CHAPTER II
Getting Ready for the Hike
For the next few months several of the Scouts saved up money for the White Mountain hike. Art, as patrol leader, and as originator of the idea, felt that it was up to him to do all in his power to encourage the plan, so he borrowed Rob Everts’ radiopticon (Rob himself was away at college now), and secured from Mr. Rogers, the Scout Master, who had been to the White Mountains many times, a bunch of picture post-cards and photographs, showing all kinds of views from that region—the Old Man of the Mountain, the clouds seen from the top of Mount Washington, the Great Gulf between Washington and the northern peaks, the snow arch in Tuckerman’s Ravine, and so on. Mr. Rogers himself came to the meeting and explained the pictures, describing the places enthusiastically. Some of his own photographs were taken at very steep places on the trails, and here some of the boys gasped. One picture in particular showed Mr. Rogers himself climbing a ledge, almost as steep as the side of a house, with a pack on his back and a blanket roll over his shoulder.
“Gee, do you have to carry all that weight up those places?” demanded Prattie.
“You do if you want to eat and keep warm when you get to the top,” Mr. Rogers laughed.
“Me for little old Southmead,” Prattie replied.
“Yes, you stay right here, and dance the minuet with Lucy Parker,” said Art scornfully. “You big, lazy tub!”
Prattie bristled up, but the other Scouts laughed him down. However, there were several more who seemed, as time went on, to feel rather as Prattie did toward the White Mountain hike. Some of them got discouraged at the task of saving up so much money. Besides, it was easier, when spring came, to go out and play baseball than it was to work for a few pennies, which had to be put in a bank and saved for summer—a long way off. Others didn’t see the trip in the light Art and Peanut saw it. It seemed too hard work to them.
“They make me tired,” Art declared one spring afternoon. “They haven’t any gumption.”
“Boys are something like men, I guess,” Peanut answered sagely. “Some men get out and do things, an’ get rich or go to Congress, while others don’t. Look right here in Southmead. There’s Tom Perkins, he’s got everything you want in his store, from sponges to snow-shoes, and he’s rich. Bill Green, who might do just as well as he does, don’t care whether he sells you anything or not; he’s too lazy to stock up with fresh goods all the while, and he’s poor and don’t amount to much. I guess when Tom Perkins was our age he’d have gone to the White Mountains with us, and Bill Green wouldn’t.”
“Probably,” said Art, “but there are too many Bill Greens in the world!”
“Right-o,” said Peanut. “I’ll tell you something else, Art. Some of the fellers’ folks won’t let ’em go. I was talking with Dennie’s old man the other day. Gee, he’s got money enough! He couldgiveDennie twenty-five dollars and never know it. He said, ‘What’s the matter with you boys? Ain’t Southmead good enough for you, that you want to go hikin’ off a thousand miles?’ He got my goat, and I just came back at him!”
“What did you say?” asked Art.
Peanut chuckled. “I wasn’t exactly polite,” he answered. “‘Mr. O’Brien,’ said I, ‘if you’d been off more, you’d know that one of the best ways to get an education is to travel. Southmead’s only a little corner of a big world.’ ‘Well, it’s big enough for me, and for Dennis,’ he says, and I answered, ‘It’s too big for you. You’re so small you’d rattle ’round in a pea-pod.’”
“And then what happened?” asked Art.
“Then I ran,” Peanut laughed. “Gee, he was mad! Old tightwad! Dennie wants to go, awful bad.”
As vacation time drew near in June, the number of Scouts who were going to be able to make the trip had boiled down to four—Art and Peanut, of course, with Frank Nichols and Lou Merritt. Those readers who have also read “The Boy Scouts of Berkshire” will recall that Lou Merritt was the boy who had started in as a sneak and a liar. But that time was long since past. He had lived with Miss Swain now for several years; he took care of her garden for her, and made some money for himself besides, raising lettuce, radishes, cauliflowers and other vegetables. He was in the high school, and was going from there to the Amherst Agricultural College. Lou was now one of the most respected boys in town, and Miss Swain was so fond of him that she had practically ordered him to go on the hike, for he had worked hard in the garden all the spring, besides studying evenings. She was going to hire a gardener while he was away, but the money for the trip he had earned himself. In addition to these four there was, of course, Mr. Rogers, the Scout Master, and Rob Everts, who would be back from college in a week or two now, and was going on the hike for a vacation, before he started in summer work in his father’s bank. That made a party of six, which Mr. Rogers declared was, after all, enough.
