White Mountain Direttissima

My 250 mile thru-hike of the 48 White Mountain 4000 footers in one continuous route called a Direttissima was done in 10 days and 19 hours. A complete Direttissima, which translated means “the most direct route” in Italian, requires hiking approximately 75,000 feet of elevation gain.

This thru hike wasn’t like any other I had done before. This is because I have a 2-year-old and a job that has me working 36 hours from Friday to Sunday. I used 3 vacation days in a row for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, giving me a 12-day window to hike the toughest NH thru hike.  All 4 of my prior thru hikes have been over 2,000 miles long and months submerged in wilderness. My journey leading up to my triple crown all started about 8 years ago. I was a day hiker and did the New Hampshire 48, it took me 5 months to complete. My friends Danny, Rachel and I took every Tuesday off so we could peak bag the mountains one week at a time.

The WMD hike was a supported hike and David aka @foghatchasesadream was the support driver and conductor behind the scenes making the wheels spin. He made every single resupply possible and gave up all his time for the long 11 days.  He would be driving around the food separated into grocery bags ina giant tote. As well as extra gear in his 4 door Acura to support the hike. When I needed a hearty meal to fill the empty stomach, he would show up with food from Waynes market in North Woodstock.

This journey all started when Nick Higgins “The store manager at Lahouts summit shop” @the4000footmailman and I started planning to attempt this 5 months ago. There was also a wolf near by we could talk to and could give us all the ins and outs named @findingphilip so a huge thank you to him for giving us the chance to chat with him personally at the @notchhostel to pick his beta.

This is my first blog at this level of publicity and I try not to wonder if I’m able to describe what happened to me in 11 days. Trying to think of way is always a difficult task for me. Every day so many highs and lows, but I knew I had to get it done. I was given a beautiful weather window for the first five days. I was so blessed for the heatwave & perfectly blue skies. Like all challenges in life, the rain always comes. It’s times like this you have to dig deep.

When I quit on my first attempt of this thru hike 5 years ago it was hard to admit that I was not mentally prepared or physically prepared to do this hike alone. This trail wants to break everything you own, including your will to walk on. I had to put my body through something I’ve never done before. It’s truly amazing what one can accomplish alone and although one walks alone it would not have been possible without my supporting and loving crew.

I used a backpack hand made by Eric Blanche seen in photo 3, he is a product design developer for EMS @dextergear. I went through about 4 set of poles all donated by eric to test out because I have a tough time walking fast downhill 😉. I went through two pairs of Altra lone peaks and rotated 3 pairs of darn toughs. Also in rotation was two pairs of Outdoor research trail shorts and mostly used my North face summit series shirt.