Presby responded that the promotion and commercialization of Mt. Opponents of the Hotel proposal raised a variety of issues, including its impact on the viewshed and its potential to exacerbate the unpleasant congestion at the Summit that has discouraged many a hiker, including me, from returning to Mt. Presby retaliated by refusing the AMC access to a helicopter landing spot near the AMC’s Lake of the Clouds Hut, and a leader of the grassroots opposition was threatened with arrest if he set foot on Cog property. Numerous established conservation groups joined the opposition, including American Alpine Club, Friends of Tuckerman Ravine, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society of New Hampshire, Appalachian Trail Conference, and Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). Hikers in the White Mountains immediately cried, “enough is enough.” A grassroots group called Keep the Whites Wild secured 20,000 signatures opposing this hotel for the ultra-rich. The hotel would be located within the Cog’s 99-foot right-of-way at the terminus of the rail line just below the summit, and would be open from May to November. In December 2016, the Cog Railway announced plans to open a 35-room hotel and restaurant, the Summit House, in July 2018, the 150 th anniversary of the Cog. Lizzie’s Station represents Presby’s latest attempt at high elevation hospitality. Presby, who has owned the Cog outright since 2017, told an Associated Press reporter “the project would partly fulfill his vision of bringing back hotels that once graced the mountain in the 1800s.” Prices for sleeping, dining, and shopping at nearly 5,800 feet will also reflect the glorious era of the Gilded Age that Presby wishes to revive. If built, hundreds of thousands of tourists will debark there, greatly increasing threats to the area’s alpine vegetation. It will construct two 500-foot long platforms on either side of the existing rail line near the spot where 20-year old Lizzie Bourne perished in a storm on September 13, 1855. The Cog calls this luxury resort Lizzie’s Station. These cars would operate from May to October and be stored at the Cog’s base station during the winter. The other cars would house bathrooms and high-end shopping opportunities. Nine of those cars would provide sleeping quarters for 70 people, and five others would serve meals and alcoholic beverages. On March 4, 2022, Wayne Presby, owner of the Cog, announced a proposal to offer “upscale accommodations,” consisting of 18 Pullman-like cars situated about 500 feet below the summit on the 99-foot wide Cog-owned right-of-way that runs from its base camp to the summit. Washington State Park, an over-developed, congested nightmare atop the mountain that claims to enjoy the “world’s worst weather.” In 2021, the Cog carried 150,000 tourists to the summit on the 60-acre Mt. As the Cog’s engine, now fueled by diesel, but powered by coal from 1910 to 2008, claws its way up the mountain, it emits black plumes visible from miles away. The Cog Railway line from its base camp to the summit forms a vertical scar on the western face of wild Mt. Washington, the highest mountain (elevation 6,288 feet) in the northeastern United States, could face a future where they have nowhere to go as the climate continues to warm, unless we aggressively reduce global and local carbon emissions. The alpine species and natural communities at the summit of Mt. He is nearing completion on a book about the ecology and land use history of the forests of northern New England.Ĭlimate-stressed species, forced to search for cooler climes to survive, often must disperse in a northerly direction, or, as in the case of high-elevation ecosystems, move uphill. He is author of You Had a Job for Life, an oral history of the now-defunct Groveton Paper Mill. He co-published the Northern Forest Forum from 1992-2002.
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