Hiking 4,000 Ft Peaks in Winter with Mardi Fuller

0:04So many mountain ranges in the U.S. are beloved by hikers. The Rockies, the Sierra Nevadas, the Cascades. But there are others that we don't hear about all that often. Take the White Mountain Range in New Hampshire, which has some of the most difficult hiking in the country. There are stretches of exposed terrain, steeply graded trails, brutally strong winds, and rapidly changing conditions. Adventuring there in the winter months provides extra challenges. Thick snow blankets the trails, impacting navigation and visibility, and the region is famous for having some of the world's worst weather.

0:41There are 48 peaks in the White Mountains that are over 4 ,000 feet tall, and it's become a tradition among New England hikers to summit all of them. In 2021, adventurer Marty Fuller became the first Black person to hike every 4 ,000 footer in the winter. She hits the trails all year long, but it's the cold season that really gets her blood pumping. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

1:20marty fuller welcome to wild ideas worth living you have truly lived some of the wildest ideas we've heard of on this podcast thank you shelby it's so wonderful to be here your wild idea was hiking all 48 of new hampshire's 4 000 foot peaks which is an incredible goal i'm curious how you got into hiking and adventure as a kid?

1:41Mardi Fuller:I grew up in New York, not in the city, but just in one of the suburbs just north of the city in Westchester County. And I always just loved nature. I love playing outside. My parents are immigrants from Jamaica, and they both grew up in rural environments, loving the outdoors. And so they raised my brother and I really loving the outdoors in a different way than Americans tend to take on the outdoors, meaning in a much more organic way, like going for walks, learning the names of birds and trees, visiting parks. Those are things that Americans do too. But the difference really came when I went to high school in college and I got kind of inculcated into outdoor culture where you would like need to buy a bunch of gear so that you could take a walk in the woods or like so you could sleep outside.

2:43Mardi Fuller:And my parents are like, I don't, why are you spending a thousand dollars to sleep outside? We're very confused right now. So one important thing about how I was raised and how it differs from an American experience is that because my parents are Jamaican and grew up in a Black country where they could feel belonging to nature and not face the exclusions that Black Americans face in the U.S., it was just so much more natural for them to invite me into that. And yes, they, you know, experienced American racism and learned about how it works here, but they still had that like initial innate bonding with nature that made it more possible for me to experience that without friction.

3:34Mardi Fuller:And so that's like a really important part of my nature connection as a kid and why I kind of immersed myself in the outdoors. And then in college, I did a four night or so backpacking trip in the Green Mountains in Vermont. And it was pretty transformative. I knew, you know, as a first year student, you're given like this long list of orientation options. And I was like backpacking, always wanted to do it. I haven't had an opportunity before. I had been working as a lifeguard. And so I literally like bought everything out of the L.L. Bean catalog. This is 1997. You could like send a check in an envelope to L.L.

4:19Mardi Fuller:Bean. So anyway, I remember all of this. Got the gear. We went on this trip and it was just really special. I mostly remember connecting with the people. It was really transformative and kind of set me on a path to want to explore more. I love it. Okay. So somehow along the lines, you got some idea to hike all of 48 of New Hampshire's 4 ,000-foot peaks. Actually, the first time I heard about the White Mountains was on that Green Mountain trip where a couple of the other participants were like, yeah, these mountains are beautiful and pretty hard, but the White Mountains, wait till you try those.

5:01Mardi Fuller:They're brutal. They're so hard. And so I got in my mind like, oh, I got to see these. I got to check these out. Marty first hiked in the White Mountains in 2003 and she was hooked. From there, she tackled as many peaks as she could. After a couple of years of climbing mostly in spring, summer and fall, Marty began bundling up and hiking in the winter too.

5:28What originally hooked you into hiking in the winter?

5:30Mardi Fuller:I think I should preface it by saying that I did already love winter. and I think that my love of winter came from growing up in New York and having snow days and how when you have a snow day like there's just this excitement that builds you know a week ahead of time you see the forecast you get excited like maybe it's gonna snow enough to close school and then you get the robocall and then it's beautiful out the next day and you can go sledding. You can meet up with all your friends because everyone's free. You have snowball fights. You have hot cocoa when you come back inside. Like it's just this like core memory, like experience that is just precious to me in my memory of childhood.

6:21Mardi Fuller:And so I loved hiking and I took a winter hiking program and they teach you about mountain safety. And so when I went on these winter hikes, it was from this place of enjoying winter. But you quickly discover as you hike that you're staying warmer than you would think you would because when you're moving, especially when you're moving uphill, your body generates a lot of heat. You're actually staying very comfortably warm within 20 minutes of walking or less, really down to like zero degrees, not even joking. It's just when you stop where you will get cold very quickly. And if you have moisture on your body due to sweating, that could freeze up and accelerate your coldness.

