Alan Eusden oral history transcript 
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Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Alan Eusden
Date of Interview: August 7, 2010
Location of Interview: Randolph Mountain Club, Randolph N.H.
Interviewer: Steve Chase
Brief Summary of Interview: Alan joined by his sister Sara Eusden and nephew Riley Eusden (towards end of interview), talks about his parents, where he went to school and college, how he became interested in the Randolph Mountain Club and what he is doing now. He talks about his time working on the trail and hut crews, what the best and worst parts of the jobs were and what they consisted of. He shares stories of his time there, his friends, favorite paths, wildlife experiences, people he met and recreational activities. Sara joins in with additional comments and some stories of her own. Riley Eusden shares a funny story that his father Dyk Eusden, brother of Alan and Sara, had told him about two of the caretakers. Overall Alan, along with Sara, really enjoyed their time at Randolph and the people they shared it with.
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Steve: Ok, first thing, please just give me your name and then spell your last name for the transcriptionist.
Alan: Alan Eusden, A L A N E U S D E N; E U S D, D as in David, E N.
Steve: Okay. And it’s just after four o’clock on the 7th of August and it’s Steve Chase here on a wonderful Randolph day without any humidity; I live in Virginia, it’s always humid.
[Alan laughing]
Steve: I don’t like that. I was here in Randolph when I moved to Virginia. And I never come back but that’s where work is, so. Can you give me your birthplace and your birth date please?
Alan: Yeah, May 26, 1955 and birthplace is New Haven, Connecticut.
Steve: And can you tell me a bit about your parents, like what did they do?
Alan: So my parents, John and Josie Eusden, lived in Massachusetts for many, many years. Dad is, was a professor at Williams College and also was the chaplain at Williams College and then went on to be minister at several other local churches, ministered here in Randolph, still does to this day. Mom was a psychiatric social worker and did that off and on. She was, that was probably more part-time, you think, yeah, probably more part time. And so we grew up in a college environment but we always spent summers here. And so starting back in the early sixties we would come up here for summers, we built our house ’68.
Sarah: ‘4.
Alan: ’64. 3
Sarah: ’66,
Alan: ’66, yeah ’66 we (unclear, 1966 we’re up here for summers ever since, always enjoyed it.
Steve: So what did you do when you were a kid?
Alan: So is it, you mean in the summers?
Steve: In the summers and outdoors and that type of thing.
Alan: And so what we did as a kid is, we would just love coming up here and just exploring around and one of the great things about the early huts and trail crews is that whole, there were a couple of generations of kids that just grew up together. And so we would all look up to the older ones, Tad Pfeffer and the Kennedys and the older Post girls and other ones like that. And they were the ones that we’d see doing their different activities, whether they were trail crew or hut crew or swimming or going downtown or doing whatever it was they did and that was a lot of fun for all of us.
Steve: Let’s talk about you a bit. What high school did you go to?
Alan: Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Steve: And what year did you graduate?
Alan: 1973.
Steve: And what university did you attend?
Alan: Williams College, graduated in 1977. 4
Steve: With a degree in?
Alan: Degree in economics and minor in environmental studies.
Steve: Did you do graduate work?
Alan: I went on to do a MBA at Duke University graduating in 1983.
Steve: Did any of your formal education help you or inspire you for your work with the Randolph Mountain Club? It’s not a trick question, it’s just a…
Alan: Is that a trick question? (Laughing) And the answer is, well, I don’t know, I don’t know which inspired which because I spent a lot of time with the Williams Outing Club. And spent some summers out west or a summer out west in Colorado in the mountains and including all those things helped to keep my love for the mountains and to keep my love for Randolph Mountain Club but I think all of it started from my days in Randolph and so it’s probably more the other way around that, that being in Randolph hiking and climbing and being around all the people in Randolph led to my being on the Williams Outing Club and, and doing other outdoor activities.
Steve: Okay, and what do you do now?
Alan: See, now I live in Taipei, Taiwan.
Steve: Wow!
Alan: And I work for Corning, Incorporated. We make glass for liquid crystal display TV’s. Taiwan is the second largest producer of LCD panels in the world and it’s a great market for Corning, a lot of fun to be exploring Asia. It means I now get to Randolph once a year for week one, first week of August. (Laughing) 5
Steve: Wow!
Alan: It’s not enough.
Steve: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I actually had some visitors one time from the Park Service in Taiwan and they…
Alan: Really.
Steve: …were very proud of their national parks.
Alan: You should see the trails there, they do; when you see them, Sara, you will just be amazed because they do such a great job with maintaining the trails; the trails are very, very popular. But they do a great with erosion control, with stone steps and wood steps and it really is impressive.
Steve: Great. So what made you want to work for the Randolph Mountain Club?
Alan: Okay, so first the Randolph Mountain Club was a summer job and I knew it was time to get a summer job. Second it was in the mountains. I loved the idea of being in the mountains. But third, all this gang that I talked about hanging out with before, that’s what they all did and so what they all did was, they all would start with trail crew and then move on to hut crew or if they didn’t necessarily do that, they were associated with it. And so guys like Dwight Bradley might not have ever been on the hut crew, but he was very associated with the mountain club. His brother Paul was doing all the signs at the time; these are some of the folks that we grew up with going through those years. And it just seemed like such a natural progression to go from playing in and swimming in the pool and hanging out all day long…
Sarah: Playing softball. 6
Alan: …playing, oh yeah, that’s the other big thing, to joining up with the trail crew. And Sarah’s right, I’m here with my sister Sarah Eusden. Hi Sarah!
Sarah: Hi Al!
Alan: And Sarah’s right, that the other, the other BIG activity in those early summers was playing Sunday softball. And we would play all the time at the Horton’s field; you’d get the hut crew, the trail crew almost always would come down for those games, you’d get all the rest of this generation of Randolphians who would come down and play along with a lot of the older generations and you’d have 40-, 50-, 60-year-olds playing with the 15-, 20-, 25-year-olds and that was a lot of fun and that led to the formation of the Randolph Mossback Softball, which turned into a POWERHOUSE softball team in the Gorham area; really, really good powerhouse.
Sarah: With a lot of trail and hut crew members on it.
Alan: And that had…
Steve: That’s great.
Alan: … that not only had a massive amount of past trail and hut crewmembers on it but also future board members like John Scarinza.
Sara: Yeah.
Alan: Who was not actually on trail or hut crew but he played in that same league, he sometimes would play for the other team. But that was okay.
Steve: Interesting. So what jobs did you work and what years were they?
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Alan: So I worked, I have to look to see, I worked for two years on trail crew 1971 and ’72, one year as caretaker at Gray Knob ’73, and then two years at Crag Camp ’74 and ’75.
Steve: Wow!
Alan: In between taking a summer to be a shepherd in Colorado. (Unclear) did you know that?
Sara: Yeah, a sheepherder.
Alan: Yeah.
Sara: (Unclear).
Steve: Wow.
Alan: (Unclear) afterwards. Must have been ’76 (unclear).
Steve: I remember some of your logbook entries, not details, but I remember your name in the logbooks. What kind of experience prepared you to be on the trail crew, did you have any experience or just kind of jumped into it and…?
Alan: It’s a great question; we would just jump into it. And at that time, I object mildly to the terms used in Judy’s book. I love Judy and everything she says is true but she says it was in the 1980’s that the Randolph Mountain Club finally got a professional trail crew. [Laughing] And what, you know, and it was absolutely true because what happened was in our years, in the ‘70’s, our focus was on making the trail a nice place to be on. And so our focus was cutting the trees and the bushes on the side, making sure you weren’t going to be too wet when you walked along them, making sure it was all hollowed out nicely; but it wasn’t on erosion control. 8
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: It wasn’t on the things we moved to in the ‘80’s and I really agree that that has made the trail crew a much more professional crew because it focuses on those things that make the trail something that will last, that will last forever. And so the only reason I even put in a mild protest is because I think that those trail crews in the ‘70’s worked really, really hard; they just weren’t trail, trails; the stuff they did on the trails didn’t end up lasting forever because they weren’t doing (unclear) great stone steps and the great bridges and things like that.
