Introduction

Abstract

On August 9, 1902, two camp counselors in their early twenties led eight young men from Camp Moosilauke, New Hampshire, on an ambitious backpacking expedition into the White Mountains, which lay to the east. The two counselors were Knowlton Durham, of Columbia University, and Benton MacKaye, a young forester from Massachusetts who, nearly twenty years later, would brainstorm the idea for the Appalachian Trail. Their journey would take them through the Lost River valley and into the Pemigewasset basin, through Crawford Notch, up Mount Washington and the other Presidentials, and then back to Camp Moosilauke.