Lost and found in the mountains

Mt. Washington from Intervale, N.H.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

I was wandering around in the Internet the other night and came across a 1941 movie called Sun Valley Serenade,  a musical film set in the Idaho ski resort of the same name. Seeing it took me back to February 1971, when I watched the film in a hotel room in Jackson, N.H. I was up there covering, (for The Boston Herald Traveler) the search for a couple of guys  lost or dead just up the road, on Mt. Washington. The search was being run out of the  Appalachian Mountain Club’s Pinkham Notch facility.

For three days, about a dozen of us journalists (including from  such national media such as Time magazine) hung around as rescuers from the National Forest Service looked for these guys. They eventually found them safe in a shelter somewhere near the tree line. But the authorities were very angry that such inexperienced climbers had jeopardized the rescuers on that infamously stormy mountain. (I’ve climbed it myself twice  in the winter with an experienced team. It’s a beautiful spectacle.)

“Do those little bastards know how much this is costing?’’ griped one of rescuers.

Of course, we journos were bored much of the time, but some of us snuck away for cheery drinks and dinner in Jackson, hoping that nothing exciting would happen  while we were enjoying ourselves.

But what I most remember from that trip, one of many crazy expeditions during my time at The Herald Traveler, was sitting in my hotel room as wet snow fell outside watching Sun Valley Serenade on the TV and, particularly, listening to the song “I Know Why’’ being sung while backed  by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. One of the lines is “Even though it’s snowing, violets are growing.’’

Corny but it brings a pang about the passage of time

I probably have yellowed clips of my stories of the lost climbers in the cellar, but I’d bring on an asthma attack looking for them. In those deep, dark, pre-Internet days you’d need clips to get your next newspaper job, if you were foolish enough to want one.

'Happy Feast of the Circumcision!'

Mt. Washington from the Wildcat Mountain ski area, near Jackson

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Back when I was around 12, my parents, a couple of my siblings and I spent the New Year’s weekend in Jackson. N.H., in the White Mountains, where we skied (clumsily) a bit and stayed at a B&B (but called an inn). The place was owned by an Episcopal minister. He was quite funny. On New Year’s morning he greeted everyone with a boisterous “Happy Feast of the Circumcision!” But it was clear how hard the couple had to work to keep their little business going, ministering, so to speak, to the almost 24/7 needs and desires of their about 15 guests – e.g., directions to local ski areas and other attractions, drugstores and doctors, cocktails (but not too many) for the adults and huge breakfasts for all. It was an early introduction to the challenges of running a small business.

Old New England skiing

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary, in GoLocal24.com

'On Jan. 1, 1961, when my parents and a couple of my siblings were staying in an old inn, or glorified bed and breakfast, in Jackson, N.H., then, as now, a ski town. As we sat in the dining room having a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and enough bacon to instigate acute myocardial infarction, the co-owner (with his wife) of the establishment, a retired Episcopal priest, came bounding in, wishing everyone a “Joyous Feast of the Circumcision!’’ Later that day, I saw him speeding down the slopes of Black Mountain with great skill, despite his having called himself a “lousy intermediate’’ and his having consumed several martinis with his guests the night before.

Skiing then was a lot cheaper – fancy equipment such as snow-making machines and high-speed chairlifts, and huge personal-injury lawsuit settlements and soaring insurance premiums, not yet having made the sport so expensive. And there were still lots of tiny commercial ski hills (many owned by local dairy farmers) with rope tows powered by truck engines spewing out very dirty exhaust. Indeed, whenever I smell heavy exhaust, I think of those ski hills, especially in “spring skiing’’ on corn snow in March. Richly evocative.