Mount Waumbek 4006’ 3/10/07

7.2 miles 2500’ Elevation gain

Kevin, Judy and Emma

We spent the night at Town and Country on the Shelburne/Gorham town line. We had both had a tough winter, being sick and me with various skiing injuries that kept us off the hiking trails. For this reason we chose two smaller mountains north of the Presidentials, Mount Starr King, which is named for the minister Thomas Starr King who was the author of the white Hills, a compelling book about the White Mountains published in 1871. It is thought that he brought many visitors to the White Mountains with his descriptions of the hills he loved. King Ravine is named in his honor as well as the first mountain we crossed on this climb. From the summit of Starr King we crossed the ridge to Mount Waumbek, it being the 4000 footer, barely, measuring in at 4006'. The trail was packed out by snowshoers, though stepping off the trail resulted in sinking in to your hip in soft snow. Jude wore cleats, not quite crampons, but more than yak-traks, I went in just my 3 season boots and wool socks, Emma had her usual 4 -wheel drive. It was so warm all I wore was polypro running pants, no long underwear and just an armorall shirt. I had to take the light jacket off even though it had zip pits. Just too warm! Later as the snow softened and the day warmed up we both wished for our snowshoes as we occasionally post-holed. At one point between summits the trail crossed a spruce trap where I went in both legs up to my chest. Fun. At the trailhead we briefly spoke to another hiker who also had a small dog. Later, along the trail we stopped to let him pass and we paused for a moment to compare notes about winter hiking with small dogs. It was at this point we found out who they were. As I always do, I made it a point to brag that Emma has her 4000 footer patch from the AMC. Imagine my embarasment when I asked if they were working towards their winter 4000 footers and I was told in a very humble manor, I might add, " Well, we're actually on our second time through them, THIS WINTER!" Unbelieveable. It seems we had stumbled upon the legendary Tom and Atticus. We had no idea who they were or what they were doing until this moment, but they were on a quest to raise money for the Dana Farber Cancer Research and the Jimmy Fund, both of which are organizations fighting to eradicate cancer from the world. Their idea was to raise money by hiking all 48 4000 footers in winter, things went so well that they were now on there second time through, having already climbed 71 mountains this winter. Tom had arisen at three AM to climb Cannon Mountain, and now they were climbing Mount Waumbek, later that same day they climbed Mount Cabot. Unbelieveable! Here we were struggling to climb over these two smaller mountains and they had already done one that day and planned to do another that afternoon. We became instant fans and followed their progress over the rest of the winter through their website:

http://tomandatticus.com/

Our trip seemed to pale in comparison after this encounter. The woods were gorgeous, the weather was beautiful, but we just couldn't take our minds off of what these two were doing. When we got home we rattled off some email encouragements and made a donation to the cause. They fell short of completeing them twice by a few mountains due to bad weather and Tom's devotion to not putting Atticus at risk, but still managed to summit 81 peaks in one winter! I don't know if anyone else has done that, but I know if they did they didn't do it with a little dog! These two will always be heroes in our book.