(HOST) Storyteller, contractor and commentator Willem Lange has been climbing mountains again – and reflecting on the legends that sometimes become associated with them.
(LANGE) Mount Chocorua, near North Conway, New Hampshire, is reputed to be one of the most photographed mountains in the world. With its bare, rocky summit, it looks huge, but it’s only 3500 feet high. D’you suppose that what’s happened is that all those cameras clicking away for so many years have worn it down to a nubbin?
Well, nubbin or not, it’s a pretty good climb: 2600 feet from the parking lot at its base to the summit. Its most-touted feature is its view. The last half-mile of climbing is over steep, bare ledges. From the summit, the lakes to the south, a wilderness of peaks to the west, and the Presidentials in the north are magnificent. But as I perched on the slab at the very top, I reflected anxiously that this is not an old man’s mountain.
No one knows what the Indians who lived here called it. It’s named now for an Indian who may or may not be historical. Tradition has it that Chief Chocorua was friendly to the settlers, especially the family of Cornelius Campbell, whose home was in what is now Tamworth.
Story goes that Chocorua went to a meeting in Montreal and left his son with the Campbells. In his father’s absence, the boy ate some wolf poison and died. His father returned to find his grave. In a passion, he killed Mrs. Campbell and her son and ran away grieving toward the mountain. Campbell formed a posse and went after him. As they closed in on Chocorua near the summit, he clambered onto a projecting rock just below the peak, hurled curses at the white men, and then hurled himself off the rock to his death. You can see the rock up there today and reflect upon how legends get started.
Cursed or not, Chocorua is one of the most often climbed of the White Mountains. There used to be a hotel near the top, but it was blown down a couple of times. Now there’s a stone-and-plank shelter, with chains running over the roof to hold it down.
Climbing the trail today, it’s impossible not to reflect upon the tremendous effort of hauling everything up there, over three miles, to build, furnish, and stock the hotel for vacationers. Beyond the stable for the horses that delivered the guests, part of the trail was leveled by blasting, to ease the way for dudes in leather-soled shoes and ladies in long skirts and petticoats. They must have had nerves of steel. I’d no more try to climb that thing without rubber-soled hiking shoes than I would on ice skates.
Last time on Chocorua – which may have been my last time – I climbed with a TV crew and the high bidder in a Public Television auction called "A Day with the Crew." As we sat together on the summit looking at Chocorua’s leaping rock and I silently contemplated the possibility of making it back down alive and unbroken, I said, "You know what the losing bidder in the auction got? He got two trips with the crew."
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.