Steve: Right.
Alan: So, I don’t really object to it, we just were doing it (unclear).
Steve: Well, I know that my wife and I did it in ’87 because Jack begged us to do it because he couldn’t find anyone else.
Sara: That’s (unclear) amazing.
Steve: So we were hardly professionals then, we just cleared blow downs and that was…
Alan: But that was…
Steve: …and that was pretty much it that year.
Alan: But wasn’t that already a time frame where we were supposed to be doing all this stuff?
Steve: There was stuff going on…
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Alan: Yeah.
Steve: …before that like ’82, I know, they did the big work on the Amphibrach but I think…
Alan: That’s right.
Steve: ….I think in the ‘70’s too though, there was a lot of pretty good work going on so yeah, maybe I disagree a little bit on…
Alan: Well, in the ‘70’s, I think it was more like you just described, that maybe every year there’d be some trail that would be chosen as a special project. You would get, you get the big guys to come out and do the special things to that trail and put on (unclear) and other things like that. But the trail crew was more tasked with clearing out the trails.
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: And in that, that was okay. I do think what the trail crews do now is a much better and smarter thing.
Steve: Yeah. Did you have any favorite paths?
Alan: Yes. Now that’s a tough question. I know that for all of us, our least favorite path was always (unclear) Ridge Trail, least favorite. And that’s why I’m so excited to go on that now that they’ve, they’re really fixing it up ‘cuz they’re really transforming that trail, which would be great. I enjoyed a lot some of the core trails that we just used all the time and so I really enjoy the Amphibrach and the Spur. I love, I loved going up those because I knew every single part of those trails. But also I like a lot of the King Ravine trails, especially the Chemin des Dames and the King Ravine Trail itself.
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Steve: Yeah, okay. When you were on trail crew, any cool wildlife experiences? See any wildlife or…?
Alan: So, we saw all kinds of wild birds, of course. But we never had any experiences; I can’t remember any experiences with bears or fisher cats or anything else like that. Do you remember any of that?
Sarah: Well, except we didn’t spend the night; didn’t you hear bear?
Alan: I’m sure that I did, I must have drunk beer that night.
Sarah: He had to sleep one night in the middle of the trail.
Alan: There was one night I went up to, to Crag too late and it was just one of those pitch, pitch dark nights; no moon, no nothing at all, just absolute pitch dark. And when I got up to Pentadoi and I just couldn’t even tell where I was, I just had no way of telling and so I spent the night crouched down in Pentadoi waiting for Don to come.
Steve: Wow!
Alan. And, of course, as you spend all those hours, just sitting down in Pentadoi, I’m sure that I heard a lot of things out there (laughing).
Steve: Yeah, I remember Pentadoi bear stories so you never know. I saw a lynx at the Log Cabin one time, hiking up at 1:30 in the morning.
Alan: Wow!
Steve: And the headlamp caught the critter for two seconds before it went (makes noise).
Alan: Oh, that’s neat. 11
Steve: But that was my best one.
Alan: When you talk to others, have you heard of other good animal stories?
Steve: Mostly, mostly bear stories. One coydog story that’s very odd but you never know. What was the best part of the job being on the trail crew?
Alan: So I think that there were two best parts of the job. One was, it was just great to do a real hard day’s work and get home and just be wiped out exhausted. To just be gone and gone and gone hard day and that was something that I really enjoyed. I was also trying to work out to get in shape for ski team at Williams and so that was a great way to get in shape.
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: But then that tied into the other best part which was, this is just, this is a group of people that was a lot of fun to hang out with and be around and those two things, I think, were the things that, that made it best.
Steve: Do you have any funny stories or…
Alan: Let me take a look.
Steve: … cool stories about the trail crew?
Alan: I don’t know if those are trail crew stories. No most of my funnier stories are associated with hut crew.
Steve: Okay.
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Alan: Yeah, there were some, there were some near misses on the trail crew, which were, which were just tough ‘cuz just every year somebody sometime would take; we were using machetes. We would take a machete and we’d go in for, for some big rubbery plant and do it at the wrong angle and have it; we would, we would try to be as safe as possible. But we would have it come off at a bad angle and come back and cut a leg or cut an arm or something like that. We never had anything that was really serious but it was those kinds of things that almost always happen on wet rainy days that were the scariest parts of trail crew. Where we’re all saying to ourselves “Be careful, let’s be careful when we’re out here.” And then just something happens; some kind of a ricochet or rebound would happen that would make it a little more scary. Do you remember any good trail crew stories?
Sarah: Well, just in the course of trail crew…
Alan: This is Sarah Eusden.
Sarah: (Chuckling) …in the course of trail crew, you guys, isn’t that when you set some of your records or was that…
Alan: I think that was all during hut crew. Yeah, yeah.
Sarah: He’s got…
Steve: (Unclear), you mean records for getting up and down?
Alan: So what would happen, must have been true for you as well, is that when you’re going up to Crag and Gray Knob all the time, especially if you have a base down in the valley and if you have friends down in the valley; you take more trips than you would need to take. And so you end up going up and down with either no packs or minimal packs all the time.
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Steve: Yeah, sometimes.
Alan: And so, so what we ended up doing was, there was a gang of us that would end up just timing that, all the time. And so in that time, the best times for going up to Crag from the power line up to Crag, were 45 to 50 minutes. So anything sort of in the high 40’s was pretty good.
Steve: That’s excellent.
Alan: The fastest of anybody we knew at the time, I think that, I forget who had the record at the time but they had the record of some place in the 44. And we’d get down and flirt with that, we’d get down into, close to 45 or into 45’s but never much lower than that. I think that the current generation, I think that Doug Mayer and those guys have gone up there in the high 30’s. I think they just…
Steve: Well, I recall that the legend was that Chris (name) did the Crag run in 36 minutes.
Alan: In 36 minutes?
Sara: That’s amazing!
Alan: Unbelievable!
Steve: My fastest was Lowe’s from, from Route 2 to Gray Knob in 58.
Alan: That’s great, especially going up Lowe’s ‘cuz that’s kind of, that’s longer.
Steve: With a load…
Alan: With a load? 14
Steve: …with a load maybe an hour and twenty.
Alan: That’s fast. And Jeff Bean, Jeff Bean we gotta talk about Jeff Bean because Jeff was the fastest downhill runner that I’ve ever seen. And he ended up setting more than once a time of 16 minutes something.
Steve: Yep, I’ve heard that 16-minute number.
Alan: From Crag Camp…
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: …all the way down to here and, and he had; a couple times he tried changing shoes going from boots on the top to sneaks at first crossing. And would, would go on and go on like that. But what he had was he had a method of running down the steeps that we all called control falling.
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: Where he really was just falling and he’d just be tapping his feet, running down just tapping his feet on the sides trying to keep balance and trying to move around and just as fast as anybody has ever seen move. And a bunch of the rest of us, you know, we thought we were pretty good runners and we and I get down there and just go as fast as I could and it’ll be like 18 minutes and I just couldn’t get close to the 16 minutes. I don’t think anybody else could get past that.
Sarah: (Unclear).
Alan: And Jeff was just phenomenal.
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Steve: We would skip and you could go really, really fast but you couldn’t do it up high. On the lower part of the Amphibrach you could skip and…
Alan: And get down fast.
Steve: …really, really (unclear). But I think my fastest time was in the high 20’s.
Alan: Yeah, but that’s the thing and the other thing is that almost everybody who did that has…
Sara: Bad knees.
Alan: …really bad knees.
Steve: My knees are destroyed. I’ve had surgery on both of them and…
Alan: We should be testing that with all the new trail and hut crew just to find out how many people think that they suffer bad knees now because of all the bad…
Steve: Well, and we actually laughed about it. We’d say, “Our knees in thirty years are going to be gone.”
Sarah: Yeah, you knew then.
[Laughing]
Steve: You know.
Alan: That’s true.
