On an overcast and warm third Monday of April, I was sitting on a curb in Atlanta after high school track practice when I got the texts.

    Yes, my godfather Jerry had finished his 21st consecutive Boston Marathon.
    No, chemo and lung tumor removal hadn’t stopped him from having fun.
    Yes, he was in good spirits.
    No, he wasn’t hurt.
    Yes, he’d finished close enough to feel the shock waves from the explosions.
    No, we didn’t need to be worried about him.

In the days that followed, I constantly refreshed the news, reading with trepidation about the manhunt that ensued in what seemed like a faraway land. The news cycle waned. Life went on.

In the years that followed, I visited MIT, my dad pointed out the spot that would become the Collier Memorial, and I began to see the faraway land as my maybe-future home. I moved to Cambridge. I started college.

The Whites first found me the following summer, the summer after Jerry died, and they have held a piece of my heart ever since. Grief, depression, and chronic illness had zapped my love for running. I quit. A few weeks later, my parents came to Boston to spread Jerry’s ashes along the Marathon course, and my dad wanted to relive his 80s adventures with a trip to the Whites. I ordered my first checkbook, and I rented a pair of trekking poles from MITOC. I was awestruck. The granite along I-93. The towering Franconia Notch. The alien universe above treeline in the Presidentials. The kind Jehovah’s Witnesses who gave me my first hitch. At the time, I had no sense what our little hills would come to mean to me, but I felt close to Jerry and thankful he had brought me there.

In the years that followed, I lurked on MITOC mailing lists, deleting emails and chuckling at silly trip ideas like Bjorn’s “Double Jefferdy” (a double ascent of Jefferson via T25 trails). I flirted with a return to consistent running, always unsuccessful, reminded of the torture that is getting back into running shape.

The Whites next found me a few years into grad school while wrestling with my identity and values. I found solace, and my problems felt small in the mountains. In time, I started cutting my teeth outdoors, connecting peaks until I felt tired and unaware that linking up 15-20 mi days wasn’t “normal” for most newcomers to the Whites. After years of work travel, grant deadlines, and qualifying exams over IAP, I finally found myself in Cambridge for Winter School. With much coaxing, a friend convinced me to go to lectures and sign up for the trips lottery. I went on my first trip. I was hooked.

In time, the Whites became a second home, a place where I felt close to Jerry, familiar skylines dotted with memories and misadventures, sunsets and shenanigans, and never-fading awe. Somewhere along the way I learned about New Hampshire hiking culture, about peak bagging and lists, about fabled single-day odysseys like the Presi and Pemi. Eventually I learned about the Direttissima, a 220+ mi, 80k ft continuous linking of New Hampshire’s 48 4000-foot mountains. It captured my imagination. I started dreaming big.

I pitched a crazy trip for the Collier Adventure Grant: not just a Direttissima, but a fast one. I started building base mileage and vert, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Well, that is until I fell trail running in February, tearing my MCL and MPFL and leaving me unable to run for the indefinite future. My crazy trip seemed even crazier.

I committed myself to recovery, spending hour after hour on my bike trainer, sweat dripping until my hands slid on my handlebars and puddles formed on my bedroom floor. I couldn’t do big mountain days with my friends, but they’d skip their own adventures to join me at Camelot, pulling me around in a pulk, building a quinzhee, and rediscovering the rusted two-person saw.

Winter eventually turned to spring, and my crazy trip still seemed crazy. I doubted I’d be able to start it at all. Maybe instead I’d “Picnic the Whites” (bike and hike all of the classic traverses), or bikepack from MIT to Camelot and then to Intervale, or recruit friends to slackpack me and hike with me on a slower Direttissima.

In time, running replaced biking, physical therapy turned into leg day, and the snow thawed in the high peaks. I reframed my Collier Adventure Grant not as a financial investment in one trip but as an investment in me and as encouragement to do big things in my home mountains, whatever that looked like. I pulled out my maps and texted my friends.

The crazy summer adventure scheming began, loosely under the premise of “Direttissima training and scouting”. 

If I hopped on the bus to Hanover Thursday after work, I could take the AT to Franconia Ridge, pop over to Flume, and shimmy down Osseo to Lincoln Woods, where my friend Thomas could retrieve me so that I could join the Sunday of June Circus. Traversing a blowdown hellscape between Moosilauke and the Kinsmans in dark cold pouring rain made for quite the sufferfest. I cursed myself for ignoring Aoife’s advice that this wasn’t the right first weekend to go stoveless. My rain shell was no longer waterproof. My macerated feet screamed in pain with each step. But for the first time since February, a Direttissima felt possible.

