MMVSP

By Guy Gosslein
Almost everyone who has hiked in the White Mountains during the last three decades has run into someone—probably in raggedy pack shorts—with a purple T-shirt bearing the words, “Mount Madison Volunteer Ski Patrol”, and wondered what kind of a tough job it must be to watch out for skiers on Mount Madison. Actually, the job is anything but tough, since skiers are few and far between in that remote liftless area, and since patrol persons are in evidence almost exclusively during the summer. In fact, one might say the clients of a ski patrolman around Star Lake are found only among the après après crowd, and that the duties are limited to a kind of convivial speculation about the idea of skiing Mount Madison, rather than actually ever, and perhaps under any circumstances, donning the hickories, whatever they are. Suffice it to say that, while individual members of the patrol have been very much involved in search and rescue activity all over the White Mountains, there is no documented instance of the MMVSP itself actually ministering to an injured skier or enforcing the rules of the slope—any slope.

The apparent absurdity is not only intentional; it is cultivated. Created in 1965 by hut legend Tony Macmillan with the connivance of others in the northern most huts, the MMVSP was probably as much a cry for attention as anything else. Far from the busy officialdom of Pinkham Notch, the crowds daily invading Tuckerman Ravine, and the luster of the more capacious Lakes of the Clouds (Crowds) hut, Madison, in spite of its age and prestigious tradition, had to compete for the recognition its crew justifiably believed it deserved.

But history records that one thing above all others led to the formation of the MMVSP. It was an incident which occurred in Tuckerman Ravine in the spring of 1965. Tuckerman, you see, was the home of the Mount Washington Volunteer Ski Patrol, which had looked after a growing horde of spring skiers for many years. It was a tough by-the-book organization under the firm control of “Swampy” Paris, already at that time a mountain legend in his own right. Swampy’s dedication to his volunteer organization is said by some to have been matched only by his disdain for hutmen. When Macmillan, sporting an unauthorized Mount Washington Volunteer Ski Patrol patch, visited the ravine with a friend, he was confronted by Swampy who ripped the patch off Tony’s sleeve and read him the riot act. The number of people who subsequently heard Tony say that he would damn well have a ski patrol of his own—a better one—grows with each recounting of the story.

Once resolved upon the idea, its materialization was already in sight. Tony was articulate, witty, charismatic and a gourmet chef. He also loved to act and pounced upon any excuse for a lavish spread over which he and his cohorts might officiate in costume. Though hut fare was always good and plentiful, “lavish” applied only at Madison where Tony was not above ordering exotic spices and “cooking” sherry directly from S. S. Pierce or quantities of special foods from local distributors. This initiative —charitably interpreted as subversion by the administration— contributed to the legend and enhanced the fame of Madison Hut, which had found its first Macmillanesque expression in the famous spread put on for Justice Douglas during his visit to the huts in 1960 and then in the notorious “Christmas at Madison”celebrations which were held every August.

George Hamilton, who constituted the “administration” during most of those years still shakes his head over the fact that nobody else in the hut system could have gotten away with serving green scrambled eggs and blue casseroles—a reference to the creative use of food coloring—besides Tony. “Whatever he did was okay; anywhere else there would have been complaints!”

Whatever the reason behind its birth, the Mount Madison Volunteer Ski Patrol was the brainchild of huge (if somewhat perverse) intellect, and was but another Madison-centered prank which occurred during the Macmillan era. Christmas at Madison became old hat at once, supplanted by a ski patrol ostensibly promoting the public safety. Swampy Paris’ reaction to the idea was never officially recorded, but invitations went out to him and a select group of hutmen and AMC types to gather at the bottom of the Valley Way for a ride to Madison in the new Teleferique (cable car) to help inaugurate the ski season with a special buffet. Swampy neither showed up nor RSVP’d, probably in part because the $1.00 membership fee served also, of course, as a season pass to all the lifts on Mount Madison.

Annual meetings of the MMVSP were held in Boston at Locke- Ober’s with the members formally attired and disporting themselves in the best traditions of an explorers’ club. But the group’s major annual activity soon came to center around the Grande Traverse and Alpine Picnic. The reason for having the major annual MMVSP event in the mountains originated in an overwhelming insight realized in the plush and formal atmosphere of Locke-Ober’s; namely, that Swampy Paris had no idea what was going on and could not therefore, be aggravated by it. It was resolved that the biggest event of the year had to take place “above and in the very back yard of the Mount Washington Volunteer Ski Patrol”!

The traverse was grand from the outset. It was an elegant tour of all the 6,000 footers in New England, wherein champagne-sipping lady and gentlemen members who had motored up the Auto Road in vintage cars and fine (or over-fine) attire, strolled around the summit of Mount Washington and up over Ball Crag and Air Force Peak before settling down to a gourmet picnic among the rocks. The tour was typically a leisurely one, and by the time the lady and gentlemen members got to the appointed picnic site, balance had become a problem for some. Not content to limit the insult of the Grande Traverse and Alpine Picnic to Swampy, Macmillan twitted the AMC’s 4,000 Footer Club by issuing shoulder patches for the 6,000 Footer Club of New England.

The MMVSP grew to embrace an ever-widening membership which included the alumni of other huts (formerly only tolerated) and, in time, even members of the administration which had lost the fight to keep Tony and his colleagues in line. The joke had taken on a life of its own. A flag materialized and not only flew proudly over the annual picnic, but also made its way to other summits around the globe as mountaineering patrolmen unfurled it in all the major mountain ranges of the world, the South Pole, and who knows where else. Each display of the MMVSP flag on an exotic peak was accomplished under the proud motto Semper Altior (Ever Higher), and possibly by a smugly silent message for Swampy Paris. At least eight states have issued MMVSP license plates.

Tony lost a leg to cancer a few years after graduating from the hut system—and event which he might have described as something he took in stride—and passed away in 1976. The MMVSP lived on, partly in tribute to Tony, and partly to preserve the camaraderie and traditions which he helped create. After thirty years, the patrol has matured considerably and continues to be a colorful and enduring fixture in the White Mountains. It seems that MMVSP patches and purple T-shirts will continue to be seen in the mountains of the world, but particularly in Tuckerman Ravine, well into the future.

Members of the Mount Madison Volunteer Ski Patrol, unencumbered as they are by the duties which normally fall to less fortunately located ski patrols, have frequently visited the Observatory which, because of its perceived responsibility for all bad weather, has sometimes helped arrange for the comfort of the patrol, either on the occasion of the Grande Traverse and Alpine Picnic, or in the extremes of winter. The Patrol, in turn, helped support the fund drive for the Sherman Adams Summit Building and numbers several MWO trustees, staff and members on its rolls.

The Thirtieth Annual Grand Traverse occurred on June 29, 1996, and broke tradition inasmuch as it was held in the town of Madison instead of on the summit of Mount Washington. The site was Ward Hill Farm, the home of Colin Davidson, one of the original members of the organization. This meeting memorialized Tony and two other deceased members, Bruce Haddow and Brad Swan. Alex Macmillan, Tony’s brother and current Chief Patrolman, gave the ritual toasts to Absent Friends and to the Patrol, then read a tribute composed by Colin, one of those who had carried the MMVSP flag to other parts of the world, but who was in the final stages of Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

So long as there are ways to institutionalize good humor and the celebration of life, or any facet of life, we are probably in better shape than we think.

Semper Altior
Guy Gosselin acknowledges with gratitude the help of the late Colin Davidson, Brian Fowler, George Hamilton and Alexander Macmillan in preparing this article originally published in Mt. Washington Observatory’s Windswept magazine.

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