Steve: Yeah, it was true. 16
Sarah: One thing I might add about trail crew at that time when Alan and our brother Dyk was also on the trail crew, that there was no lodge, no Sterns Lodge or anything like that and our father was president of the club at the time, this is ’73, ’74 or right in there. And our house basically served as the base for the crew. So they would come down and eat and drink and shower and hang out, go to the pool and that sort of thing so for several years in there, we were sort of the base of operations.
Alan: Which is great ‘cuz our house is just…
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: …across the road.
Steve: Yep, yeah.
Alan: And that was really nice.
Steve: Yeah, my first year I was, I had to keep my stuff at Rowan’s place.
Sarah: Yeah, oh really!
Steve: And then we were under the Green (unclear) the second year. So…
Sarah: That’s great.
Steve: …so we were up there. And then got word we, where were we in ’87, we were in one of those tiny little tourist things for like fifty bucks a week, I think, down at the Mount Jefferson.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 17
[Some talking at same time]
Alan: (Unclear) stayed in Mount Jefferson.
Steve: That’s because John Tremblay was my buddy, lived right and they had these cottages, these cabins right there so we stayed there. We were teaching a bordering school (unclear) and I didn’t have a job other than that, so it was fun; you know we were up here all the time. So, okay, caretaker work. What were the people like that you came in contact with, did you see a lot of people, was it crowded when you were up there?
Alan: Crowded off and on and it was also very interesting because different caretakers would attract different groups of people. So my first year I was with Hawley Rising and Hawley was a guitar player and a little counter-cultural. And he would attract counter-cultural people up to Crag Camp and Gray Knob. And so there were a lot of people that used to come up from the Boston area for that and that summer I learned some guitar for the first time.
Steve: Oh cool.
Alan: And yes, so that was a lot of fun. But then that changed quite a bit the next summer it was Will Woodruff and myself that were up there. And it was a different, different crowd, different; and even different cycles of people just because it was a different group of people that would come through all the time. But I think we found it was, it was pretty consistent with what we’d seen after that, which was weekends absolutely get pretty many people. Sometimes you’d have just a few, sometimes you’d have just an absolutely full house and people just overflowing as well and weekdays not as crowded. Was that true when you were there?
Steve: I found it was still crowded Mondays and Tuesdays and then it would peter off until Saturday. And you’d think Friday would be crowded but Friday never was. 18
Alan: And I can’t remember specifically about Friday.
Steve: Best part of the job. Actually let’s not do that one yet, let’s back up and say just a normal day at Gray Knob.
Alan: So a normal day at (chuckling) well one of the things that would happen is, we would of course at that time, Gray Knob just didn’t get many people at that time for lots of different reasons it didn’t get many people. And so what we’d always do is we would, the two caretakers, would stay together at Crag and then we’d go and check; I would go over and check and see if anybody’s at Gray Knob. If someone’s at Gray Knob, I stayed at Gray Knob; that would be great. If no one was there then I’d come right back and be at Crag that night. And pretty often there would be no one at Gray Knob in those years. And so the normal day was I get all, when people would come in on the afternoon, we would spend time talking to each other, finding out what was going on, seeing if anybody needed advice on trails or other things like that. We tried and get all the administrative stuff down that night either before dinner or some people would show up after dinner and get all that done at one of those two times. Usually the folks would tend to wanna talk some and find out, you know, what we were doing there and talk about what they’re doing there as well and that was a lot of fun. Sometimes you find groups that just weren’t that interested in that and wanted to be off on their own. And then in the morning, almost always, it was a fairly big rush because almost always the folks that were not local would be going on to some other place; they’d want to get up early, get their breakfast going and get out of there pretty quickly. The locals were entirely different and so if we had other folks that were here that had joined in from, that had come up from the Randolph Valley, almost always they’d be the ones that would stay around ‘til ten or eleven or twelve and want to just talk or go for a hike together or do other things like that. And so that would tend to be a more laid back day unless we had some specific event like the August Fest, and that’s at huts. Did you go to the August Fest?
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Steve: Oh yeah.
Alan: Were they going on?
Steve: We got in big trouble at the August Fest.
Alan: You got in big trouble, why?
Steve: I didn’t get in big trouble but we would get in trouble there because of the party. And I think the second August Fest that I was up there, they got official reprimands.
Alan: For alcohol?
Steve: From the AMC; alcohol, pot brownies, topless dancing, all sorts of stuff. So it was out of control. (Alan laughing in background)
Alan: So it got better than those first years because we would look at some of these early invitations and these must have been some of the first ones. So this is a ’73…
Steve: Wow!
Alan: …and a ’73 and a ’74 invitation to the August Fest. And what we ended up doing and it wasn’t us that did; I think it was, I think it was Al Hudson that did it.
Sarah: Yeah, I think Hudson.
Alan: But Hudsons and (name) and Eusdens…
Sarah: (Name).
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Alan: …Woodruffs, (name) all get together and formed a Randolph Mountain Club marching band with a bunch of both current and past RMC hut and trail crew and hiked with instruments over the golf side, down that face into Madison Huts on the afternoon of the August Fest. And it was just so great to be marching to right in there; that was just a lot of fun to do. You think that Betsy had her French horn?
Sarah: She must have.
Alan: She must’ve had her French horn.
Sarah: And you gotta make sure you get some Rising, I hope…
Alan: Oh, the Rising. You gotta talk to some Rising…
Sarah: Hawley, Billy, Betsy.
Alan: But, well, I wish there was a picture of that ‘cuz that was just…
Steve: Yeah, that’s awesome!
Alan: …so great marching down in the; but I don’t think that…
Steve: It was a little more hard-core in 1982.
Sarah: I guess.
Steve: It was pretty much out of control.
Alan: You know, there was clearly a lot of alcohol, there might have been pot brownies, I didn’t see it. I know there were no topless dancers.
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Sarah: No not, except for those skirts, whatever the opposite of topless.
Alan: There might have been some bottomless…
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: …skirt guys, yeah.
Steve: Okay. best part of the job?
Alan: Best part of the job, best part of the job was being up in the mountains and especially being up there with Will Woodruff for the couple of years we did it together. It was great seeing all the people. It was a lot of fun when friends would come up there but that was more transcendent and that was a lot of fun to do. But I think the best part was just being in the mountains all the time and going up and down and being connected into the Randolph Valley.
Sarah: And the card games. That was a good part of it.
Alan: There were a lot of card games, what we’d play?
Sarah: Our family’s love for cards, I think, really came from the playing at the huts, just constantly playing up there.
Alan: What was it, do you think it was gin?
Sarah: I think it was that up and down the river thing that we, I think we’ve (unclear) up there.
Alan: Because there was, actually it was pretty interesting because this whole thing; I think that—that the same way that I got attracted into trail and hut crew was how Sarah 22
got attracted to the same group, and a whole bunch of girlfriends too. And so it was just this one continuum of people ten- to twelve-years age of each that we were constantly doing things together in different ways. And it ended up with a lot of your group coming up to the huts when we were there and playing cards and hanging out and that was a lot of fun.
Sarah: A couple of us were lifeguards down here and we would go up every other night just, you know, for the night and come back down for work; it was just part of our regular routine.
Alan: Your daughter just left.
Sarah: Oh.
Steve: We’re, okay, we’re winding it down here. Asked for the best part, what about the worst part?
Alan: The worst part, so the worst part of trail crew which you did ask me but which I didn’t cover was the, just the rainy nasty days when it was the tenth day in a row and you’re going up there and it was black flies and it was pouring down rain and you had to get the machetes out and you knew that the machete was going to slip out and it just wasn’t going to be nice (unclear) was the worst part of trail crew. Worst part of hut crew, I think, probably the worst part of hut crew was when you had a rowdy gang that was in there at the same time as a serious gang. And especially if it wasn’t part of our group so it wasn’t someone you could take natural control over but you had to influence them to calm down and that was probably the worst part, was just making sure that you didn’t have folks drinking beer on the porch and laughing and yelling until midnight when you had others trying to sleep. How about for you?
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Steve: Yeah, it was about; there were crowd control issues like that and I think my best example would be a family’s at Gray Knob, nice people, no problem and four guys show up and they have full bottles of Jack Daniels in their side pockets.
