One of the many cool things about RMC’s camps is that they’re are open year round. Even through the winter months, there is always a caretaker at the Grey Knob cabin, to greet visitors and keep everything up and running. However, if you’ve ever hiked in the White Mountains during the winter, you know that it gets pretty darn cold, especially up at 4370 feet. The cabin does have a wood stove, but if you look around outside Grey Knob, there’s not much good firewood to be found, just a lot of the scrappy little fir trees that are able to grow at that height. Even if the Forest Service did allow firewood to be cut near the cabin (they don’t within 1/4 mile of shelters) it would take an awful lot of those little trees to heat the cabin, it would only take a few years of cutting to destroy the surrounding area. Behind the cabin is a small woodshed, stocked with enough birch logs to at least get the cabin above freezing on particularly cold nights. But where does the wood come from?
Last week, we took a few days off from our projects on Isreal Ridge and Ledge trail to pack some of that firewood up. Just off the Hincks trail, just half a mile bellow the cabin, there start to be some birches mixed into the firs. After collectively hiking that half mile of trail 50 or 60 odd times, carrying over a ton and a half in total, I think just about all of us on crew (and plus the two caretakers) can agree that that half mile feels like the longest half mile in the world.
The packboard is a White Mountain invention that hasn’t changed much since (if I remember correctly) the 1920’s. They’re a a simple wooden backpack frame with nothing but a canvas corset and a pair of leather straps. While they’re far from comfortable, packboards are still the bast way to carry heavy and akward loads, like firewood and trail tools. After firelining the freshly cut logs out to the trail, we each took a few and tied them onto our packboards as tightly as possible. One of the funniest things is watching somone struggling to stand up after slipping into the leather shoulder straps. With all of the weight over your head, it’s difficult to balance, and you have to walk slowly, concentrating on every step to make sure you don’t fall.
While packboarding is not an enviable task, it is enjoyable in its own way. The relief experienced upon seeing Grey Knob and knowing you’ll soon be able to take a short rest before heading down for more, or perhaps the satisfaction of watching the woodpile slowly grow larger and larger, knowing that it was carried there by you and your fellow crew members. As has been said before, trail work is not easy and is often physically demanding- packboarding is a staple of the trail crew experience and work wouldn’t be the same without it.
