On Dec. 11, New Hampshire lost one of its truly original and unique individuals, Eugene (Gene) Daniell, whom I had the pleasure of working with for over a decade on the 25th and 26th editions of the AMC White Mountain Hiking Guide and the first edition of the AMC Southern New Hampshire Trail Guide.
Gene and I met on a beautiful late summer day in September 1982 on the summit of Mount Jefferson, he with his two young children and I with mine. He told me about his work on “the book” as we affectionately called it, and I challenged him that one day we would work on it together.
Six years later I got in touch with him to remind him of my commitment and he challenged me back by assigning me Chapter Two of the guide to wheel, measure and log – and never expected to hear from me again.
A few points of clarification: First, Chapter Two of the AMC White Mountain Hiking Guide covers the Northern Presidential Range (Mounts Clay, Jefferson, Adams and Madison), which has by far the steepest, roughest and arguably most beautiful trails in our mountains. Second, the way mileages are measured in “the book” is by taking a surveyor’s wheel with 800 rotations/mile and rolling this wheel over every rock, cliff, crevice and stream and thus calculating the mileage to the nearest .01 mile.
The challenge was completed in three weeks and a partnership was born that lasted over a decade. Our division of labor initially was that I would hike and measure each and every trail in the Guide and Gene would take my measurements and observations and convert them into trail descriptions. Eventually he began trusting me with the writing and I would send him the log along with a draft description, which he always found a way to make more eloquent. We eventually broke the guide (which we affectionately called the “brick” because it had become so large and cumbersome) into two books, dividing the trails of the White Mountain National Forest with those trails south of that region into the Southern New Hampshire Trail Guide.
My favorite part of the project was visiting him in his home in Concord amidst his stacks and stacks of stacks and stacks. He collected copies of anything pertaining to the New Hampshire outdoors that went back decades.
His home was a virtual library unlike I had ever seen, organized in a labyrinth that only he could decipher. We would go over the copy of each trail description and then debate for hours as to whether a trail was very steep, steep, rather steep, moderately steep or somewhat steep. His acerbic wit, erudite mind and endlessly curious intellect was a source of great pleasure, and I never tired of our time together. His friendship, collaboration and unique way of looking at the world equaled the joy for me of exploring every inch of our state’s extraordinary 2,000-plus miles of trail.
Gene shared an indelible part of my life and I will always be grateful for the time we shared doing something that was such a great source of passion and pleasure for us both. I hope that wherever his spirit resides he will finally be able to “peak-bag” to his heart’s content without any further limit of body or time.
(Jon Burroughs lives in Glen.)