We love sharing some of our guides’ more significant accomplishments. We’d love to write about all of their accomplishments, but it’d simply be too much work so we stick to the significant bits. And that’s why we’re writing here and now. With the accompaniment of her husband, Rich Gambale, Redline Guide Arlette Laan — whom we write about a lot due to all the cool stuff she does — has completed hiking the 48 New Hampshire 4000-footers in a single winter. While we let that accomplishment sink in for a moment, we will also add that her winter was only about a month long since she was out of the country for two months. That makes this whole thing even more amazing. In essence, she could’ve done this three times over.
Composite photo of this incredible husband/wife team.
From Facebook, here is Rich’s writeup:
SSWNH48 [Single Season Winter NH 48] complete. Including a two month hiking trip to Europe! Yesterday we hiked north and middle tripyramid then traversed thru the Sleepers to reach Whiteface and Passaconaway. A 17-hour hike. The SSWNH48 adventure started at the end of December when we hiked 12 peaks in 6 days at total of 80 miles. To add fun we spent 2 months on a hiking trip in Europe. On Feb 28th we began again till March 18th. 12 hiking days yielded 32 peaks and it totaled 180 miles. The favorite peak was Moriah when we spent an hour on the summit with Steve Smith, [owner of Mountain Wanderer Bookstore in Lincoln and Editor of the AMC’s White Mountain Guide]. Most challenging was Mt Isolation breaking trail for 8 hours thru mash potatoes-like snow with a total of 13 hours. The most aggravating was this final hike. […] —Rich Gambale
Congratulations Arlette and Rich. You guys are amazing!