NEW HAMPSHIRE, USA — Chuck's Big Adventure is traveling to New England. It is an area known for its beauty, history, lobsters and, in autumn, it's explosion of color.
Mount Washington
If there is one place I really wanted to visit on this Big Adventure, it was the top of Mount Washington. After all, as a broadcast meteorologist, I had always heard about the mountain, the famous cog railway and the summit, which boasted the worst weather in America.
We had to fit this trip in, and we did, to my absolute joy.
There are a couple of ways up Mount Washington: the toll-based Auto Road in your car (be sure to pull over occasionally on descent to cool your brakes) or via the world-famous Cog Railway.
The steam-powered locomotive is still available to ride up the side of the mountain, but most passengers take the more environmentally friendly cars that leave every few minutes.
Train master Andy Villain, who is originally from Boston, has made this area his home for several years at a job where weather conditions are really relative.
"You do have to be constantly in tune with the conditions that are taking place at the summit. You plan for equipment, personnel, safety and things like that. We have sand on the trains to go up for the passengers to disembark. We do have a switch on the summit that needs to be free of ice to operate," Villain said. "Whatever is taking place down here, you can pretty much count on because of the microclimate on Mount Washington, that there is going to be a pretty unique set of conditions up there vastly different from this."
Villain was right. While we were in the mid-50s at the base camp area, it became clear as we climbed up the side of the mountain on the Cog Railway that we weren't entering another climate — we were entering another season.
As our train stopped at the 6,288-foot summit, visibility was only 100 feet, snow was blowing, the temperature was 25 degrees and the wind chill was 9 below zero.
"You started your morning on the train in some overcast conditions, a little cool, a little damp, some nice fall colors," said Patrick Hummel, supervisor at Mount Washington State Park. "As you come up Mount Washington to the summit, not only did you go through different ecological zones with our vegetation and everything, here we have the weather in Mount Washington living up to its reputation."
Reputation of continuous bad weather is the Mount Washington story. This place is generally regarded as having the worst weather in America and possibly some of the worst in the world. Where else in America has wind been clocked at 231 miles per hour by a human being? Nowhere.
A trip to the nearby Mount Washington Observatory was fun but also eye-opening. My dream-come-true trip into the observatory was met with a hard dose of reality by Alex Branton, who is from Florida but now is part of the observation team, 24/7, 365 days a year.
"The topography of Mount Washington is so interesting. It's so much taller than everything around it," Branton said. "The shape of the mountains around us funnels the wind toward us. Our average wind speeds up here are 35 miles per hour. That's average, but here soon, we are going to expect a 100 mile-per-hour wind every three or four days."
Hayden Pearson was well prepared for his stint at Mount Washington after spending the last three years in Norway, living above the Arctic Circle. Pearson feels that observing and researching the weather here is absolutely vital.
"We are one of the few places in the world that is a 24 hours a day, 365 days a year-staffed weather station on a mountaintop. That means we go out every hour, basically on the hour, and take weather observations — no matter the weather — unless there is lightning within the vicinity of the station," Pearson said. "Twice a day, we do a higher summits forecast, so at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m., we'll put out a forecast that basically puts out a higher summits forecast."
Those forecasts are vital to skiing interests, resorts and even electric companies.
But what would be a big adventure to the summit without going out and taking an observation? Photographer Steve Rhodes and I joined Pearson on the roof of the facility in a near tropical storm wind to climb the ladder. Pearson brought a sledgehammer with him to knock the ice off the platform, and we watched him — freezing but in awe of the ice, the snow and the courage of this public servant who is keeping this area informed of the elements while braving the worst weather in America on a daily basis. What a visit and what a memory.
Make a trip to Mount Washington a must-see destination when in New England.