The WVAIA/Rey Center Trail Crew — Raye, Larisa, Jimmond and Tommy — flips a granite boulder. The rock will eventually be placed in the trail as a soil retainer (rock step). Have you ever wondered how those steps on White Mountain Trails get there? To see a video of the crew flipping and setting the rock, keep reading and click on the YouTube icon. (more…)

Above: Larisa, Sue, Brenda, Raye and Jimmond.

The 2008 WVAIA/Rey Center trail crew spent two days training on Franconia Ridge. Good weather helped us reach Greenleaf Hut Friday. By Saturday afternoon we were working at 5,000 feet in wind-driven rain. The crew managed to clear all the waterbars on the Upper Greenleaf Trail and repair scree wall between Mt. Lafayette and Mount Lincoln. On Sunday morning half the crew learned how to repair cairns from WETT sage Sue Demming while the others built rock steps with Nat.

The 2008 WVAIA/Rey Center crew consists of three Student Conservation Association interns — Larisa, Raye and Jimmond — and crew leader Tommy (arriving on Monday). Nat is training the crew, and perennial volunteer, Brenda, joins whenever she has time. During this special training session crew members were initiated into the West End Trail Tenders (W.E.T.T.). WETT is an informal gathering of volunteer trail workers started by Laura and Guy Waterman in the 1970’s to share in the care of Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) trails on the west side of the White Mountains, most notably the Franconia Ridge Trail. The WVAIA and the Rey Center are helping keep up this tradition. Trails are maintained through the AMC adopt-a-trail program.

In a happy cooincidence, we met Kim Votta at Greenleaf Hut on Sunday. Kim will be working with Chris Hilke on environmental monitoring and the Tecumseh overnight program. Chris is the Rey Center research coordinator and Kim is a graduate student at Plymouth State University’s (PSU) Center for the Environment (CFE). Kim’s graduate study is co-sponsered by the Rey Center and CFE.

To see more photos, click here.

If Arthur L. Goodrich, profiled here last week, is considered one of the most instrumental early trail-builders of the Waterville Valley, then his son has to be considered one of the founding fathers of our modern-day White Mountain trail system.

Along with fellow Appalachian Mountain Club members Charles Blood and Paul Jenks, Nathaniel Lewis Goodrich (1880-1957) oversaw the development of a trail system that connected previously constructed local trail networks. This expansion occurred over a two-decade period starting in the early 1900s and included the building of such important footpaths as the Garfield Ridge Trail, the Webster Cliff Trail, the Kinsman Ridge Trail and the Twin Range Trail (or Twinway as it is known today). Over a 15-year period, this work resulted in more than 170 miles being added to AMC’s White Mountain trail system.

Nathaniel Goodrich summered practically all his life in Waterville Valley, first coming to the valley as an infant. Upon Goodrich’s death in 1957, his pal Blood wrote about his early acquaintanceship with Goodrich. “I first met Nat Goodrich in July, 1897, riding on the stage into Waterville. I was an absolute greenhorn in the mountains, while to me he even then seemed a seasoned veteran, for he had spent his summers there since babyhood. For the next twenty years our summer vacations brought us together almost every year, and from him I learned much of my woodcraft.”

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It probably goes without saying that the most famous father-son tandem in White Mountains annals is that of Abel Crawford and Ethan Allen Crawford, pioneer settlers and innkeepers whose names live on in the famous mountain pass to which they were so closely associated.

The Crawford, who at various times owned inns and taverns from one end of Crawford Notch to the other, played a huge role in the development of the early tourist trade in the region, not only providing places for travelers to stay, but also developing some of the first walking trails and bridle paths up Mount Washington and the southern reaches of Presidential Range.

Over the years plenty has been written about the Crawford, so I won’t take up space this week re-hashing what’s already been penned many times over in the course of the past 150 years. Instead, I want to take a look back this week and next at another father-son team with longtime ties to the Whites, but whose legacy pales in comparison to that of the Crawford, even though these two men did far more for today’ hikers than the Crawford.

Arthur L. Goodrich and Nathan Lewis Goodrich never lived in the White Mountains, per se, but for many summers were closely associated with the Waterville Valley area. Arthur, the father, began summering in the Valley in the mid-to-late 1870s and over the course of the next 30 to 40 years was an instrumental figure in the development of the fine trail system that pretty much exists intact today in Waterville, more than a century later.

Arthur’s son, Nathaniel, whose ties to the Valley go back to his days as an infant, closely followed his footsteps, at least in terms of his dedication to trail-building in the Whites. Nathaniel, along with fellow Appalachian Mountain Club members Charles Blood and Paul Jenks, are considered the “fathers” of the modern day White Mountain trail system, for it was the three of them working together as a team who pieced together over a period of two decades the interconnected trail network that has long been enjoyed by area trampers.
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Brenda Conklin is the WVAIA’s volunteer of the year.  Her tireless work on the trails and with the historical society has been a great example to us all.

To see a video of Brenda and others doing trail work on Franconia Ridge, click here.

The WVAIA, an historic association of people who value the quality of life that the wilderness around us provides, has been thriving in recent years with membership up around 180, a record breaking amount. We’ve raised and saved enough money to produce a first rate hiking map of the valley, but now, with the Town’s decision not to allocate $3,000 for trails work, plus the map costs, we are more pressed to raise money so that we can partner with organizations like the Rey Center, and the Forest Service, in grant-writing, in order to help maintain our historic trails system. At the time of this writing, our membership is down markedly: 98. Our balance is $2500.  This represents a decline.  If you haven’t responded to your renewal notice, please renew at the Winter Gathering.

The long awaited arrival of the map is upon us. As a result of the Map Committee efforts [Ray Kucharski, Dan Newton, Susan Hammond], as well as Mike Bromberg, Nat Scrimshaw, and former President Ray O’Hara, we have produced a first rate piece of cartography that has received a favorable response from those who have seen and used it. As with any map, there are edits to make, and we welcome suggestions, corrections and salutations as you all “field test” it.

As a WVAIA member you are entitled to a free copy of the map, and are invited to stop by the Waterville Realty Office and ask for Susan Hammond.

Maps are also on sale at the WV Recreation Department, and the Town Offices and several locations outside the valley, including Ski Fanatics, Peppercorns, The Book Echange and The Mountain Wanderer map and book shop.

Above: Camping in Waterville Valley, circa 1912. At the very back, standing, early WVAIA members Nathaniel Goodrich and C.W. Blood.  To see an early entry in the Tramping Record by the two, click here.

There are two file cabinets loaded with historical records of Waterville Valley. WVAIA volunteer, Brenda Conklin, has begun the process of describing the items in a database that can be sorted by date, item, subject, description, and people.

Above: the 2007 Trail Crew: Nate, Raphael, Jack (crew leader), Justin, Karen (Welch Summit Steward), and volunteers extraordinaries, Brenda and Preston.

by Dan Newton

Ambling along the trail, I come across a group of enormous young men sitting in the dirt and rocks eating things like Bumble Bee tuna fish straight out of the can, and huge chunks of bread and giant plastic bowls of pasta. It’s Raphael, a rare woodland being from the city, philosophical, erudite, possessed of strange thoughts and an infectious laugh, able to read books at speeds unknown to mortal men; and Justin, tall, a little mangy, loved by sprites and fairies of the female persuasion throughout the enchanted forest; and Nate, tough as nails, quiet, with a legendary quality about him, dusted with the dirt of work and damn serious about it. Standing over them is Jack the crew leader. His bulging arms are folded in front of his prodigious pectoral muscles; and rocks, once strong and mighty looking, lay grappled and flattened on the ground beside him, whimpering for mercy.

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