Sarah: Yeah, that’s tough.
Steve: So the way you deal with them, first off, is say “You guys ever been to Crag Camp?” And they’re like “No!” And I said, “The view there is, is just intense! You gotta go, you gotta go see it!” And they’re like, “We’re going over there! Thanks a lot, man!” And they go to Crag and the family’s like (makes noise).
[Sarah and Alan laughing]
Alan: Thank you!
Steve: You know, yeah. Now if they were already there and there were like groups, like the Berlin boys who would come up with a bottle, with a quart of tequila each. The way you would deal with them is pretend you were drinking with them the whole time and then once it was dark, you’d put on your headlamp and say, “Let’s go on a night hike!” And they would always want to go on a night hike. You’d take them out and you’d keep shining your light into their faces so they keep losing their night vision and stumble around on the rocks and by the time you turned around and got them back to the cabin they would all just go (make noise)…
Sarah: Yeah.
Steve: …and go to sleep. So those were the techniques that we used and it didn’t happen that often.
Alan: So, so were there a lot of, so in my years there were not a lot of folks from Berlin that were up there. In fact, at that time it was still (unclear)… 24
Steve: Yeah, but the Berlins boys were a spring phenomenon usually.
Alan: To go drinking.
Steve: Yeah, so I dealt with them maybe once but my friends that were there in the ’80’s like Peter Wallace or John Tremblay, dealt with them a lot more often.
Sarah: That’s interesting.
Alan: What was Dyk’s best story about hut or trail crew that he told you guys? This is Riley Eusden and Riley is the son Dyk Eusden, my brother.
Riley: I think…
Alan: And Sarah’s brother.
Riley: It must have been with the two caretakers at Crag had like over forty people and it was so crowded and so noisy that they just took off all their clothes and they hiked naked down (unclear, speaking too low).
[Laughing]
Alan: They just left.
Riley: They just left.
Alan: But you’re saying that wasn’t your father Dyk Eusden?
Riley: No it, I don’t think it was.
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Alan: Good.
Riley: That’s the best story I’ve heard.
Alan: That’s a good story.
Steve: We, I spent a lot of time up there in the winter too and we would have a lot of fun with sledding.
Sarah: Oh, that’s cool.
Alan: (Unclear) sledding.
Steve: You go up, up, you go up the tree on the Spur above Crag and you’d bring a plastic toboggan and then you’d slide down the bottom down to Crag…
Alan: You’re kidding.
Steve: …and it was so fast and so much fun that we would do it day after day, all day long.
Alan: How would you stop?
Steve: You just kick your feet out.
Alan: Where would you start?
Steve: We’d start maybe 1/8 of a mile above Knight’s Castle Path…
Sarah: Oh my god!
26
Steve: …and just go down and…
Sarah: Now one thing I remember is the, speaking of Knight’s Castle, is the trail up to Knight’s Castle, there’s a double moss bed on a rock. Did you ever know that double bed? And so a lot of people…
Steve: Yeah, I do know that.
Sarah: …a lot of us would spend the night on the double moss bed on the rock.
Steve: Yeah, that’s great.
Sarah: And the other thing that was great was The Quay. The Quay was such important part of being there and going out there; you know, even if we were at Crag, we’d go over and hang out at the quarry.
Steve: Yeah, it was important.
Sarah: That was Davis’s spot.
Alan: That was Davis’s spot right. Davis loved, Davis would just love The Quay. Love going up on there.
Sarah: Shoot his golf balls off The Quay.
Alan: Shoot his golf balls off.
Sarah: And had his ashes scattered there.
Alan: Yeah, he loved that.
27
Steve: Perch water was always very good too. I think just the water that, where the brook comes out of the side of the mountain at the Perch is just…
Alan: Really it’s that good!
Steve: …so awesome.
Alan: I gotta go back and try that.
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: Now one other story about Crag, one time, you know that after awhile you get a little bored when you’ve been up in the hut for too long.
Steve: Yeah.
Alan: And I’m sure this was Will’s idea, not my idea. But one time Will Woodruff one time ended up doing a cultural exchange, where we took all the furniture out of Crag Camp and set it up, as Crag Camp, out in the woods near Crag Camp. And then pulled (Steve and Alan laughing) pulled in all kinds of woods things into Crag Camp.
Sarah: Branches.
Alan: Branches and trees and pinecones and rocks and things like that; I think it was a lot of rocks, and put that into Crag Camp. And we had a cultural exchange, we introduced the people that night to the cultural exchange, they were very interested in that. And then we left over the Crag Slide trail and went down the mountain and that was great!
Riley: Do you go down there naked?
Alan: Well, Dyk thinks we did; I just don’t think that’s possible. 28
Sarah: Well Chips isn’t around anymore to scold you guys.
Alan: We’ll have to edit these notes, very carefully.
Steve: You will have that opportunity, so no problem. Well is there…
Alan: Now…
Steve: No, go ahead.
Alan: I think we do have…
Sarah: So you have any more stories?
Alan: No I got all, all the stories are covered.
Sarah: Okay.
Alan: Oh with the, Tad Pfeffer gets special credit because I believe that the year that he took down the 205 pounds of garbage in that oil drum, or it was just general trash that had built up over the years at Crag, I believe that was my year. And I believe he was my supervisor and I know walking down with him, it was, that was a nasty thing for him to have to have carried. I’m sure that his knees are, that’s part of the reason his knees are so bad is because of those kinds of things that he did but he was, what a tough guy; he was just a great guy to have as hut supervisor, very, very involved, very good, very knowledgeable but also just a lot of fun to be around.
Sarah: Yeah.
29
Alan: He was great. We should get, let’s check with Dyk to see if he has any other stories. Do you accept stories in writing also?
Steve: Sure.
Alan: In writing, yeah ‘cuz we should just check with him.
Sarah: Now, I don’t know if you, there’s any Woodruffs coming, if Will Woodruff is coming tonight or not to speak with, to represent the Woodruffs but I’ll just say about Davis too. And you know him as well, that for his 50th birthday, which was two years ago, two summer ago. We went up to The Quay with a potato gun and, you know what a potato gun is?
Steve: Yeah.
Sarah: And we shot off one potato off The Quay for every ten years of his life, so we did five shots. We all took turns and it was very (unclear).
Steve: That’s awesome.
Sarah: Just like he would have shot his golf balls.
Alan: How old was he when he died in Alaska?
Sarah: Oh gosh, he was still young.
Alan: Had to be mid-twenties.
Sarah: Yeah, definitely in the twenties.
Steve: What year? 30
Sarah: I don’t remember.
Steve: ’80, was it?
Alan: Let’s see, so he was—similar age to Dyk.
Sarah: Yeah, he’s Dyk’s age.
Alan: And so Dyk would’ve been born in ’57 and so yeah, I bet you’re right, I bet it was ’80 or early ‘80’s.
Steve: Year was ’79 or ’80.
Alan: So he was low twenties.
Steve: Yep. Well thank you very much!
Sarah: Thank you very much!
Alan: Thank you for doing this. It’s great that you’re doing this; it’s great to get a lot of these stories down. I think that really is good.
Sarah: And I hope you get a lot more customers.
Steve: Yeah, yeah well we’ve done pretty good today.
Sarah: Good. That’s great.
Steve: But I know I have more because Tad definitely wants to do one with…
31
Sarah: Perfect.
Steve: …another guy. And the…
Alan: He’s going to do one with another guy?
Steve: Yeah, the two people ones are good. I mean it’s kind of like with this one.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alan: I wanna come watch when Tad does it.
Sarah: I know. You’ll be doing them at the event, right?
Steve: Yeah, we’ll probably go and do it in Ms. Jones’ house.
Alan: You gonna hide out a little bit.
Steve: Yeah, keep it down a little bit.
Sarah: That’s good.
Steve: So, well, great.
Sarah: Well, thank you.
