August is the month when many people who started hiking the Appalachian Trail from down in Georgia in the spring make it up to New Hampshire, only to face the reality of the White Mountains.

Consider the case of Rachel Wild, 29, of North Carolina, who fell and injured her leg Monday near Mt. Eisenhower, four miles from the nearest road, and was flown out by helicopter to a hospital on Monday.

New Hampshire Fish and Game summed up the rescue this way: “Wild had been hiking the Appalachian Trail for over five months straight, and had made it to the Crawford Path all the way from Georgia. She commented on New Hampshire’s terrain, saying that it was certainly more difficult than hundreds of miles of trail that she had hiked up to that point.”

New Hampshire has 161 miles of the 2,200-mile AT, as the Appalachian Trail is commonly known, and almost all of it is mountainous terrain, with more miles above treeline than any other state. The AT goes over 17 peaks that are at least 4,000 feet tall here, including Mount Washington.

New Hampshire is recognized as a major obstacle among people who “thru-hike” the trail, trying to walk the entire length in a single season, usually taking three to four months. “For northbound thru-hikers, this is the beginning of the main challenges that go beyond enduring distance and time: in New Hampshire and Maine, rough or steep ground are more frequent and alpine conditions are found,” is how wikipedia puts it.

Maine lays claim to the Mahoosuc Notch, which is often referred to as the toughest mile of the AT as it weaves its way through a boulder field, requiring hikers to remove their backpacks as they crawl through narrow passages.

After being hoisted into a National Guard helicopter that had flown up from Concord, Wild was taken by Twin Mountain Ambulance to Littleton Regional Hospital “for further evaluation and treatment of injuries.”

Wild wasn’t Monday’s only victim of the terrain. According to Fish and Game, while rescue crews were hiking to her location they “came upon 32-year-old Carmen Figuroa of Boca Raton, Florida, who had sustained a lower leg injury approximately a mile up the Crawford Path from Mt. Clinton road.” Figuroa was treated and “was able to hobble down the trail with the assistance of Conservation Officers and Lakes Region Search and Rescue Team personnel.”

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