Re[2]: [at-l] Could we lay off the hut-bashing please?

[ARTCLOUTMN@aol.com (ARTCLOUTMN@aol.com)]

In a message dated 12/30/01 9:54:17 AM, ellen@clinic.net writes:

<< No one stands at the trail heads to count the number of users and where 
they
 are going, but I'm pretty sure that less than one in a hundred hikers in the
 Whites ever stay in the huts, probably less than one in a thousand. >>

I agree.  I've climbed Mt Washington over 100 times.  Usually with a crew of 
hikers nearby.  There are always hundreds of people on the Mountain during 
weekends and summer days.  Actually it gets pretty busy there in the Winter 
now.  Very few of these people have any intention of staying in the huts.  
I've only stayed in a Hut once since 1958 when it cost $7.00 for the night 
including three meals.  I thought $7.00 per person was outrageous considering 
a car campsite cost $1.00 per night for the campsite.  But I paid it because 
I was sick after a week on the trail and some bad water.  The Huts have been 
around over 100 years.  The White Mountain National Forest would most likely 
not exist if the AMC had not been formed.  Most of the hiking trails in HN 
have been constructed or maintained by AMC.  The first huts were made to save 
lives, because so many people died un the Presidentials day hiking before any 
hut existed.  
    People stay over night in the Huts that would not do it if the huts did 
not exist but they would still be out there on Day hikes.  Most of 80,000+ 
members of AMC have never spent the night in a hut.
    Many Thru hikers have the misguided notion that the AMC would not exist 
without the AT.  But the AMC was formed in 1877.  Before Sierra Club, and way 
before any idea of AT was conceved.  Most of the AT in NH is on trail 
constructed/maintained by AMC.

                                                    Art