7:15Mardi Fuller:So it's a beautiful way to enjoy the winter. It is just gorgeous. You feel like you've been teleported to a far away place as soon as you get on the trail about a mile. There's just so much snow. The higher you hike up into the mountains, there's more snow. It's like this fairy tale land. There's few people. There's no bugs. Yeah, there are just so many reasons to give it a try. Okay, but when did you get this wild idea? You know, you could have just hiked one, but you're like, I'm gonna take all 48 of New Hampshire's 4 ,000 foot peaks, but in winter. It's interesting because hiking all 48 mountains at any time of year is kind of a thing.

7:58Mardi Fuller:It's like a game that hikers in the Northeast play. So it's like a common thing you hear about that right away. You start hiking and people say, oh, you're going to hike all 48? And you know, some people like me are like, um, oh yeah. Okay. Yes, I'm going to do that. So I first hiked all 48 in spring, summer, fall, just any time within like those three seasons. I did that first, finished it in 2008. And by that time, I'd already hiked some winter peaks, but I wasn't thinking about hiking all of them. I really was more just enjoying winter hiking, going on hikes that other friends were suggesting.

8:36Mardi Fuller:and then years later I realized two things one I was getting close to hiking them all so I might as well do it and then second of all there were no other black people who had done it and I had to ask around there's kind of a historian named Steve Smith in New Hampshire asked him and looked around in in places where records are held couldn't find any other black person who had finish them in winter. So I kind of just said to myself, well, it's going to be me then. I didn't need to finish the list until I realized that.

9:1915 years after her first hike in the White Mountains, Marty realized that she had already climbed most of the 4 ,000 footers in winter. There were only 10 left to summit, but the ones that remained were the most difficult technical mountains, including Mount Adams and the Bonds Traverse. Did it scare you when you said this out loud, like, hey, I'm going to do this?

9:43Mardi Fuller:It did, because there are some hikes that are scary. Being out there in the winter is intimidating. I only hike when conditions are good. There are some people who will take more risks and go out there when conditions are bad. I don't recommend it. People die out there. So I wait till the weather looks good, conditions, wind, weather, precipitation, but also just the state of the trails. There are some people who make it the near sole focus of their life to do it quickly and they'll do it in like a season. It means they're hiking all the time. So that can be done. And that was not me. I wasn't, I didn't have the ability to, to do that.

10:33Mardi Fuller:I had to work and I had other things, not like, not just work that I had to be thinking about. But then also, I just, I don't think my joints could sustain that. Like I needed, needed more breaks and recovery in between. So there are some people who do this aggressively and make it like a goal to do it in the shortest amount of time or whatnot. That was not the vibe I was on. I was really fitting this into my life, prioritizing it, but fitting it into a life, you know, with work and family and other responsibilities and commitments.

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12:32In 2018, Marty Fuller was just 10 peaks away from becoming the first Black person to hike all 48 4 ,000-footers in winter. Reaching the top of every peak requires a total of 300 miles of hiking and at least 100 ,000 feet of elevation gain. Summoning them in winter requires extra precautions, and Marty had to make sure she was prepared.

12:58Once you decided to go all in and do this, what was step one? Or you kind of backed into it. You'd already done a couple. But then when you were like, I'm going to do the rest, and you got really serious, how did you logistically figure this out? Yeah. So there are just a lot of different

13:14Mardi Fuller:considerations. If you're doing this, if you're doing this hiking challenge, it's not going to be like 48 hikes. Some of the peaks you may do two or three in one hike, but then also you're going to be turned away several times because of conditions or because of how you're feeling or someone in your group's feeling. And there are some mountains that I tried a couple of times before I was able to summit. Mount Washington is, and the Northern Presidentials are the hardest to like be able to successfully summit because conditions are so unpredictable. The highest wind speed in the world was once recorded on Mount Washington, I think 213 miles per hour was the record for a period of time.

13:56Mardi Fuller:So the winds can regularly be between 50 and 80 miles an hour and several times a season, they're going to be higher than that, like in the hundreds. So you really have to have a like technical approach to checking the weather forecast. Yeah. What safety precautions did you have to take? So the safety precautions that I had to have in mind were really being prepared to be in the elements. Like if you're hiking in the winter, you need to essentially be prepared to spend a night out if something happens. If you get injured or maybe a member of your party gets injured or if you happen to get lost.

14:37Mardi Fuller:So, you know, you want to have a backpack that has potentially a bivy sack, maybe a sleeping bag, a warm jacket for standing on the summit, eating, you know, taking a break, or if you're hurt or someone's hurt, and maybe you need to do a gear repair, you've got to have all the appropriate gear for managing the terrain, crampons and mountaineering boots if it's above treeline, regular hiking boots and micro spikes, usually if it's below, and snowshoes for breaking trail if you need to do that. And you have to have prepared by like researching the state of the trails to read a lot of message boards and kind of hold everyone's comments with a grain of salt while trying to also deduce like what's valuable from like crowdsourced information.

