4/16/2023 0 Comments The boy that time donkeyEven though we used dehydrated food, it still weighed more than an 11- or 12-year-old boy could carry. The donkeys could carry so much more than people that the boys could focus on learning backcountry skills throughout the trip in an area where leaving food drops was not possible. Upon their return on Friday they used the camp’s bathing facility, the Beebe River, and cooked their next two meals. Their immersion experience started Sunday afternoon when they arrived, moved into a lean-to or tent, and in an assigned group of seven to eight scouts cooked the evening meal and the following morning’s breakfast on a wood fire. With no particular time schedule between sunrise and sunset and short daily hiking distances, they lived in an optimal leaning environment. No one had been out for multiple days, either, but the scouts arrived ready to learn. Few of the scouts we led had ever done an overnight backpacking trip before they came to us. In hindsight, I understand the donkeys lured scouts to the mountains and made backpacking more exciting. * According to Putnam’s research, also reported in New Hampshire magazine, Dodge bought the donkeys from Roswell, New Mexico.ĪMC LIBRARY AND ARCHIVESA trail worker unloads donkeys at Madison Spring Hut in 1940. But in the twentieth century, people had taken on carrying gear until Dodge brought in the donkeys. The tradition continued until 1964.* Horses had done such work during the Ethan Crawford era of the mid-1800s, carrying visitors and supplies to the summits of Bald Peak and Mounts Chocorua, Hayes, Kearsarge, Lafayette, Moosilauke, Moriah, Osceola, Pleasant (now Eisenhower), Washington, and Willard. The animals, also known as burros, packed in supplies to AMC’s high-mountain huts. Dodge, the hut manager for the Appalachian Mountain Club, formed the White Mountain Jackass Company in 1929 and by the next year was using 40 small donkeys. Putnam wrote in his book Joe Dodge (Phoenix, 2012) that donkeys served as pack animals in the White Mountains as early as 1930. Using donkeys was a quirky practice many have forgotten. We would return via the rail bed and Mount Israel to Mead Base on Friday afternoon. We would camp out four nights: near Guinea, Black Mountain, and Flat Mountain Ponds. We would start at Mead Base and head west through Sandwich Notch at the southern edge of the White Mountain National Forest, and climb the old Beebe River logging rail bed to its terminus at the base of Mount Whiteface. I remember 25 pounds of saltine crackers and pack bags balanced on the backs of four donkeys. We spent hours on a Monday morning packing the week’s food supply. The old house and tenting sites lie off Sandwich Notch Road. Then it was called, officially, the New Hampshire Daniel Webster Council Boy Scouts of America Mead Wilderness Base Camp. Our base camp is known today as Friends of Mead Base Conservation Center. The trip, like most of our trips, started on Monday morning with packing and ended on Friday afternoon. I will begin with the first donkey trip I led, in 1964. I have realized recently that my memories of these donkeys can paint a picture of what it was like to use animals. Not many people talk about the era of donkeys in the White Mountains. The most popular trips of our six one-week summer programs were treks using donkeys. Donkeys carried loads in the White Mountains off and on in the early- to mid-twentieth century.įor five summers, from 1964 through 1968, I taught outdoor skills to Boy Scouts at Mead Base, a camp at the foot of Mount Israel, at the southern edge of New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest. AMC LIBRARY AND ARCHIVESA muleskinner above treeline with a loaded donkey.
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