Today we drove to the top of New England, Mt. Washington, in upstate New Hampshire. It doesn’t sound like it would be that tough, with our 10,000 foot passes in the West and nice highways that go up and through at that altitude, but the Auto Road, the oldest man made structure in the U.S., is one harrying ride. Yes, the road does go to the top, but what a road. It opened around the time of the Civil War, and it was used by horses and carriages until autos came along. But it was obviously not designed for modern SUV’s and pickups, and there were mostly wide bodies on the road. It narrows down to two lanes and then gets narrower still and turns to dirt with dropoffs on each side thousands of feet, and no barriers. It takes all one’s attention to make sure there are no driving errors! The speed limit is 20 mph in first gear all the way up and back.
Can you imagine driving up 5,000 feet at fifteen miles per hour on a lane where you need to stop at times to let the other car through and with sheer dropoffs for thousands of feet on either side? Forget Afghanistan, we have Mt. Washington! The summit is at 6288 feet, and the winds there have been measured at 231 mph! The car rocked back and forth in the wind as we inched along, just inches from the side from which there would be no return! I’m not exaggerating! It was a white knuckle ride up. The wind there was roaring at 65 mph, and the summit was clouded over, and the temperature was 36 and felt like about 10 above zero. It is the highest peak in the northeast U.S. We were completely relaxed on the way back down, because once the unknown is known, the fear vanishes, and it’s a lot of fun. Jan took a lot of photos. We have been on some great mountain one-laners, like “Going to the Sun” in Glacier National Park, but this drive tops them all as far as I’m concerned.
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