Thomas and I continued to enable each other’s big ideas, giving way to increasingly complex logistics. If I backpacked a NOBO Mahoosuc Traverse(ish), I could carspot him on his SOBO Skyrunner Mahoosuc attempt on Sunday. Because he wanted a “chill Saturday slide bushwhack,” I found myself carless in search of big Saturday miles. Naturally, I day hiked with Monika and Janey, bid them farewell, and then set off northbound at sunset on Mahoosuc for hours of night hiking across boulders. I woke up at Gentian Pond to the serenity of an undercast sunrise.

If I drove Thomas’s car from Intervale to Crawford Notch the next weekend, I could have a big day in the Southern Presis and Dry River, he could run a fast Presi before retrieving overnight gear from his car, and we could all meet Janey at Ethan Pond. The next day, we’d ford the E Branch Pemi River, traverse the Bonds to Zealand, and take A to Z all the way back to Crawford Notch. After solitary swimming through several hundred blowdowns in the five miles between Isolation and Mizpah, I’d never felt so happy to rejoin my friends at the end of a day.

If Aaron and I tagged along for the start of Lanson’s Pemi, we could break off to explore Lincoln Slide and decide whether the low elevation boggy bushwhack was worth it. Aaron claims I undersold how long we’d be in the trees, a fact that became evident when we found ourselves in a mossy compost pile of decaying wood. Somehow he still let me drag him up Owls Head on our way out.

Not every day was big. Aaron and I shortened the second day of a Northern Presi backpacking trip, opting for relaxed parking lot noodles at Pinkham instead of a race to Washington before big winds rolled in. Our drive home turned into a tour of route 16: we visited White Mountain Ski Co to replace my failing Altra Timps, nearly bought the NoCo REI out of camping fuel, and called into a MITOC BOD meeting from Bucket of Balls. 

I was building up for the largest solo trip I’d ever done, but I’d never felt more connected.

Trip planning increasingly grew into a pastime and a way to keep my mind occupied. After all, the Direttissima is not so much a route as a concept, a puzzle of strategically linking the peaks in an efficient manner, and I love puzzles. I’d started building Bill Tidd-inspired, Excel-based models of routes, times, and pack weight. I realized I was on track to do well, very well. I originally pitched an 8-9 day “fast” Direttissima but now the women’s FKT seemed well within my reach.  

I spreadsheeted out nutrition, carefully trying to balance weight with calories and how likely I was to want to eat my food. Aaron and I spent a night filling dozens of small bags with powdery white Tailwind, labeling caffeinated bags with a big ole “X”. Nothing suspicious at all.

Because I put off committing to the trip for so long, I didn’t have time to care much about dialing in pack weight with new UL gear. I started with something like a 9lb base weight, realizing a bit too late in the game that I could have shaved off a few pounds if I’d been willing and able to spend more money on gear.

In the final weeks of prep, Andrew Drummond crushed the existing men’s FKT. We spoke on the phone days before I planned to set out. He told me about his recurrent thoughts of hiding his food in the trees mid-hike, of how he’d opted not to filter water, about his hatred of Shoal Pond. At the time, I was planning to bring 22 pounds of food. He encouraged me to take less food and to prioritize out-and-backs for morale as much as anything.

With Aaron’s help, I ditched a few pounds of food, streamlined my first aid kit, cut my toothbrush (mostly for the vibes), permethrin-ed my clothes, and talked through final logistics. Thomas lent me his bivy and inReach. We saw a weather window materialize, and Aaron ditched everything to miss work and drive me to the Whites. Off we went.

I agonized over whether to broadly share my tracker. In applying to CAG, I partly saw my trip as a way to get other MITOCers excited about doing Big Things in the Whites. Somewhere along the way, I’d convinced myself no one cared about what I was doing and that sharing a tracker would only confirm this. On the rare chance someone did care, what if I blew up a day in? Aoife (PCT ’24) encouraged me to at least share the tracker with friends because they cared about me and would want to dot watch, and because receiving messages might mean more than I’d realize beforehand. Reluctantly, I made a group chat the night before, shared a tracker link, and promptly put my phone in airplane mode.