The Appalachian Mountain Club camp in Tuckerman’s Ravine
The Appalachian Mountain Club camp in Tuckerman’s Ravine
The Appalachian Mountain Club camp in Tuckerman’s Ravine
“Just a good, chummy number,” he said. “The Appalachian camps will hold us without overcrowding, and we won’t always be worrying about stragglers getting lost.”
“What are the Appalachian camps?” asked Art.
“The Appalachian Club is a club of men, with headquarters in Boston,” Mr. Rogers answered, “and they do more than anybody else to make hiking in the White Mountains possible. They have built dozens and dozens of trails, which they keep cleaned out and marked clearly, and at several strategic points they have built shelters where you can camp over night or get in out of the storm. They have a stone hut on the col between Mounts Madison and Adams, a shelter in the Great Gulf, another in Tuckerman’s Ravine, and so on. I’ve been mighty glad to get to some of these shelters, I can tell you.”
“Gee, those names—Great Gulf—Tuckerman’s Ravine—make you want to get to ’em in a hurry!” cried Peanut. “Let’s plan an equipment right off.”
“That is pretty important,” said Mr. Rogers. “We want to go as light as we can, and yet we’ve got to keep warm. I’ve been in a snow-storm on Mount Washington in the middle of August.”
“Whew!” said Peanut.
So the four Scouts began planning, at their shoes, where plans for every hike ought to begin. As Mr. Rogers put it, “a soldier is no better than his feet.” Each boy got out his stoutest boots, made sure that the linings were sound so there would be no rough places to chafe the feet, and took them to the cobbler’s. If the soles had worn thin, the cobbler resoled them, and in all of them he put hobnails, so they would grip the steep rocks without slipping.
None of the Southmead Scouts wore the kind of scout uniform which has short knee pants and socks instead of stockings. As most of their hikes were through woods, this uniform would have been highly unpractical, resulting in scratched legs. Besides, all the larger Scouts, like Art and Peanut, said it was too much like the clothes rich little children wear! Instead, the Southmead troop generally wore khaki trousers and leggings.
“I think leggings are going to be too hot for this trip,” Mr. Rogers said. “We’ll have very little brush work to do. Suppose we cut out the leggings in favor of long khaki trousers. We’ll each want an extra pair of heavy socks, and you, Lou, bring along a needle and plenty of darning cotton, to repair holes. Then we’ll want an extra shirt and set of underclothes apiece, so we can change in camp after a sweaty climb. Also, we’ll all want sweaters and a blanket.”
“How about food?” asked Art.
“And cooking kits?” asked Peanut.
“And my camera?” said Frank.
“One camera only!” laughed Mr. Rogers. “You can settle whose that’ll be between you. Most of our food we’ll get as we go along. But it would be just as well if we got a few things before we start, such as salt and a few soup sticks and some dehydrated vegetables, such as spinach, and maybe some army emergency rations.”
“Brr,” said Peanut. “Art and I tried them once. Taste like—well, I’m too polite to tell you.”
“Nevertheless, you can put a small can in your pocket and go off for a day without toting a whole kitchen along,” Mr. Rogers answered, “and that’s a help when you are climbing.”
“All right,” said Peanut, “but I’d rather chew raisins.”
“He’ll eat it just the same, when he gets hungry,” put in Art. “Now, about kits. Can’t we divide up? We oughtn’t to need much stuff for only six.”
“I’ve got two kettles, that nest, one inside the other,” said Peanut, “and a small frying-pan.”
“I’ve got a good sized fry pan,” said Frank.
“And I’ve got a wire broiler, that shuts up and fits into my pocket,” said Mr. Rogers.