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| Rating | |
| Title | Alan Eusden oral history transcript |
| Alternative Title | Alan Eusden |
| Creator | Chase, Steve |
| Description | Alan Eusden oral history interview as conducted by Steve Chase. Alan talks about his time with the Randolph Mountain Club located in the White Mountains National Forest in New Hampshire. |
| Subject |
History Biography Mountains Climbing Camping Hiking Maintenance |
| Location |
New Hampshire |
| Publisher | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service |
| Contributors | Steve Chase |
| Date of Original | 2010-7-8 |
| Type | Text |
| Format | |
| Item ID | Eusden.alan.pdf |
| Source |
NCTC Archives Museum |
| Language | English |
| Rights | Public domain |
| Audience | General |
| File Size | 151 KB |
| Length | 31 p. |
| Transcript | 1 Oral History Cover Sheet Name: Alan Eusden Date of Interview: August 7, 2010 Location of Interview: Randolph Mountain Club, Randolph N.H. Interviewer: Steve Chase Brief Summary of Interview: Alan joined by his sister Sara Eusden and nephew Riley Eusden (towards end of interview), talks about his parents, where he went to school and college, how he became interested in the Randolph Mountain Club and what he is doing now. He talks about his time working on the trail and hut crews, what the best and worst parts of the jobs were and what they consisted of. He shares stories of his time there, his friends, favorite paths, wildlife experiences, people he met and recreational activities. Sara joins in with additional comments and some stories of her own. Riley Eusden shares a funny story that his father Dyk Eusden, brother of Alan and Sara, had told him about two of the caretakers. Overall Alan, along with Sara, really enjoyed their time at Randolph and the people they shared it with. 2 Steve: Ok, first thing, please just give me your name and then spell your last name for the transcriptionist. Alan: Alan Eusden, A L A N E U S D E N; E U S D, D as in David, E N. Steve: Okay. And it’s just after four o’clock on the 7th of August and it’s Steve Chase here on a wonderful Randolph day without any humidity; I live in Virginia, it’s always humid. [Alan laughing] Steve: I don’t like that. I was here in Randolph when I moved to Virginia. And I never come back but that’s where work is, so. Can you give me your birthplace and your birth date please? Alan: Yeah, May 26, 1955 and birthplace is New Haven, Connecticut. Steve: And can you tell me a bit about your parents, like what did they do? Alan: So my parents, John and Josie Eusden, lived in Massachusetts for many, many years. Dad is, was a professor at Williams College and also was the chaplain at Williams College and then went on to be minister at several other local churches, ministered here in Randolph, still does to this day. Mom was a psychiatric social worker and did that off and on. She was, that was probably more part-time, you think, yeah, probably more part time. And so we grew up in a college environment but we always spent summers here. And so starting back in the early sixties we would come up here for summers, we built our house ’68. Sarah: ‘4. Alan: ’64. 3 Sarah: ’66, Alan: ’66, yeah ’66 we (unclear, 1966 we’re up here for summers ever since, always enjoyed it. Steve: So what did you do when you were a kid? Alan: So is it, you mean in the summers? Steve: In the summers and outdoors and that type of thing. Alan: And so what we did as a kid is, we would just love coming up here and just exploring around and one of the great things about the early huts and trail crews is that whole, there were a couple of generations of kids that just grew up together. And so we would all look up to the older ones, Tad Pfeffer and the Kennedys and the older Post girls and other ones like that. And they were the ones that we’d see doing their different activities, whether they were trail crew or hut crew or swimming or going downtown or doing whatever it was they did and that was a lot of fun for all of us. Steve: Let’s talk about you a bit. What high school did you go to? Alan: Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Steve: And what year did you graduate? Alan: 1973. Steve: And what university did you attend? Alan: Williams College, graduated in 1977. 4 Steve: With a degree in? Alan: Degree in economics and minor in environmental studies. Steve: Did you do graduate work? Alan: I went on to do a MBA at Duke University graduating in 1983. Steve: Did any of your formal education help you or inspire you for your work with the Randolph Mountain Club? It’s not a trick question, it’s just a… Alan: Is that a trick question? (Laughing) And the answer is, well, I don’t know, I don’t know which inspired which because I spent a lot of time with the Williams Outing Club. And spent some summers out west or a summer out west in Colorado in the mountains and including all those things helped to keep my love for the mountains and to keep my love for Randolph Mountain Club but I think all of it started from my days in Randolph and so it’s probably more the other way around that, that being in Randolph hiking and climbing and being around all the people in Randolph led to my being on the Williams Outing Club and, and doing other outdoor activities. Steve: Okay, and what do you do now? Alan: See, now I live in Taipei, Taiwan. Steve: Wow! Alan: And I work for Corning, Incorporated. We make glass for liquid crystal display TV’s. Taiwan is the second largest producer of LCD panels in the world and it’s a great market for Corning, a lot of fun to be exploring Asia. It means I now get to Randolph once a year for week one, first week of August. (Laughing) 5 Steve: Wow! Alan: It’s not enough. Steve: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I actually had some visitors one time from the Park Service in Taiwan and they… Alan: Really. Steve: …were very proud of their national parks. Alan: You should see the trails there, they do; when you see them, Sara, you will just be amazed because they do such a great job with maintaining the trails; the trails are very, very popular. But they do a great with erosion control, with stone steps and wood steps and it really is impressive. Steve: Great. So what made you want to work for the Randolph Mountain Club? Alan: Okay, so first the Randolph Mountain Club was a summer job and I knew it was time to get a summer job. Second it was in the mountains. I loved the idea of being in the mountains. But third, all this gang that I talked about hanging out with before, that’s what they all did and so what they all did was, they all would start with trail crew and then move on to hut crew or if they didn’t necessarily do that, they were associated with it. And so guys like Dwight Bradley might not have ever been on the hut crew, but he was very associated with the mountain club. His brother Paul was doing all the signs at the time; these are some of the folks that we grew up with going through those years. And it just seemed like such a natural progression to go from playing in and swimming in the pool and hanging out all day long… Sarah: Playing softball. 6 Alan: …playing, oh yeah, that’s the other big thing, to joining up with the trail crew. And Sarah’s right, I’m here with my sister Sarah Eusden. Hi Sarah! Sarah: Hi Al! Alan: And Sarah’s right, that the other, the other BIG activity in those early summers was playing Sunday softball. And we would play all the time at the Horton’s field; you’d get the hut crew, the trail crew almost always would come down for those games, you’d get all the rest of this generation of Randolphians who would come down and play along with a lot of the older generations and you’d have 40-, 50-, 60-year-olds playing with the 15-, 20-, 25-year-olds and that was a lot of fun and that led to the formation of the Randolph Mossback Softball, which turned into a POWERHOUSE softball team in the Gorham area; really, really good powerhouse. Sarah: With a lot of trail and hut crew members on it. Alan: And that had… Steve: That’s great. Alan: … that not only had a massive amount of past trail and hut crewmembers on it but also future board members like John Scarinza. Sara: Yeah. Alan: Who was not actually on trail or hut crew but he played in that same league, he sometimes would play for the other team. But that was okay. Steve: Interesting. So what jobs did you work and what years were they? 7 Alan: So I worked, I have to look to see, I worked for two years on trail crew 1971 and ’72, one year as caretaker at Gray Knob ’73, and then two years at Crag Camp ’74 and ’75. Steve: Wow! Alan: In between taking a summer to be a shepherd in Colorado. (Unclear) did you know that? Sara: Yeah, a sheepherder. Alan: Yeah. Sara: (Unclear). Steve: Wow. Alan: (Unclear) afterwards. Must have been ’76 (unclear). Steve: I remember some of your logbook entries, not details, but I remember your name in the logbooks. What kind of experience prepared you to be on the trail crew, did you have any experience or just kind of jumped into it and…? Alan: It’s a great question; we would just jump into it. And at that time, I object mildly to the terms used in Judy’s book. I love Judy and everything she says is true but she says it was in the 1980’s that the Randolph Mountain Club finally got a professional trail crew. [Laughing] And what, you know, and it was absolutely true because what happened was in our years, in the ‘70’s, our focus was on making the trail a nice place to be on. And so our focus was cutting the trees and the bushes on the side, making sure you weren’t going to be too wet when you walked along them, making sure it was all hollowed out nicely; but it wasn’t on erosion control. 