok it’s ok you’re going to be ok, hello body HELLO! You are MOVING! You are STRONG! You are ALIVE! You are going to DO THE DAMN THING! You are GOING TO MAKE IT TO THE BOTTOM!” Jeff quickly appeared behind me, and together, we continued our descent.

Lesson 73: Confidence is important, but best not to be cocky, because cockiness can be dangerous.

It was mind boggling and impressive to see how far up we had hiked. And it was also terrifying. We’d reach familiar checkpoints and I’d think, “Oh my god we still have so much further to go,” and I’d continue on with a renewed sense of terror. But we WERE getting closer, and the mood was getting lighter.

We carefully got lower and lower, eventually the snow thinned out again, and the wind didn’t howl as loudly, and the ground leveled out, and we stepped (well, he stepped, I tripped) over the last few logs, up and down the last few slopes and bends, before finally making it to the parking lot.

Lesson 80: Good, high-quality snowshoes make a huge difference in your ability to navigate safely and also enjoy a hike.

We couldn’t walk normally after taking the snowshoes off. We both laughed endlessly. We made it. We were going to get in the car and we were going to eat hot food. 

The moments you get to share with your people after a crazy adventure are hard to explain,

and they are private and special. It’s a sacred time communicated in half-formed sentences, or sometimes just a silent shared understanding. There are pauses and laughs and shrugs and sighs. I felt this on the AT, I felt this every hike I did in the Pisgah, I felt this with the kids I used to work with, and now I felt it there, in a Subaru in -15 degree weather, with someone who proved to be just as insane and in love with hiking as I am. These kind of moments were a dime a dozen on the AT, and I took them for granted. But they’re the moments that make me love adventuring with people.

Lesson 98: You are not permanently wounded, you always have the ability to grow and change and heal.

Lesson 99: It is not our business to know what is best for us in the grand scheme of things.

And this time? I was going to savor this one.

The night ended with a hard earned beer, soup, and the best burger I have ever had in my life courtesy of the Ice Jam Inn. Highly recommend that place wow oh my gosh.

We didn’t plan to go hiking on the coldest day of the year. We planned to go hiking, and it happened to become the coldest day of the year, and that didn’t stop us.

So, until the next time – and I am so grateful that there will in fact be a next time, having not died and all –

Fly on,

Lil.