15:34Mardi Fuller:and then reading the weather reports, understanding the weather conditions. You also have to prepare by maybe having a conversation with your group, having the same expectations, agreeing what would determine that you're going to turn around because you don't want to be surprised by someone's risk tolerance. Sometimes folks can be very focused on peak bagging or getting a summit There have been times that I've hiked and I've been like 100 yards from the summit. But my hiking partners and I have said we don't feel that it's safe to go further because we're not sure that we would know where we are.

16:19Mardi Fuller:Like once we're there because the conditions are so bad. The winds are strong. There's a whiteout happening because the wind is blowing up snow or it's actually snowing and the wind is blowing the snow around. you might be in a situation where it's like foggy and you're above treeline and you're looking at cairns to know the direction you're going in and if the visibility is decreasing and you can't see the next cairn then you're essentially stuck because you're in this super rocky terrain and you could wander down to a cliff's edge without visibility so you just have to always be making good decisions.

17:05In order to stay safe on these trails, Marty almost always took at least one other person with her. Over the years, she's developed a healthy community of fellow outdoor adventurers who are more than happy to share their skills and resources. Navigation is challenging in winter, so it was always helpful when Marty's group could double check each other's work. Some friends even had climbing expertise and equipment to assist with descending steep inclines. Finally, in 2021, Marty completed her final winter peaks, Mount Adams and Mount Madison.

17:44What did you learn about yourself as you went along this journey? It started when you were young, up until your 40s.

17:51Mardi Fuller:I really do feel like putting myself into the elements in these ways has allowed me to face, you know, hardship and uncertainty in my own life. It's made me, I think, more ready to embrace change. It's helped me even just like as a traveler when unexpected things happen or you're in a situation that you didn't plan for is out of your control. I just feel more, you know, I feel confident that I'll get through it, I'll manage it. And I'm, you know, able to kind of get to a place of peace more easily. Just the pride that I have in myself for like being able to do hard things has really like been impactful for me.

18:43Mardi Fuller:growing up, I was a swimmer. I ran kind of track, but I was never good at like hand-eye coordination sports. And so I always had a little bit of like shame around performing physically. So being able to be proud of myself in my physical accomplishments was not something that was innate to me as a kid. Were there times where you experienced incredible awe or wonder or you saw some sort of piece of nature that just stopped you in your tracks? Yes, I would say in some senses, I always kind of had that experience, just the scenery and just the quiet and the vastness is just mind blowing every time.

19:36But some of the best experiences I've had have really been when I've been surprised by kind of like some of the smaller beauties.

19:47Mardi Fuller:One of the examples is a time when I brought a group of people hiking for their first winter hike. And we climbed one of the 4 ,000 footers that is totally below treeline. It's not a terribly long hike and pretty safe for new people to try out. and witnessing their wonder along the way was really one of the most memorable winter experiences I've had. It was everything from getting out of the car and they'd had a packing list. They were really thoughtful about how they prepared and most of them just had brought too many layers and too much stuff. And they were so skeptical about how warm they would be.

20:33Mardi Fuller:And I was able to convince them like leave these things in the car bring this and they were so delighted 10 minutes into hiking to find that they were sweating and warm because they were worried about that so that was really wonderful this was a an outdoor afro group outdoor afro is a national organization that i volunteer with um specifically around connecting black people in nature so one of the like most remarkable aspects of that hike was there was some moisture in the air the northeast is humid and it was cold out it was in the teens or so and these little icicles started forming on our hair and the way that it formed on like black hair and dreadlocks and afros two people had these big afros was just so beautiful and everyone was just so delighted with it and thought it was so cool.

21:32Mardi Fuller:And it was really remarkable, especially because it was a cloudy day. There were no views. I was very disappointed on my drive up by myself thinking, oh no, I really want this group to see beautiful views. And throughout this hike, they were just so in awe of all of the little experiences of, you know, walking through the woods in winter and just the abundance of snow, the fro-sicles as we called them on our hair. They were just so enamored by all of that. It didn't even matter if there was a view. And so I was just, it was kind of one of those like life lessons that, you know, you might be surprised at how you can find little bits of joy.

22:15Mardi Fuller:And so that felt really special.

22:25in addition to becoming a record-setting adventurer marty also works to encourage diversity and inclusion in outdoor spaces along with writing consulting and public speaking she continues to lead trips with outdoor afro an organization we featured on the show in 2022 too. Marty's next wild idea is to expand her list from 48 to all 67 of New England's 4 ,000 footers in the wintertime. If you'd like to keep up with Marty, you can follow her at where locks fly free. That's W-H-E-R-E-L-O-C-S-F-L-Y-F-R-E-E. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Pierce-Nitzberg of Puddle Creative.

23:16Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Motula and Joe Crosby. Thanks again to our partner, Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.