Mount Washington has a long history as a pleasurable place in summer. Winter is a different story.

By DAVID LASKIN

To a weather nut like me, the trip sounded like a weekend in paradise: an overnight winter sojourn at the venerable Mount Washington Observatory on the peak in northern New Hampshire reputed to have the worst weather in the world. The observatory's Web site fleshed out the glorious particulars of the so-called EduTrip. Nine hardy souls and a "weather educator" scale the 6,288-foot mountain by snow tractor. At the top we attend seminars, watch resident observers stagger into hurricane-force winds to take hourly readings, and, weather permitting, venture forth to gape at stupendous views. Serenaded by the blast, we bed down for the night in the observatory's living quarters and then, weathered and weather-wise, descend to the valley in the morning.

Historic postcard of Mt. Washington Hotel

But now that I was standing with my fellow EduTrippers in six inches of new snow at the base of the road up Mount Washington on a blustery Saturday morning in early March, I wasn't so sure. The regulations and warnings for conduct at the summit—never venture out alone, beware of flying ice chunks—seemed better suited to boot camp in Siberia than to an exhilarating weekend of mountaintop weather education. And then our weather educator, Duncan McKee, who retired after 25 years of forecasting for the Air Force, cheerfully listed recent casualties, a recitation topped by the guy who lunged after his sunglasses as they twirled over the lip of Tuckerman Ravine.

Of course, none of the accidents happened on these carefully planned trips. The equipment list alone could have kept Shackleton going in the Antarctic for a couple more years. But still. That business about worst weather in the world: What I'd assumed was more or less hype loomed a bit more ominously.

David Laskin wrote Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather.

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