Read the beginning of "A Slife of Life on the Mountain" from Ten Years on the Rock Pile: A Collection of Stories, Some Hilarious, Some Tragic, about Life at the Summit of Mount Washington by Lee Vincent, Foreword by Guy Gosselin:
"For a long time nothing has been written about Mount Washington and the immediate area, and to me this has been sort of a tragedy in that there has been so much taking place on the mountain in the past ten years and nothing has really been said. It is with this idea in mind that I have written these short stories pertaining to the mountain, trying to include the humor, tragedy, and everyday lifestyle of those men that inhabit the summit of Mount Washington year-round.
A few newspapermen and short article writers will show up whenever we have some rugged weather and try to make ink with a hashed up piece of junk and then peddle it to the public under a sensationalistic theme, and it makes those of us that are native violently ill to our stomachs to hear about how tough we got it. Ha! If they only knew. . . . Oh sure, once in a while we have a hard time with the weather and then all hell breaks loose, but for the most part our days are made up of trying to do a job that in the lowlands would have no attraction. But because we are on the highest peak in the northeastern United States, we get investigated often.
In trying to convey this sense of what the mountain is all about, I hope to impress upon all that it is not a peak to try and pit yourself against in order to have an ego trip. Rather, it is a mountain that stands majestically in the way of two weather patterns and is buffeted by those same two patterns, mainly, the west to east and the coastal storms. Winds in excess of 200 miles per hour used to be common, but there are more buildings now than ever before, and the winds do not approach the old readings. It’s a shame because there are winds of higher velocity down on the homestretch area, but that is not where the Mount Washington Weather Observatory is located, rather the Yankee Network building now protects the summit from the northwest and any wind that is going to give us a hard time is deflected by this building. The winds from the south and east are not allowed direct bearing upon the Observatory’s instruments. And then again is the old argument that the Obs equipment stinks. It needs updating and the use of more reliable wind speed indicators is necessary. The old Pitot tube theme is no longer any good, except it is easy to keep clean of ice and for that, in my opinion, is why it is still used. I wish they would get rid of it and stop being like old Yankees, hard to convince that what was good enough for their fathers is not necessarily what is good for them, that there are technological advances and they should keep pace. However, in their defense, the United States Weather Service is always nine hundred years behind times because of red tape and reams and reams of paperwork.
Needless to say, there are times when I feel that winds are definitely higher than what the instruments of the Obs will tell."
To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Ten Years on the Rock Pile visit http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Ten-Years-on-the-Rock-Pile,674791.aspx.
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