Mount Washington Summit

Author's Comments

The summit gets a bad reputation among photographers and I understand why. It is crowded. There is a parking lot. There is a snack bar and a cog railway and a line of people waiting to photograph the summit sign. None of that is what I came for and none of it is what stays with me. What stays with me is the moment late on a September afternoon when the wind drops just enough to be bearable and the light comes raking across the Presidential Range from the west. Adams and Jefferson and Madison stack themselves in receding blue, and the ravines on the eastern face go into shadow while the ridges still hold gold. The scale is genuinely difficult to photograph. A wide lens flattens it. A longer lens has to choose. I have made my best images here at around 70 millimeters, picking out a single ridge against the layers behind it and letting the rest go. The weather is the other photograph. Most days the summit is in cloud, and most photographers treat that as a failure. It is not. When the cap lifts for ninety seconds and you can see down into Tuckerman Ravine before the cloud closes again, that is a photograph nobody else is making because nobody else is still standing there in the wind. Bring more layers than you think you need. Bring a lens cloth. Be willing to wait through weather that sends everyone else back to their cars. The summit rewards the patient and punishes the casual, which is, in the end, what makes it worth the climb.

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