Lincoln

[Jayne]

#47444 |

September 11, 2006
Lincoln Trip report

The flag crew (Janis, Melissa, Lynda, and Jayne), left on Falling Waters trail @ 8:25 on route for Lincoln peak. It was a hazy sky, humid, and temps in the 60’s. We were making good time and encountered Michael J with video and still camera so we stopped for greetings and photo ops.
Our group reached Little Haystack at 10:45 and huddled out of the high winds, got into some dry shirts, and had snacks. We ventured over to Lincoln and arrived at 11:25 with plenty of time to set up our 4×6 flag on our 18’ pole assembly. Kudos to Janis who carried the flag poles (20’ of 1”and 11/2” pvc in four 5’ sections) on her pack all the way to the top! Unfortunately the wind was so strong that we had to drop it down one section and had a nice 13’ pole with old glory flying straight as an arrow at 11:45.
Our other team members arrived (Jackie, Keith, Chris, Mark and Andy) as well as many visitors who thanked us endlessly for doing this. We also had the honor of having a New York City flag covered with ash, which had lain in the streets of Manhattan, brought up by a gentleman for this occasion. I apologize for not getting his name, but he was hiking with Dave. I was so moved by this display that I was speechless. He had it nicely folded in a heavy duty protective plastic bag and of course did not dare to take it out. Just looking at it closely gave me goosebumps. We thanked him for choosing Lincoln to share his piece of history on this memorial occasion.
We were flying our flag with thoughts of all those lost but especially one person, Jane Orth, 49, who was on flight 11, from Haverhill, MA. She was a friend of teammates Josh and Brenda Seluta that could not come this year due to the recent birth of their son Emerson. We also said congratulations to Barb and Eric who got married at noon down in Atkinson, NH.
Without aid, we saw flags on Flume, Liberty, Lafayette, Garfield, and S Twin and with binoculars, Cannon, Owls’ Head and West Bond or Bond- couldn’t tell. Not bad for a hazy, cloudy day.
The rain moved in quickly and even though we had a tarp setup for quick shelter, the thunder sent us down early for safety reasons. The visibility on the ridge diminished to 50 feet, with 40 mph westerly winds. It seemed as though we couldn’t get to the Falling Waters trailhead and below treeline fast enough, but we made it and the rain eventually subsided. We traveled in a steady stream of hikers receding off the ridge. A while later the sun came out, the skies cleared, as we removed raingear we second guessed our decision to leave. We got down to the footbridge knowing we had only 5 minutes to the car and the rains suddenly appeared, again. We did not bother to adorn our raingear this time we just walked quickly to the car. Once inside, all hell broke lose, the skies opened with torrential sideway rains, watching lightening bolts hitting the ridge, keeping our fingers crossed that everyone we passed and anyone else out there including several of our team would get out unharmed. Mark and Andy who carried the flagpoles down were the last drenched teammates to come out. We made it! So even though our parade was rained on, we succeeded in doing what we came to do and that was pay tribute to those lost in the 9-11 tragedy.

Peak coordinator,
Jayne
You can email me by clicking on the PM.

[TrekMan]

#53170

Jayne – With the help of some field glasses, we saw your flag at Lincoln from our post at Flume. Good job!
-TrekMan :flag:

[Frodo]

#53171

Awesome job Jayne, and memorable words… :flag:

Glad you all got down in time. We also barely made it down Adams before it unleashed… 😮

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