Day 1: 40 mi / 17k ft

My alarm buzzed at 3AM, and I popped right up. I felt energized from my 8:15pm bedtime, excitedly folding up my sleeping pad and changing into my very clean hiking clothes. I ate two donuts on the three minute drive to Beaver Brook TH. At Beaver Brook, I braided my hair. Aaron made himself parking lot noodles. I peed at least four times. I ate another donut. We took obligatory (and surprisingly high quality) selfies. I headed into the darkness.

Beaver Brook was uneventful — short, punchy, and familiar. A far cry from what felt like a never-ending climb a few years ago while postholing through late spring snow on my way to my first of the 48. I got up quicker than anticipated, summiting before sunrise and ducking below treeline before the bright red sun peaked over the horizon. At the trailhead, I grabbed my pack, shoved food in my face, and drank flat orange soda, grateful I’d let Aaron convince me to stash this instead of premixed Tailwind.

I cruised over the wooded ridgeline to the Kinsmans, pleasantly surprised that in blowdown-free dry daylight, Wolf Ridge was soft and quiet, far from the nightmare hellscape I’d encountered on previous trips. I filtered water at Eliza Brook, oddly excited for the steep ascent to South Kinsman, an under-appreciated gem. Alone on South Kinsman, I wondered where all the people were. It was a perfect summer Saturday aside from the severe air quality warnings from the Canadian wildfires. I bopped down Fishin’ Jimmy to Lonesome, avoiding the hut’s siren call, quickly grabbing water and continuing on my way. I ditched my pack to head up Cannon. Morale was strong, I felt free!

Ascend Falling Waters, my mind watered at the first stream crossing. I turtled myself in the water, pack wedged between boulders, shoulder slammed into a rock, and legs pointing upstream. I was part of the Falling Waters. After an eternity (surely at most 30s), I reluctantly unclipped my pack, extricated myself and my gear, and laughed as I carried on my way. My legs started to feel tired as the enormity of the day hit me and I realized I was too far ahead of pace to make sleeping just below Little Haystack practical. Nothing I could do about that now except keep chugging along. Hopefully I’d make it to a flat spot on Garfield Ridge before it got too late.

I ditched my pack and headed south to Flume, passing the Liberty Springs junction with its warning sign to not leave packs because of the Pemi bear. Liberty was so hazy you could barely see Franconia, let alone trace out my day from distant Moosilauke along Kinsman Ridge. The haze gave way to fiery sunset skies. I was alone on the ridge, gradually accepting darkness on the ascent to Lafayette. After a few failed attempts, I eventually found a not-too-soggy flat-enough spot on Garfield Ridge, set up the bivy, and called it a night, stirring only to the patter of footsteps during Grant Allard’s double Pemi FKT.

Day 2: 32 mi / 10k ft

Traversing Garfield Ridge at night does nothing to quell my hatred of it. I topped out on Garfield at first light as the sky crept toward blue and the folks in the foundation slept on unaware. Headlamp stayed on down The Waterfall and through the ups and downs until the Wilderness Boundary. The wildness of Franconia Brook was a welcome respite from Garfield Ridge. The softness of the path, the narrow brushing, the feeling of adventure and aloneness. I dropped my pack near Thirteen Falls and loaded an Owls Head GPX on my watch. I’d followed Andrew’s advice to follow the NW shoulder but, much like him, got a bit turned around on the ascent. I bushwhacked my bushwhack on the way down, opting for steeper segments interspersed with gentle logging grades.

It started raining on the ascent to Galehead and I got increasingly sleepy. After a brief dirt nap somewhere along Twin Brook, I trudged along, no longer sleepy but now unable to eat solid food without immediately throwing up. I eventually popped out of Twin Brook, hurriedly dashing to the top of Galehead with only my phone.

At Galehead, I realized it was clearly not a popular hiking day. A few very dry families quietly played board games. I tiptoed through the hut, trying my best not to leave Pig Pen-style mud and rain tracks behind me. What a different morning I’d had.

I panicked at the top of South Twin. I was missing my smart water bottle and paralyzed at the idea that I’d left it somewhere deep in the Pemi wilderness (I later realized it was quite obviously in the Galehead bathroom). I shuffled along to North Twin, losing my appetite in the cold rain. Between Guyot and Zealand, I forced myself to eat a gel and drink my Tailwind as I cursed what are always surprisingly pointy rocks on a trail that never feels as flat as the map makes it seem. Back at the Twinway-Bondcliff junction, I crouched in a gap under the krummholz, shivering as I shuffled gear and tried my best to eat a few bites of food. I set off toward the Bonds, soaked and cold to my core, well behind on calories for the day.

