I mean, it’s nothing like my imagination has always painted the top of mountains to look like: smooth tapering cones of snow-covered rock that end in cartoony, sharpened points. Despite my random bouts of worry, a part of me was actually cynical enough to think that the top of the mountain would look extremely touristy, with giant nicely lined parking lots, neon signs, street vendors, four-star restaurants, Broadway-style shows, and laser light water features. There were also plenty of pull-offs where you could savor the view or rub the blood back into your knuckles and gather the courage to continue.įinally, we arrived at the top. However, because of the late opening, we were the first group up, so at least there was no two-way traffic to contend with. Also, near the top, is one harrowing stretch where the asphalt becomes a dirt road, which, added to sharp turns that seem to end in mid-air, make you briefly regret the string of choices that led you there. I mean, one wrong swerve would certainly kill you, and I couldn’t exactly take in the scenery to the fullest since I was staring potholes into the road ahead and-due to the hairpins-beside of me. Then, suddenly you're above the tree line, with only lichens and rock cairns as evidence that you’re anywhere but on a desolate alien planet and your car is vertical enough that you feel like you’re sitting on a launch pad awaiting countdown.Īctually, the drive up wasn't all that bad. The pines then shrink to twisted, bent, miserable-looking specimens called krummholtz that only reach heights of a couple feet (some of which, the CD told us, were more than a hundred years old), which do nothing to hide the fact that just inches beyond them are sheer drops of certain death. Eventually, that forest switches to all hardy pines. You start out in a leafy forest, in an uphill, but not egregiously so, drive. The Auto Road stretches, wends, loops, and rises drastically through eight miles of changing ecological zones. It's the safest road in America, basically. That's three in 150 years out of tens of millions of drivers. In 1984, a vehicle experienced brake failure about a mile up the eight-mile road, killing the driver.
#MT WASHINGTON COG RAILWAY ACCIDENTS DRIVER#
In 1880, a stage coach driven by a drunken driver crashed, killing one of its passengers.
Only three have died on the road itself, though. Turns out, there’s a whole morbidly interesting page on it here that lists every death by name and cause. On the way up I had freaked myself out enough to check on my smartphone how many people had died on the mountain. This was a factoid I had learned just a few hours previously.
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