Hiking the Presidential Range in New Hampshire | Photos from the Hike of a Lifetime
Two intrepid photographers trekked hut-to-hut across Presidential Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, discovering hardship, pain, beauty, and wonder along the way.
Dom on his way from
Madison Spring Hut
to Pinkham Notch: “We were in the clouds as they enveloped and released us into the views of Mount Washington. We were in heaven.”
Photo Credit : Little Outdoor Giants
Late last August, when the adventure was over—after nearly 70 miles of ascending and descending mountain peaks and trekking along boulder-strewn trails, of clambering over rocks, of feeling sweat streak down their bodies, of hearing thunder boom along exposed ridges, of shouldering backpacks that chafed and bruised, of feeling that ache in the knees that was relieved only when they sank into icy mountain pools—when all that ended after 10 days, what Jarrod and Dom knew with certainty was this: how much they would miss it all. They had come here to photograph what many call the most beautiful yet arduous stretch of the entire 2,174-mile Georgia-to-Maine Appalachian Trail: the White Mountains’ Presidential Traverse. They would cross 11 summits while sleeping at each of the eight Appalachian Mountain Club huts, the oldest mountain-hut system in the country. The huts gave them history and tradition, but also bunks and camaraderie and home-cooked meals that tasted like no other. Each day Jarrod and Dom wrote and painted in a leather-bound journal, and at the end one wrote: “We knew it would be epic and hard and special and mysterious …
The White Mountains are not the majestic, far-off, exotic mountains I always wanted them to be, but now they’re even more special to me—they’re familiar. And they’re home.”—Mel Allen