By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
SARGENT’S PURCHASE – Checking out meteorological instruments and climbing ladders to the top of the observation deck at the very summit of the highest peak in the Northeast, Gov. Chris Sununu and the state’s five-member Executive Council got a chance to tour the Mount Washington Observatory this week.
Based in North Conway with research headquarters on the summit at 6,288 feet, the non-profit organization holds a treasure trove of meteorological data going back the last 90 years and it uses space in the state’s Sherman Adams building in Mount Washington State Park.
Sununu and all five members of the council went there to hold what District 1 Executive Councilor Joe Kenney said was the first Council meeting on the summit in the state’s history.
Dianna Wimpey of the state archives said she could find a meeting of the council at the base of the mountain on Aug. 15, 1967, but no formal meeting of the council on the summit.
Before the council went to the summit Wednesday councilors and Sununu received a presentation by Wayne Presby, owner of Cog Railway and Mount Washington Auto Road officials along with the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce. After the meeting, they heard from and toured the observatory. The Cog, Auto Road, and Observatory are all partners of the state on the summit.
The Cog expects to present a plan in October to Coos County officials to build a seasonal hotel just below the summit of the mountain. The gathering in the observatory was also attended by Sarah Stewart, commissioner of the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which is in charge of state parks. She noted the state is in the process of developing a new master plan for Mount Washington State Park.
Stewart, along with other members of the commission, is calling for an environmental assessment of the park to help guide the future of the heavily used property.
At the Executive Council meeting, Sununu nominated two new members to the Mount Washington Commission. He chose Christopher Ellms Sr. of Sugar Hill to replace Paul H. Ingersoll of Berlin to serve through 2026 and retiring Parks Director Philip A. Bryce of Deering, also with a term through 2026. The council has not yet acted upon the nominations.
In the observatory, councilors learned that weather measurements are taken each hour, 24 hours a day on top of the rock pile and require going outside into some of the world’s worst weather. It was there that some of the highest recorded wind speed in the world was clocked.
The observatory recorded 231 miles per hour on April 12, 1934. The record fell on April 10, 1996, in an unmanned weather observatory on Barrow Island in Australia and now stands at 253 miles per hour.
The “Obs” as it is known in the North Country provides a live camera to see what is happening at the summit, delivers data to federal weather officials and even does testing on products to see how they fare in some of the world’s worst weather.
It also provides a number of educational opportunities to help people better understand the weather and nature. Its website is here https://www.mountwashington.org/experience-the-weather/
Rob Kirsch, chair of the observatory board, said the future of the summit and its historic operations are extremely important. He supports the idea of an environmental assessment as part of the master plan.
Kirsch, of Concord, worked as an observer from 1978 to 1981 and joined the trustees in 1985.
With competing businesses bringing people to the summit by rail or road and many hiking it, and no real data on how many or their impacts, and the observatory also bringing people, Kirsch said it is time for the state to analyze and recommend for a sustainable future of the Northeast’s highest peak.
“We’ve already damaged it,” Kirsch said of the summit. “We can undo some of that. We can assess it. But the idea going forward is to make this a sustainable operation.”
“We bring people up,” he said, “We will need some revenue to do the study and then we will need a model to make us sustainable both environmentally and financially going forward and I think we will have a plan for that.”
State Sen. Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, who chairs the Mount Washington Commission, said there will be an effort to ask the legislature to spend the funds for an environmental assessment and he said Sununu shares his view that it is critical to inform future decision-making for the park.
As Kirsch spoke, hundreds of tourists climbed the rocks around the summit building in near-perfect weather conditions with a 90-mile view above a bank of clouds.
Sununu said it reminded him of Hawaii where you can hike above the clouds and see only the mountain tops of peaks around.
He also noted that when he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, he climbed to the summit, knowing it was the highest peak he would encounter after spending a month hiking through Maine and into his home state.
“This is great. It was historic to do it because it was not logistically an easy thing to do,” said Sununu.
“So hats off to the park, and here at the summit and (District 1 Executive Councilor) Joe Kenney for having this great idea and God bless the good Lord for giving us some pretty incredible weather. I mean, it is a light breeze, an undercast like this, it’s a really cool day…I just couldn’t ask for anything better.”
Sununu climbed the rungs of the ladders up to the top of the observatory and was able to see hundreds of tourists below scrambling on the rocks and taking pictures.
After the tour, the five members of the council loaded into an Auto Road “stagecoach” and descended the steep, 7.6-mile road through the clouds and back to sunshine at the base of the road.
