I’ve really enjoyed the two recent mountain-climbing My Turns. As it happens, I climbed both of those mountains on the same day, July 2, a little over twenty years ago. My wife and I crawled up the Caps Ridge trail to get to the summit of Mt. Jefferson. The weather was so glorious that we decided to head over to Mt. Adams. Unfortunately, I rolled my ankle pretty badly just below the summit of Mt. Adams. After we hit the summit, we decided to avoid Caps Ridge on the descent, figuring that the steepness wouldn’t be easy on a bum ankle. Instead, we took the Link, a trail around the shoulder of Mt. Jefferson. However, we read our topo map a bit too cavalierly and completely missed the 700-foot-deep ravine that the Link goes down into and back up from.

Needless to say, the Link was not much fun, and we did not get out of the woods until late. When we got to the Bear Notch trailhead, we discovered that our car had a dead battery. Just as we were hunkering down to sleep in the car, we saw a parade of cars drive by the trail head. It turned out that Bear Notch Road was the shortcut home from the local two-days-early fireworks show. We got a jump start, drove home, and got to sleep in our own bed. On July 4, I decided to climb Mt. Moosilauke because I did not want to wait a whole week to chase away the bad memories of my mishap on Adams. Mission accomplished. Moosilauke was wonderful.

Parker Potter

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