Mountain climbing — doing it and telling the story

By Patricia J. Malin

In just the last 20 years, Carol Stone White has experienced more peaks and valleys in her personal life than a majority of New Yorkers combined.

It just so happens that this 68-year-old resident of Clinton in Oneida County, has climbed several hundred mountain peaks in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire — most of them with Dave, her husband of more than 40 years.

“I first became interested in hiking in the Adirondacks when I quit smoking in 1988 at age 47,” she said. “In 1989, a friend asked if we would like to climb 5,344-foot Mt. Marcy, the highest mountain in New York state. We said, ‘Why not?’”

At the time, White was naive enough not to realize that she needed a sturdy pair of hiking boots for the momentous occasion. “I didn’t buy boots, though, for only one big-mountain climb,” she laughingly recalled.

“That experience was so splendid that we climbed all 46 Adirondack High peaks [with boots] by 1990. On Mt. Marcy’s summit, I had experienced an overwhelming desire to know this vast wilderness up close. I never started smoking again, as I had several times before. Little did I realize that, five years later, we’d be climbing Marcy on Christmas Day and all 46 High Peaks in winter in the next two years!”

Over the course of thousands of miles, White became so transformed by her hiking experience that she has parlayed it into a successful career—no, not as an ordinary senior mountain climber, but as an author of many books about the Adirondacks and the Catskills.

Her fifth book is being published in April. It is titled “Adirondack Peak Experiences: Mountaineering Adventures, Misadventures, and the Pursuit of the ‘46,’” an anthology of other hikers’ amazing hikes. Excerpts will appear in Adirondack Life magazine in May.

Although she was a late bloomer when it came to tackling mountains, it didn’t take White long to get hooked. “I was not a natural athlete and my focus was on politics and public policy, family and other interests,” she pointed out. “I was fascinated by this new hiking lifestyle.”

White was born in Cortland, but moved to Florida at age 10 because her father had asthma. She attended college in Virginia. She met her husband while both were working in New York City, and they both ended up taking a sociology course at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Dave was working for IBM and was transferred to Syracuse. At that time, while raising their two children (Julie, now 42, and Jeff, 38), they became fond of hiking in the gorges in Ithaca. The Whites later moved to the Mohawk Valley when Dave got a job with the now-defunct Cogar Corporation.

It’s hard to get an exact figure on the number of peaks she and Dave have conquered. The Adirondacks have 46 “high peaks,” referring only to those over 4,000 feet in elevation. There are 35 superior peaks in the Catskills and 48 in New Hampshire. Even with some 113 high peaks throughout the Northeast, the Whites are as familiar with them as with the plot of grass in their backyard.

“We have climbed all 46 once in summer, once in winter, and most of the peaks many times,” she related. “I climbed all 48 peaks [White Mountains] in New Hampshire in winter—including Mt. Washington—between ages 60 and 65. We have climbed 113 peaks in winter and non-winter. That includes the ‘Killer Mountain,’ Mt. Washington, in winter.”

White laughs now when she recalls her early struggles while hiking the High Peaks, such as carrying heavy packs, improper dress, dehydration, nausea and exhaustion, but every trip was literally a learning experience.
“People don’t have a real sense of what they are getting into, which is one reason I like to compile anthologies with dozens of people sharing their stories,” she explained. “You learn at least as much from peoples’ first-hand experiences as you do from guidebooks.”

n her new book, Adirondack Peak Experience, White gave a first-hand account of one scary incident. “We backpacked to a range of trailless high peaks called the Santanoni Range, east of Long Lake. Climbing up a frozen brook, Dave broke through the ice and got frostbite.”

But she also remembers some “awesome” climbs. “If you pick a day without tremendous winds to ascend above treeline, you can spend considerable time on the summits, even in winter,” she pointed out.

“One time we ascended Wright Peak on a cloudy New Year’s Day and suddenly we hiked above the clouds! A rippled ocean of clouds spread out below us to the horizon, the white dome of Whiteface Mt. thrusting above it. Warmed in sunlight in utterly still air, we stood on top of the world on New Year’s Day, as if in a bright realm of magical potential.”

She published her first book, “Catskill Day Hikes for All Seasons” in 2002 at age 62 for the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK). It features 60-day hikes in the Catskill Forest, an area with a vast trail network, but also what she calls large regions of untracked wilderness.

ADK had asked Carol and Dave to write “Catskill Day Hikes for All Seasons as a companion to “Day Hikes for All Seasons: An Adirondack” Sampler,” by Bruce Wadsworth, the current president of the ADK Club.

The Whites tended to be more familiar with the Adirondacks. Between 1994 and 1997, the couple climbed the 46 High Peaks in winter after having previously earned their “46er” badge the conventional way. ADK compiles an official record on the dates and names of people who have scaled the High Peaks, and then bestows membership in its exclusive “Forty-Sixer” club. There are now more than 6,000 people in the club.
White then went on to publish “Women with Altitude: Challenging the Adirondack High Peaks in Winter. “I wrote about our winter mountain climbing adventures and misadventures, and the thought occurred to me that others have fascinating stories to tell,” she said.

White found such stories in the New York State Archives in Albany. She began by reviewing hiking files that had been maintained for more than 50 years by the 46er Club historian, Grace Hudowalski (1906-2004).
In 1937, Hudowalski was the first woman, and ninth person overall, to complete the ascent of the High Peaks. She was a founder of the Adirondack Forty-Sixers Club Inc., and served as its first president from 1948 to 1951. She then became the club’s secretary and historian, a position she held until her death. She was also an ardent conservationist who fought diligently to preserve the Adirondacks from the destructive practices of timber companies.

At Hudowalski’s urging, the 46ers began to send her stories about their adventures and “precious experiences” in the High Peaks. After reading all the letters that the pioneering women had written to Hudowalski, White began her own quest for the rest of the story. She started to correspond with the hikers, thus capturing the life stories, thrills and dangerous treks of 33 of the women 46ers in her book on the Adirondacks. In addition, she included some of her most memorable hikes in Women with Altitude.

The Catskill Forest Preserve has 35 mountains over 3,500 feet in elevation (up to 4,100). Members who climb all those peaks get a certificate and patch, as do the 46ers. So as the Whites hiked all the trails and while compiling this book, they became members of the “3500 Club.”

In turn, it led to another request from ADK to edit their comprehensive “Guide to Catskill Trails.” “We measured 345 miles of trails in the Catskill Forest Preserve with a surveying wheel, rewrote the guidebook, and continue to be the editors,” said White.

White delved even further into the Catskill archives and put together another book titled, “Catskill Peak Experiences: Mountaineering Tales of Endurance, Survival, Exploration and Adventure From the Catskill 3500 Club.”

Carol has served on the 46ers’ executive committee and she is currently conservation chairwoman of the Catskill 3500 Club. David is a director of the Utica chapter of ADK and membership chairman of the Catskill 3500 Club.

Carol’s days as an author are as unlimited as her desire to continue tackling high peaks. Her next book, “New England Peak Experiences,” will cover 52 mountains “with a view” (under 4,000 feet) in New Hampshire. She completed the New Hampshire high peaks in winter at age 65.

She also intends to complete work on a book about the Oneida Community and its founder, her great-grandfather, John Humphrey Noyes.