8 Steve: Yeah. Alan: It wasn’t on the things we moved to in the ‘80’s and I really agree that that has made the trail crew a much more professional crew because it focuses on those things that make the trail something that will last, that will last forever. And so the only reason I even put in a mild protest is because I think that those trail crews in the ‘70’s worked really, really hard; they just weren’t trail, trails; the stuff they did on the trails didn’t end up lasting forever because they weren’t doing (unclear) great stone steps and the great bridges and things like that. Steve: Right. Alan: So, I don’t really object to it, we just were doing it (unclear). Steve: Well, I know that my wife and I did it in ’87 because Jack begged us to do it because he couldn’t find anyone else. Sara: That’s (unclear) amazing. Steve: So we were hardly professionals then, we just cleared blow downs and that was… Alan: But that was… Steve: …and that was pretty much it that year. Alan: But wasn’t that already a time frame where we were supposed to be doing all this stuff? Steve: There was stuff going on… 9 Alan: Yeah. Steve: …before that like ’82, I know, they did the big work on the Amphibrach but I think… Alan: That’s right. Steve: ….I think in the ‘70’s too though, there was a lot of pretty good work going on so yeah, maybe I disagree a little bit on… Alan: Well, in the ‘70’s, I think it was more like you just described, that maybe every year there’d be some trail that would be chosen as a special project. You would get, you get the big guys to come out and do the special things to that trail and put on (unclear) and other things like that. But the trail crew was more tasked with clearing out the trails. Steve: Yeah. Alan: And in that, that was okay. I do think what the trail crews do now is a much better and smarter thing. Steve: Yeah. Did you have any favorite paths? Alan: Yes. Now that’s a tough question. I know that for all of us, our least favorite path was always (unclear) Ridge Trail, least favorite. And that’s why I’m so excited to go on that now that they’ve, they’re really fixing it up ‘cuz they’re really transforming that trail, which would be great. I enjoyed a lot some of the core trails that we just used all the time and so I really enjoy the Amphibrach and the Spur. I love, I loved going up those because I knew every single part of those trails. But also I like a lot of the King Ravine trails, especially the Chemin des Dames and the King Ravine Trail itself. 10 Steve: Yeah, okay. When you were on trail crew, any cool wildlife experiences? See any wildlife or…? Alan: So, we saw all kinds of wild birds, of course. But we never had any experiences; I can’t remember any experiences with bears or fisher cats or anything else like that. Do you remember any of that? Sarah: Well, except we didn’t spend the night; didn’t you hear bear? Alan: I’m sure that I did, I must have drunk beer that night. Sarah: He had to sleep one night in the middle of the trail. Alan: There was one night I went up to, to Crag too late and it was just one of those pitch, pitch dark nights; no moon, no nothing at all, just absolute pitch dark. And when I got up to Pentadoi and I just couldn’t even tell where I was, I just had no way of telling and so I spent the night crouched down in Pentadoi waiting for Don to come. Steve: Wow! Alan. And, of course, as you spend all those hours, just sitting down in Pentadoi, I’m sure that I heard a lot of things out there (laughing). Steve: Yeah, I remember Pentadoi bear stories so you never know. I saw a lynx at the Log Cabin one time, hiking up at 1:30 in the morning. Alan: Wow! Steve: And the headlamp caught the critter for two seconds before it went (makes noise). Alan: Oh, that’s neat. 11 Steve: But that was my best one. Alan: When you talk to others, have you heard of other good animal stories? Steve: Mostly, mostly bear stories. One coydog story that’s very odd but you never know. What was the best part of the job being on the trail crew? Alan: So I think that there were two best parts of the job. One was, it was just great to do a real hard day’s work and get home and just be wiped out exhausted. To just be gone and gone and gone hard day and that was something that I really enjoyed. I was also trying to work out to get in shape for ski team at Williams and so that was a great way to get in shape. Steve: Yeah. Alan: But then that tied into the other best part which was, this is just, this is a group of people that was a lot of fun to hang out with and be around and those two things, I think, were the things that, that made it best. Steve: Do you have any funny stories or… Alan: Let me take a look. Steve: … cool stories about the trail crew? Alan: I don’t know if those are trail crew stories. No most of my funnier stories are associated with hut crew. Steve: Okay. 12 Alan: Yeah, there were some, there were some near misses on the trail crew, which were, which were just tough ‘cuz just every year somebody sometime would take; we were using machetes. We would take a machete and we’d go in for, for some big rubbery plant and do it at the wrong angle and have it; we would, we would try to be as safe as possible. But we would have it come off at a bad angle and come back and cut a leg or cut an arm or something like that. We never had anything that was really serious but it was those kinds of things that almost always happen on wet rainy days that were the scariest parts of trail crew. Where we’re all saying to ourselves “Be careful, let’s be careful when we’re out here.” And then just something happens; some kind of a ricochet or rebound would happen that would make it a little more scary. Do you remember any good trail crew stories? Sarah: Well, just in the course of trail crew… Alan: This is Sarah Eusden. Sarah: (Chuckling) …in the course of trail crew, you guys, isn’t that when you set some of your records or was that… Alan: I think that was all during hut crew. Yeah, yeah. Sarah: He’s got… Steve: (Unclear), you mean records for getting up and down? Alan: So what would happen, must have been true for you as well, is that when you’re going up to Crag and Gray Knob all the time, especially if you have a base down in the valley and if you have friends down in the valley; you take more trips than you would need to take. And so you end up going up and down with either no packs or minimal packs all the time. 13 Steve: Yeah, sometimes. Alan: And so, so what we ended up doing was, there was a gang of us that would end up just timing that, all the time. And so in that time, the best times for going up to Crag from the power line up to Crag, were 45 to 50 minutes. So anything sort of in the high 40’s was pretty good. Steve: That’s excellent. Alan: The fastest of anybody we knew at the time, I think that, I forget who had the record at the time but they had the record of some place in the 44. And we’d get down and flirt with that, we’d get down into, close to 45 or into 45’s but never much lower than that. I think that the current generation, I think that Doug Mayer and those guys have gone up there in the high 30’s. I think they just… Steve: Well, I recall that the legend was that Chris (name) did the Crag run in 36 minutes. Alan: In 36 minutes? Sara: That’s amazing! Alan: Unbelievable! Steve: My fastest was Lowe’s from, from Route 2 to Gray Knob in 58. Alan: That’s great, especially going up Lowe’s ‘cuz that’s kind of, that’s longer. Steve: With a load… Alan: With a load? 14 Steve: …with a load maybe an hour and twenty. Alan: That’s fast. And Jeff Bean, Jeff Bean we gotta talk about Jeff Bean because Jeff was the fastest downhill runner that I’ve ever seen. And he ended up setting more than once a time of 16 minutes something. Steve: Yep, I’ve heard that 16-minute number. Alan: From Crag Camp… Steve: Yeah. Alan: …all the way down to here and, and he had; a couple times he tried changing shoes going from boots on the top to sneaks at first crossing. And would, would go on and go on like that. But what he had was he had a method of running down the steeps that we all called control falling. Steve: Yeah. Alan: Where he really was just falling and he’d just be tapping his feet, running down just tapping his feet on the sides trying to keep balance and trying to move around and just as fast as anybody has ever seen move. And a bunch of the rest of us, you know, we thought we were pretty good runners and we and I get down there and just go as fast as I could and it’ll be like 18 minutes and I just couldn’t get close to the 16 minutes. I don’t think anybody else could get past that. Sarah: (Unclear). Alan: And Jeff was just phenomenal. 