Mt Crawford (7) – “National Disgrace”

October, 2020

I’ve been working through another group of mountains: New Hampshire’s “52 With A View.” Obviously, they are all supposed to have interesting summits. And, so far, they do!

Compared to my “4000-footer” series, these posts will be briefer: sharing a couple of photos and a brief description of each climb, and a few miscellaneous thoughts on current events.

This time I want to share a new song I’ve just released, and the accompanying video – see below!

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But first, I climbed Mt Crawford (3,119ft) on a beautiful, but buggy, day in mid-June 2020. I aimed to climb three of the 52-With-A-View summits that day – Crawford, Stairs, and Resolution – with Crawford being first. My plan was to walk up Davis Path to Mt Crawford, then to continue on Davis Path to Stairs Mountain. On my way back, if all went to plan, I’d divert over on the Mt Parker Trail to climb Mt Resolution.

I arrived at the trail-head at around 10:30am, and headed up Davis Path:

The view from the top of Mt Crawford was fantastic: still, on this warm June day, some snow in areas below Mt Washington. And the whole southern Presidential Range was laid out in front of me.

I continued up towards Stairs Mountain next.

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I climbed Mt Crawford again in 2023, in a very different season: late January! This time the whole climb was done in snowshoes, which slowed me down some. As a result, it was an up-and-back just to Crawford, without continuing on to Stairs or Resolution.

Here is the view from near the trailhead:

I was the second person to break trail after the storm that passed through the day before. Early in the climb, that first person crossed me – he was coming down but, from his questions, I could tell that he hadn’t made it to the summit.

It turns out he had turned around at the second viewpoint. First, here is the great panorama across the southern reaches of Crawford Notch, filmed from the first viewpoint on the way up:

Here is the view from the second viewpoint:

Really pretty.

But here the tracks ended, and I wandered around for a while. Close to giving up, as the first hiker had done, two others arrived and one of them had a GPS. However, I ended up stumbling upon the trail before they found it, and then we went up Mt Crawford basically at the same time.

And here is the view from the summit, where it’s possible to see the mountains all around, 360 degrees:

Looking north towards Crawford Notch (on the left), with Mt Washington (obscured by clouds) on the right:

I started this climb at at just before 11am, and reached the top at about 1pm. On the way down there were a few more tracks:

It was a fantastic day, clear blue skies and few climbers. Snowshoes the whole day!

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I’ve used the Native American story of the two wolves as my theme in this series. And I’ve argued that our society has decided to feed the wrong wolf.

This post is different, though I would argue that I’m looking at the same trend, the same underlying cause.

As we approach the Federal election, I’m sharing this new song, called “National Disgrace,” which is a commentary on the upcoming US federal election.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the audio file, slightly-better quality than in the video:

This is the third song in my upcoming album, “Pandemic Songbook.” You can download all three, and find links to videos that accompany each, here.

Here are links to the other posts in the “52-With-A-View” series:

1. Mt Shaw (1) – Which Wolf To Feed?;
2. Mt Roberts (2) – We Are Feeding The Wrong Wolf;
3. Mt Jennings (3) – Pandemic Fever Dream;
4. Sandwich Dome (4) – Justice in America;
5. South Moat (5) – The World We Create When We Feed The Wrong Wolf;
6. North Moat Mountain (6) – Social Inequality in the United States;
7. Mt Crawford (7) – “National Disgrace“;
8. Stairs Mountain (8) – Two Quiet Interludes”;
9. Mt Resolution (9) – Abundance;
10. Mt Willard (10) – The Two Wolves Face A Tax Bill!;
11. Mt Avalon (11) – Standards? Or Expectations?;
12. South Baldface (12) – “Feed It With Love”;
13. North Baldface (13) – Inspiring Words from Albert Einstein;
14. South Paugus (14) – A Political Home For Good Wolves;
15. Hedgehog Mountain (15) – A Very Good Wolf;
16. Mt Potash (16) – Love;
17. Mt Cube (17) – “Without a Vision, the People Perish”;
18. Welch-Dickey (18) – “With a Vision, the People Flourish”;
19. Smarts Mountain (19) – Between Stimulus and Response;
20. Mt Webster (35) – A Hopeful Sign?

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All posts in this “52 With A View” series will be collected here.

There are three other collections of posts on this blog:

— I’ve been writing and recording a series of songs, with the general theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. As each is finished, you’ll find it here. Hope you enjoy them!

— Check out my “Everest Base Camp” series: four friends and I hiked from Lukla to the Everest Base Camp in November, 2019. It was incredible, spectacular, and very challenging. 

— And don’t forget to visit my “New Hampshire 4000-Footer” series, for reflections on a career in international development and social justice, along with descriptions of climbing the 48 highest peaks in our state!