My stomach churned at solid food, which made it extra sensitive to caffeine. My legs felt fine, but I couldn’t fathom the amount of caffeine I’d need to hike through the dark to get across the E Branch that night without stopping. I put on my shell, laid out my foam pad, and shivered for a dirt nap just off of Bondcliff. Thanks to the drought, the river that’d required mid-thigh fording just a month before was now rock hoppable without wet socks. I called it a night on the other side of the E Branch and bivied in the middle of the East Side trail, 20 pounds of food next to my head.

Day 3: 37 mi / 12k ft

Begrudgingly, I woke up to still-wet socks and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to eat a protein bar while cramming my food back in my pack. I set off on Cedar Brook, my pack almost as heavy as it’d been the morning before. 

The lower part of Cedar Brook was surprisingly dry, a welcome change from my memories of last summer’s post-Cedar Slide sogginess higher up. In time, Cedar Brook grew increasingly boggy and eventually streamlike, better matching my memories. I ditched my pack at the junction, excited to feel nimble and free once again.

This enthusiasm was short-lived. I threw up several times ascending North Hancock, immediately killing the vibe. I started crying on the ascent to South Hancock when an episode of the Dirtbag Diaries was unexpectedly emotional and the North-to-South section felt longer than I’d remembered. I walked the Kanc from the hairpin to Greeley Ponds, arguably the most terrifying part of the trip. At Greeley Ponds TH, I paused to dry my socks (mixed success), eat a few bites of solid food (mostly unsuccessful), charge my watch (quite successful), and take a quick nap (not my best sleep, did the job). From photos, my Injinji liners had clearly ripped, and the ball of my left foot was fully rubbing against my insole. I guess this bothered me little compared to the constant nausea and vomiting; I wore the ripped socks until well into the next day.

As the day heated up, I got roasted. I baked going up E Osceola, and it became increasingly hard to eat — attempting to eat solid food was losing its appeal as I’d consistently throw up right after. Filtering enough water to make enough Tailwind was getting on my nerves. I convinced myself that I could either continue filtering water but not drink enough, or I could abandon filtering in hopes of drinking enough to stay hydrated and get some semblance of calories from Tailwind. Filter-free it was, then.

Tripoli felt like paradise after the descent off Osceola. The inReach was unexpectedly dying, and I’d pulled out my phone to concerned messages from Aaron and Janey. I stopped at the brook going up Tecumseh to charge batteries, realizing my battery calculations hadn’t included the inReach and that one of my battery packs wasn’t working.

Coming off of little ole Tecumseh, golden hour and a flood of emotions hit hard. I felt overwhelmed by the beauty around me, eager for what lay ahead of me, and proud of how far I’d come. I couldn’t stop thinking about my friends and the adventures we’d had together in these hills, and the flurries of inReach messages helped me realize they were thinking of me, too. Sure, I couldn’t eat much, but the nausea had become a familiar discomfort. Maybe I could do the damn thing after all.

I slept for a few hours at dusk along Livermore Rd before continuing up the Tripyramids. I’d hoped to make it to Kate Sleeper before calling it a night, but I found myself stumbling around for the last few hundred feet of North Tripyramid. At the summit, I threw on a shell, crouched on my foam pad behind a rock, and took a brief nap. I woke up shivering in the fetal position, no more rested and unconvinced I wouldn’t go right back to sleepwalking. Reluctantly, I found the least rocky and most flat spot and laid out my bivy. There’s a reason North Tripyramid isn’t known as a great summit bivy; it’s about as comfortable as it looks.

Day 4: 38 mi / 8k ft

I carried on the next morning, winding up and over South Tripyramid to Kate Sleeper trail. Eating any meaningful amount of solid food felt like a foregone concept, so my pack wasn’t getting any lighter. As I shuffled along runnable terrain, I cursed myself for not having simply carried fewer calories. Descending Passaconaway, I buckled down for what was going to be a long day at low elevation at peak heat. The Kanc felt like a literal oven. Crossing the Swift River, I’d never been so happy to find non-rock-hoppable water.

Somehow the “most efficient route between the 48” usually involves a direct path between Passaconaway and… Hale, passing only Carrigain along the way. The trail was flat and calm, but mindless and hot. My pack was still too heavy to run. Would anyone know if I threw out my food deep in the Pemi? How much Tailwind could I dump in the Sawyer River before causing problems?