15 Steve: We would skip and you could go really, really fast but you couldn’t do it up high. On the lower part of the Amphibrach you could skip and… Alan: And get down fast. Steve: …really, really (unclear). But I think my fastest time was in the high 20’s. Alan: Yeah, but that’s the thing and the other thing is that almost everybody who did that has… Sara: Bad knees. Alan: …really bad knees. Steve: My knees are destroyed. I’ve had surgery on both of them and… Alan: We should be testing that with all the new trail and hut crew just to find out how many people think that they suffer bad knees now because of all the bad… Steve: Well, and we actually laughed about it. We’d say, “Our knees in thirty years are going to be gone.” Sarah: Yeah, you knew then. [Laughing] Steve: You know. Alan: That’s true. Steve: Yeah, it was true. 16 Sarah: One thing I might add about trail crew at that time when Alan and our brother Dyk was also on the trail crew, that there was no lodge, no Sterns Lodge or anything like that and our father was president of the club at the time, this is ’73, ’74 or right in there. And our house basically served as the base for the crew. So they would come down and eat and drink and shower and hang out, go to the pool and that sort of thing so for several years in there, we were sort of the base of operations. Alan: Which is great ‘cuz our house is just… Steve: Yeah. Alan: …across the road. Steve: Yep, yeah. Alan: And that was really nice. Steve: Yeah, my first year I was, I had to keep my stuff at Rowan’s place. Sarah: Yeah, oh really! Steve: And then we were under the Green (unclear) the second year. So… Sarah: That’s great. Steve: …so we were up there. And then got word we, where were we in ’87, we were in one of those tiny little tourist things for like fifty bucks a week, I think, down at the Mount Jefferson. Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 17 [Some talking at same time] Alan: (Unclear) stayed in Mount Jefferson. Steve: That’s because John Tremblay was my buddy, lived right and they had these cottages, these cabins right there so we stayed there. We were teaching a bordering school (unclear) and I didn’t have a job other than that, so it was fun; you know we were up here all the time. So, okay, caretaker work. What were the people like that you came in contact with, did you see a lot of people, was it crowded when you were up there? Alan: Crowded off and on and it was also very interesting because different caretakers would attract different groups of people. So my first year I was with Hawley Rising and Hawley was a guitar player and a little counter-cultural. And he would attract counter-cultural people up to Crag Camp and Gray Knob. And so there were a lot of people that used to come up from the Boston area for that and that summer I learned some guitar for the first time. Steve: Oh cool. Alan: And yes, so that was a lot of fun. But then that changed quite a bit the next summer it was Will Woodruff and myself that were up there. And it was a different, different crowd, different; and even different cycles of people just because it was a different group of people that would come through all the time. But I think we found it was, it was pretty consistent with what we’d seen after that, which was weekends absolutely get pretty many people. Sometimes you’d have just a few, sometimes you’d have just an absolutely full house and people just overflowing as well and weekdays not as crowded. Was that true when you were there? Steve: I found it was still crowded Mondays and Tuesdays and then it would peter off until Saturday. And you’d think Friday would be crowded but Friday never was. 18 Alan: And I can’t remember specifically about Friday. Steve: Best part of the job. Actually let’s not do that one yet, let’s back up and say just a normal day at Gray Knob. Alan: So a normal day at (chuckling) well one of the things that would happen is, we would of course at that time, Gray Knob just didn’t get many people at that time for lots of different reasons it didn’t get many people. And so what we’d always do is we would, the two caretakers, would stay together at Crag and then we’d go and check; I would go over and check and see if anybody’s at Gray Knob. If someone’s at Gray Knob, I stayed at Gray Knob; that would be great. If no one was there then I’d come right back and be at Crag that night. And pretty often there would be no one at Gray Knob in those years. And so the normal day was I get all, when people would come in on the afternoon, we would spend time talking to each other, finding out what was going on, seeing if anybody needed advice on trails or other things like that. We tried and get all the administrative stuff down that night either before dinner or some people would show up after dinner and get all that done at one of those two times. Usually the folks would tend to wanna talk some and find out, you know, what we were doing there and talk about what they’re doing there as well and that was a lot of fun. Sometimes you find groups that just weren’t that interested in that and wanted to be off on their own. And then in the morning, almost always, it was a fairly big rush because almost always the folks that were not local would be going on to some other place; they’d want to get up early, get their breakfast going and get out of there pretty quickly. The locals were entirely different and so if we had other folks that were here that had joined in from, that had come up from the Randolph Valley, almost always they’d be the ones that would stay around ‘til ten or eleven or twelve and want to just talk or go for a hike together or do other things like that. And so that would tend to be a more laid back day unless we had some specific event like the August Fest, and that’s at huts. Did you go to the August Fest? 19 Steve: Oh yeah. Alan: Were they going on? Steve: We got in big trouble at the August Fest. Alan: You got in big trouble, why? Steve: I didn’t get in big trouble but we would get in trouble there because of the party. And I think the second August Fest that I was up there, they got official reprimands. Alan: For alcohol? Steve: From the AMC; alcohol, pot brownies, topless dancing, all sorts of stuff. So it was out of control. (Alan laughing in background) Alan: So it got better than those first years because we would look at some of these early invitations and these must have been some of the first ones. So this is a ’73… Steve: Wow! Alan: …and a ’73 and a ’74 invitation to the August Fest. And what we ended up doing and it wasn’t us that did; I think it was, I think it was Al Hudson that did it. Sarah: Yeah, I think Hudson. Alan: But Hudsons and (name) and Eusdens… Sarah: (Name). 20 Alan: …Woodruffs, (name) all get together and formed a Randolph Mountain Club marching band with a bunch of both current and past RMC hut and trail crew and hiked with instruments over the golf side, down that face into Madison Huts on the afternoon of the August Fest. And it was just so great to be marching to right in there; that was just a lot of fun to do. You think that Betsy had her French horn? Sarah: She must have. Alan: She must’ve had her French horn. Sarah: And you gotta make sure you get some Rising, I hope… Alan: Oh, the Rising. You gotta talk to some Rising… Sarah: Hawley, Billy, Betsy. Alan: But, well, I wish there was a picture of that ‘cuz that was just… Steve: Yeah, that’s awesome! Alan: …so great marching down in the; but I don’t think that… Steve: It was a little more hard-core in 1982. Sarah: I guess. Steve: It was pretty much out of control. Alan: You know, there was clearly a lot of alcohol, there might have been pot brownies, I didn’t see it. I know there were no topless dancers. 21 Sarah: No not, except for those skirts, whatever the opposite of topless. Alan: There might have been some bottomless… Steve: Yeah. Alan: …skirt guys, yeah. Steve: Okay. best part of the job? Alan: Best part of the job, best part of the job was being up in the mountains and especially being up there with Will Woodruff for the couple of years we did it together. It was great seeing all the people. It was a lot of fun when friends would come up there but that was more transcendent and that was a lot of fun to do. But I think the best part was just being in the mountains all the time and going up and down and being connected into the Randolph Valley. Sarah: And the card games. That was a good part of it. Alan: There were a lot of card games, what we’d play? Sarah: Our family’s love for cards, I think, really came from the playing at the huts, just constantly playing up there. Alan: What was it, do you think it was gin? Sarah: I think it was that up and down the river thing that we, I think we’ve (unclear) up there. Alan: Because there was, actually it was pretty interesting because this whole thing; I think that—that the same way that I got attracted into trail and hut crew was how Sarah 22 got attracted to the same group, and a whole bunch of girlfriends too. And so it was just this one continuum of people ten- to twelve-years age of each that we were constantly doing things together in different ways. And it ended up with a lot of your group coming up to the huts when we were there and playing cards and hanging out and that was a lot of fun. Sarah: A couple of us were lifeguards down here and we would go up every other night just, you know, for the night and come back down for work; it was just part of our regular routine. Alan: Your daughter just left. Sarah: Oh. Steve: We’re, okay, we’re winding it down here. Asked for the best part, what about the worst part? Alan: The worst part, so the worst