Author: Dan Szczesny
From virtually the moment the Appalachian Mountain Club formed in 1876, members were trying to make maps of the White Mountains. “Being unable to find a reliable map of the White Mountains, I made up my mind to try and make one for myself,” wrote AMC Recording Secretary John B. Henck in the April […]
This story was originally published in the Winter/Spring 2021 issue of Appalachia Journal. In a small patch of crumbly dirt and mulch, near the weather-worn trellis where the hydrangea had begun to bloom, my 5-year-old daughter, Uma, plucked a beetle off the wood and held it up to the sun. “Daddy, look Daddy. Isn’t she […]
Mount Washington was feeling benevolent on the afternoon of August 14, 1945, and 14-year-old Hugh Dunphy was taking advantage of the mountain’s good mood. Dunphy was part of a crew of about 12 campers and counselors from Camp Ropioa in Harrison, Maine, that was hiking toward Washington’s summit under clear skies and mild temperatures—and […]
Every fall since 2013, Dave and Monica Metsky of Somerville, Mass., have loaded their mountain bikes onto their car and driven the nearly 200 miles to Kingdom Trails in East Burke, Vt. There, they check into a rental home and spend several days biking at what Dave calls “the mecca of New England mountain biking.” […]
Of all the places Dr. Baker Perry, a professor of geography at Appalachian State University, visited while training for an expedition to Nepal’s Mount Everest, dangling from a weather station in a winter storm at 4,000 feet was not something he had planned. “It was wicked up there,” Perry says of his experience on [the […]