A pile of mountain bikes and children’s laughter greeted me at Sawyer River Rd, only the second party I’d seen in the 18 miles since North Tripyramid. Maybe these woods held more than sufferfests after all.

I had the Carrigain fire tower all to myself as I squinted into the late afternoon sun, realizing if I hustled I could get down Desolation without getting benighted. My right knee erupted in pain on the descent, tiptoeing down rock after rock as I dropped into the mossy undercarriage of the Whites. Somehow my MCL and MPFL were fine, but everything else hurt horribly. I convinced myself that it would feel better on flats, that it would get better after sleep, that I’d be a-okay. Eventually the grade eased, rocks turned to dirt, and I reached Stillwater Junction at sunset. Rosy skies reflected off of the gently flowing water.

Tall trees, soft trails, and a sense of wildness greeted me at the start of the Shoal Pond trail. It felt like a dream.

Then the bog bridges began. They weren’t too bad at first: a little wet, sure, but nothing they were cracked up to be from past Direttissima reports. They got worse and worse the farther I went, devolving into the bog bridges from hell: slimy round decaying logs with eight inch nails jutting out the top. I still wasn’t eating much, which meant I couldn’t take caffeine without getting more nauseous, and I needed caffeine to night hike. I got sleepier and sleepier. I couldn’t bivy on the side of the trail. There was too much water, and even what looked like solid ground was far too boggy. My knee hurt more and more, even on flats now, and especially when accidentally sliding off a loose plank. I finally found a half-decent stealth spot at the AT junction, hallucinated that my friends were camping there with me, and called it a night.

Day 5: 12 mi / 2k ft

As had become the norm, I woke up in the dark, damp and slightly disoriented. In an unwelcome development, I could now barely bend my knee. I set a new alarm, wishing that another hour of sleep would magically heal me. Unsurprisingly it did not, so I cut my losses and set off. I hadn’t made it as far as I’d wanted on day four, but I was still well ahead of pace to beat the current FKT. I needed to get moving and see what was still in me.

Light broke through Zealand Notch, a pleasant distraction from the now nearly continuous pain in my knee. I dropped my pack at the Twinway junction and scampered past a still-sleeping Zealand hut. The ascent to Hale was a mixed bag — a rush of adrenaline on ascents coupled with sharp wincing pain and an excruciatingly slow pace on descents. I sat down on top of Hale and looked down. My knee hadn’t been this swollen since the week after my MCL tear. It started to hit me not only that I might not finish fast enough but that I might not finish at all. 

The inReach wasn’t cooperating, and my satellite messaging was being finicky. I texted Janey the old fashioned way, sitting on a rock in the middle of the trail.

    I wasn’t going to make it, could someone come and pick me up?

I dragged my feet back to Zealand. My legs were covered in dirt, my shirt was stained grey from my pack, and my face was a salty mess of sweat and tears. I spent a long time on the porch, debating whether I looked miserable enough to get the croo’s pity and thus free thruhiker pancakes and, if I ate the pancakes, whether I’d immediately throw them up. Not wanting to have to explain myself or my now-failed project, I eventually got my act together sans pancakes, hobbled down the stone steps to the Twinway junction, retrieved my far-too-heavy pack, and limped my way to the trailhead.

Sitting on my foam pad, I took off my soaking socks and shirt and stared at the sky in disbelief. My knee was quickly swelling, but my legs felt fine, and my feet looked reasonably normal. The Whites had eaten me for breakfast, but maybe I was tougher than I’d realized after all.

Fifteen minutes later, Thomas appeared. Much to his relief, I was no longer crying or throwing up but instead already scheming a return the next summer. He handed me his clean dry Birkenstocks and we drove to Yaya’s where a pile of cheese curds and day-old $2 pizza awaited.

Reflection

The Whites have always tugged at my heartstrings, and this trip redefined my relationship with my home mountains. I found beauty in unexpected places, from the sun peeking through wildfire haze on Liberty to the rosy alpenglow reflections at Stillwater and golden hour on Tecumseh. I felt gratitude for the sudden calmness of old logging grades on Owl’s Head, for slightly softer-than-average trails, for the chill of clear-running springs. I’ll never look at my home the same way again.

I pitched this trip to Collier as a big solo sufferfest and on paper, maybe it was just that. When I look back, it became a story of small things, of discovery, of friendship. Of finding adventure in your backyard, of trusting that the people you care about will be there for you, of appreciating where you are, where you came from, and where you’re going.

I think Jerry and Sean would be proud.