part of trail crew which you did ask me but which I didn’t cover was the, just the rainy nasty days when it was the tenth day in a row and you’re going up there and it was black flies and it was pouring down rain and you had to get the machetes out and you knew that the machete was going to slip out and it just wasn’t going to be nice (unclear) was the worst part of trail crew. Worst part of hut crew, I think, probably the worst part of hut crew was when you had a rowdy gang that was in there at the same time as a serious gang. And especially if it wasn’t part of our group so it wasn’t someone you could take natural control over but you had to influence them to calm down and that was probably the worst part, was just making sure that you didn’t have folks drinking beer on the porch and laughing and yelling until midnight when you had others trying to sleep. How about for you? 23 Steve: Yeah, it was about; there were crowd control issues like that and I think my best example would be a family’s at Gray Knob, nice people, no problem and four guys show up and they have full bottles of Jack Daniels in their side pockets. Sarah: Yeah, that’s tough. Steve: So the way you deal with them, first off, is say “You guys ever been to Crag Camp?” And they’re like “No!” And I said, “The view there is, is just intense! You gotta go, you gotta go see it!” And they’re like, “We’re going over there! Thanks a lot, man!” And they go to Crag and the family’s like (makes noise). [Sarah and Alan laughing] Alan: Thank you! Steve: You know, yeah. Now if they were already there and there were like groups, like the Berlin boys who would come up with a bottle, with a quart of tequila each. The way you would deal with them is pretend you were drinking with them the whole time and then once it was dark, you’d put on your headlamp and say, “Let’s go on a night hike!” And they would always want to go on a night hike. You’d take them out and you’d keep shining your light into their faces so they keep losing their night vision and stumble around on the rocks and by the time you turned around and got them back to the cabin they would all just go (make noise)… Sarah: Yeah. Steve: …and go to sleep. So those were the techniques that we used and it didn’t happen that often. Alan: So, so were there a lot of, so in my years there were not a lot of folks from Berlin that were up there. In fact, at that time it was still (unclear)… 24 Steve: Yeah, but the Berlins boys were a spring phenomenon usually. Alan: To go drinking. Steve: Yeah, so I dealt with them maybe once but my friends that were there in the ’80’s like Peter Wallace or John Tremblay, dealt with them a lot more often. Sarah: That’s interesting. Alan: What was Dyk’s best story about hut or trail crew that he told you guys? This is Riley Eusden and Riley is the son Dyk Eusden, my brother. Riley: I think… Alan: And Sarah’s brother. Riley: It must have been with the two caretakers at Crag had like over forty people and it was so crowded and so noisy that they just took off all their clothes and they hiked naked down (unclear, speaking too low). [Laughing] Alan: They just left. Riley: They just left. Alan: But you’re saying that wasn’t your father Dyk Eusden? Riley: No it, I don’t think it was. 25 Alan: Good. Riley: That’s the best story I’ve heard. Alan: That’s a good story. Steve: We, I spent a lot of time up there in the winter too and we would have a lot of fun with sledding. Sarah: Oh, that’s cool. Alan: (Unclear) sledding. Steve: You go up, up, you go up the tree on the Spur above Crag and you’d bring a plastic toboggan and then you’d slide down the bottom down to Crag… Alan: You’re kidding. Steve: …and it was so fast and so much fun that we would do it day after day, all day long. Alan: How would you stop? Steve: You just kick your feet out. Alan: Where would you start? Steve: We’d start maybe 1/8 of a mile above Knight’s Castle Path… Sarah: Oh my god! 26 Steve: …and just go down and… Sarah: Now one thing I remember is the, speaking of Knight’s Castle, is the trail up to Knight’s Castle, there’s a double moss bed on a rock. Did you ever know that double bed? And so a lot of people… Steve: Yeah, I do know that. Sarah: …a lot of us would spend the night on the double moss bed on the rock. Steve: Yeah, that’s great. Sarah: And the other thing that was great was The Quay. The Quay was such important part of being there and going out there; you know, even if we were at Crag, we’d go over and hang out at the quarry. Steve: Yeah, it was important. Sarah: That was Davis’s spot. Alan: That was Davis’s spot right. Davis loved, Davis would just love The Quay. Love going up on there. Sarah: Shoot his golf balls off The Quay. Alan: Shoot his golf balls off. Sarah: And had his ashes scattered there. Alan: Yeah, he loved that. 27 Steve: Perch water was always very good too. I think just the water that, where the brook comes out of the side of the mountain at the Perch is just… Alan: Really it’s that good! Steve: …so awesome. Alan: I gotta go back and try that. Steve: Yeah. Alan: Now one other story about Crag, one time, you know that after awhile you get a little bored when you’ve been up in the hut for too long. Steve: Yeah. Alan: And I’m sure this was Will’s idea, not my idea. But one time Will Woodruff one time ended up doing a cultural exchange, where we took all the furniture out of Crag Camp and set it up, as Crag Camp, out in the woods near Crag Camp. And then pulled (Steve and Alan laughing) pulled in all kinds of woods things into Crag Camp. Sarah: Branches. Alan: Branches and trees and pinecones and rocks and things like that; I think it was a lot of rocks, and put that into Crag Camp. And we had a cultural exchange, we introduced the people that night to the cultural exchange, they were very interested in that. And then we left over the Crag Slide trail and went down the mountain and that was great! Riley: Do you go down there naked? Alan: Well, Dyk thinks we did; I just don’t think that’s possible. 28 Sarah: Well Chips isn’t around anymore to scold you guys. Alan: We’ll have to edit these notes, very carefully. Steve: You will have that opportunity, so no problem. Well is there… Alan: Now… Steve: No, go ahead. Alan: I think we do have… Sarah: So you have any more stories? Alan: No I got all, all the stories are covered. Sarah: Okay. Alan: Oh with the, Tad Pfeffer gets special credit because I believe that the year that he took down the 205 pounds of garbage in that oil drum, or it was just general trash that had built up over the years at Crag, I believe that was my year. And I believe he was my supervisor and I know walking down with him, it was, that was a nasty thing for him to have to have carried. I’m sure that his knees are, that’s part of the reason his knees are so bad is because of those kinds of things that he did but he was, what a tough guy; he was just a great guy to have as hut supervisor, very, very involved, very good, very knowledgeable but also just a lot of fun to be around. Sarah: Yeah. 29 Alan: He was great. We should get, let’s check with Dyk to see if he has any other stories. Do you accept stories in writing also? Steve: Sure. Alan: In writing, yeah ‘cuz we should just check with him. Sarah: Now, I don’t know if you, there’s any Woodruffs coming, if Will Woodruff is coming tonight or not to speak with, to represent the Woodruffs but I’ll just say about Davis too. And you know him as well, that for his 50th birthday, which was two years ago, two summer ago. We went up to The Quay with a potato gun and, you know what a potato gun is? Steve: Yeah. Sarah: And we shot off one potato off The Quay for every ten years of his life, so we did five shots. We all took turns and it was very (unclear). Steve: That’s awesome. Sarah: Just like he would have shot his golf balls. Alan: How old was he when he died in Alaska? Sarah: Oh gosh, he was still young. Alan: Had to be mid-twenties. Sarah: Yeah, definitely in the twenties. Steve: What year? 30 Sarah: I don’t remember. Steve: ’80, was it? Alan: Let’s see, so he was—similar age to Dyk. Sarah: Yeah, he’s Dyk’s age. Alan: And so Dyk would’ve been born in ’57 and so yeah, I bet you’re right, I bet it was ’80 or early ‘80’s. Steve: Year was ’79 or ’80. Alan: So he was low twenties. Steve: Yep. Well thank you very much! Sarah: Thank you very much! Alan: Thank you for doing this. It’s great that you’re doing this; it’s great to get a lot of these stories down. I think that really is good. Sarah: And I hope you get a lot more customers. Steve: Yeah, yeah well we’ve done pretty good today. Sarah: Good. That’s great. Steve: But I know I have more because Tad definitely wants to do one with… 31 Sarah: Perfect. Steve: …another guy. And the… Alan: He’s going to do one with another guy? Steve: Yeah, the two people ones are good. I mean it’s kind of like with this one. Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alan: I wanna come watch when Tad does it. Sarah: I know. You’ll be doing them at the event, right? Steve: Yeah, we’ll probably go and do it in Ms. Jones’ house. Alan: You gonna hide out a little bit. Steve: Yeah, keep it down a little bit. Sarah: That’s good. Steve: So, well, great. Sarah: Well, thank you. |
| Images Source File Name | 14268.pdf |
| Date created | 2012-12-13 |
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