“And I’ve got a collapsible camp lantern, that you can see to shut it up by,” said Lou.
“Then we’ll do with just those things,” Art said. “Of course, everybody’ll bring his own cup and knife and spoon. Oh, and how about maps and compasses, Mr. Rogers? Will we need compasses?”
“You bet, we’llalltake compasses. Everybody’s got to have a compass in his pocket before we start.”
“Why?” asked Frank. “Can’t you always see where you are going on a mountain? Those pictures of Washington you showed us looked as if the mountain was all bare rock.”
“That’s just why we need the compasses,” Mr. Rogers answered. “You can follow a path through woods, no matter how thick a cloud you may be in, but when you get up on the bare ledges of the Presidentials, the path is marked only by little piles of stones, called cairns, every fifty feet or so, and when a cloud comes up you can’t see, often, from one to the next, and if you once get away from the path and started in a wrong direction, you are lost. Many people have been lost on Mount Washington just that way, and either starved or frozen to death. If you have a compass, you can steer a compass line down the mountain till you come to water, and follow the brook out toward the north where there are houses at the base. But if you haven’t a compass, and get to going south, you get into a wilderness, and it would go hard with you. Mount Washington is really a dangerous mountain, even if it is only 6,293 feet high. The storms come quickly and often without warning, and it can get very cold up there, as I told you, even in midsummer. Yes, sir, we’ll all take compasses, and before we tackle the old boy we’ll have some lectures, too, on how to act in case of cloud!”
“Don’t we want maps, too?” said Art. “Gee, it sounds more exciting every minute!”
“I have the maps,” Mr. Rogers said. “Here are the government maps of the Presidentials, and here is the little Appalachian Club book, with maps and trails.”
He brought out a small book in a green leather cover like a pocketbook, and opened it, unfolding two maps of the Presidential range, like big blueprints.
The boys leaned their heads together over it, and began to spell out the trails.
“Gulf Side Trail,” cried Art. “That sounds good.”
“Here’s the Crawford Bridle Path—that’s a long one—shall we go up that?” asked Lou.
Mr. Rogers nodded. “That’s the way we’ll get up Washington,” he said.
“Hi, I like this one!” Peanut exclaimed. “Six Husbands’ Trail! She goes down—orhedoes, seeing it’s husbands—into the Great Gulf, and then up again—let’s see—up Jefferson. Wow, by the contour intervals it looks like a steep one!”
“It is a steep one—wait till you see it,” said Mr. Rogers.
Art had now turned back from the map into the reading matter.
“Listen to this!” he exclaimed. “Here’s a description of the Tuckerman Ravine path up Mount Washington. It’s three and six-tenth miles, and the time given for it is four hours and fifteen minutes. That’s less than a mile an hour. Gee, I call that pretty slow!”
“Do you?” laughed the Scout Master. “Well, if we average a mile an hour on the steep trails, I’ll be satisfied. You wait till you hit the head wall with a pack on your back, and a blanket on your shoulder, and see how many miles an hour you want to travel!”
“Keeps sounding better and better!” cried Peanut. “Golly, I can’t wait! When do we start?”
It was agreed, as soon as Rob got home from college, to start the day before the Fourth of July, and celebrate the Fourth in the mountains. Rob suspected that Mr. Rogers suggested this date partially in order to keep Peanut from getting into trouble “the night before,” as Peanut was always a leader in the attempts to ring the Congregational church bell, and this year the sheriff had declared he’d arrest any boy he caught near the steeple. But Peanut was too excited over the mountain hike to worry much at losing the night before fun. On the afternoon of the second, all five Scouts had their equipments ready, and brought them to Mr. Rogers’ house, which was nearest to the station. The next morning they were on hand half an hour before train time, and marched to the station with a flag flying, for Peanut declared, as he unfurled it, that he was going to plant Old Glory on the top of something on the Fourth of July.
Two hours later they changed cars for the White Mountain express, at Springfield, and soon were rolling up the Connecticut valley, through country which was strange to them.