The Nightmare Geography Glitch Hiding in New Hampshire

0:00 If somebody asked you what the deadliest mountain in the world is,

0:03 your first thought would probably wander to ones

0:04 that are obviously very dangerous like Mount Everest.

0:07 Or maybe even K2 if you're familiar

0:09 with the world's second tallest mountain's brutal reputation.

0:12 If you were limited to answering the deadliest mountain in the United States,

0:15 you might think of examples like Denali in Alaska,

0:18 Mount Rainier in Washington, or Mount Hood in Oregon.

0:21 All of these mountains indeed have infamous reputations

0:24 and they all look extremely intimidating as well.

0:27 That's probably at least partially why you actually heard about them.

0:31 But what if I told you that instead, the deadliest mountain in America,

0:35 and indeed the deadliest mountain in the entire world,

0:38 isn't actually any of these, but is rather

0:40 a much much smaller and unassuming looking mountain

0:43 in New Hampshire that you've maybe never even

0:46 heard about if you're not from around here, that's called Mount Washington.

0:50 With a total elevation of 6,288 ft above sea level,

0:54 Mount Washington is the tallest summit that can be found anywhere in New

0:57 England and more broadly anywhere in the entire

1:00 northeast region of the United States.

1:02 Nonetheless, when compared to the elevations

1:04 of mountains elsewhere across the western US,

1:07 Mount Washington appears as basically a dwarf mountain.

1:10 Despite being the tallest mountain in the northeast,

1:13 it is only the 550th tallest mountain nationwide with literally hundreds

1:18 of mountains taller than it dotted all across states west of the Mississippi,

1:21 across the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascades.

1:25 In fact, it's less than half the height

1:27 of dozens of mountains found across Colorado and Alaska.

1:30 And yet, it has claimed more people's lives than nearly all of them anyway.

1:35 Since 1948, more than 32 people have died

1:39 on Mount Washington due to a combination of falls, avalanches, and hypothermia.

1:43 More than every other mountain in the United States other than Denali,

1:46 Mount Rainier, and Mount Hood.

1:48 Mount Washington is tied for the fourth highest

1:51 number of deaths on any mountain in the country,

1:53 tied with Grand Teton in Wyoming.

1:56 And of course, the principal attribute of Mount Washington that sets it

1:59 apart from all of these other

2:00 deadly mountains is its dramatically shorter height.

2:04 Mount Washington is less than a third the height

2:06 of Denali and is roughly half the height of Mount Rainier,

2:09 Mount Hood, and Grand Teton,

2:11 despite having the same number of fatalities since 1948 as the latter.

2:15 Since modern record keeping began a century before that in 1848,

2:19 more than 160 people are known to have lost their lives on Mount Washington.

2:24 Adjusted for the number of deaths per foot of vertical climb,

2:27 Mount Washington becomes not only the deadliest mountain in America,

2:31 but the deadliest mountain anywhere in the world.

2:34 A fact that becomes all the more strange when you realize that you can

2:37 simply drive a car or take a train all the way up to the summit.

2:41 Unlike any of these other super deadly

2:42 mountains that are dramatically taller than it,

2:45 where the only way up is basically to climb.

2:48 This is, in a sense, precisely what makes Mount Washington so deadly.

2:52 The fact that it simply doesn't appear to be deadly when

2:54 all of the other mountains do on the list of deadliest mountains.

2:58 Denali is in an extremely remote location

3:00 in rural Alaska that isn't connected to any roads.

3:03 You basically have to charter a plane just to fly you to Denali's base camp,

3:08 and climbing up from there and back

3:09 again often takes weeks to accomplish through massive

3:12 glaciers and crevasse fields that are apparent

3:15 from miles away before you even get there.

3:18 Mount Rainier is similarly covered in glaciers,

3:20 full of cavernous crevasses that are large enough to swallow

3:23 up entire houses all that you can see from far away.

3:27 While hiking up more than 10,000 vertical feet through all of that in order

3:31 to reach the summit serves as too much of a deterrent for most.

3:35 The kind of people who decide to climb

3:37 these kinds of mountains are usually well aware of how

3:39 dangerous they are and have spent a serious

3:42 amount of time and effort preparing to tackle them.

3:45 Mount Washington, on the other hand,

3:46 doesn't really look all that different from just about

3:49 any other mountain within its range in New Hampshire, the White Mountains.

3:53 There aren't any glaciers that are present to frighten people away,

3:55 [music] and unlike many of the other deadliest mountains,

3:58 it's hardly in a remote location that's difficult to get to.

4:01 [music] It's only about a 3 and 1/2 hour drive from the big

4:04 city of Boston to reach the parking lot at the base of the mountain.

4:07 And from there, it can only take all of about 2 hours

4:10 for an unprepared hiker to get in way over their heads and capabilities.

4:14 The summit of Mount Washington is actually

4:16 the sixth most visited mountain summit in the world,

4:19 largely because of how accessible it

4:20 is from major metropolitan areas like Boston,

4:23 the fact that you can usually just drive or take

4:25 a train all the way up to the summit,

4:27 and its status as the highest peak in New England in the Northeast.

4:30 But all of the other mountain summits in the top

4:32 most visited are either much shorter and therefore safer,

4:35 or they're much higher and therefore people know to prepare better.

4:39 Mount Washington is basically at this weird middle sort of height,

4:42 where underprepared climbers or even drivers expecting

4:45 something easier might get caught off guard,

4:48 especially when luck doesn't favor that.

4:51 It's not really Mount Washington's height

4:53 that makes it so incredibly deadly, though.

4:56 It's the fact that the mountain, arguably,

4:58 is the site of the worst weather that can be found anywhere on planet Earth,

5:03 despite its rather unassuming-looking appearance.

5:06 Let's start with wind and explain why Mount Washington

5:09 is actually the single windiest location anywhere in the world.

5:13 On an afternoon day in April of 1934,

5:16 researchers at the summit of Mount Washington at the Mount

5:18 Washington Observatory measured wind speed that should have been impossible,

5:22 an astonishing 231 mph.

5:26 To put that in a perspective, in order to become a category 5 hurricane,

5:30 wind speeds only need to reach 157 mph.

5:33 231 mph is enough to obliterate any house made out of wood,

5:38 and will even cause serious structural issues to well-built houses.

5:43 For decades, that measurement on the top of Mount Washington was the fastest

5:47 wind speed ever measured anywhere on the Earth's surface until it was

5:51 surpassed in 1996 by a monster tropical cyclone that clocked in at a speed

5:57 of 254 miles per hour off the western coast of Australia.

6:01 It is still the fastest wind speed ever measured on the Earth's

6:04 surface outside of the context of a tropical cyclone or a tornado.

6:09 Hurricane force winds or wind speeds greater than 75

6:12 miles per hour are generally observed on the summit

6:15 of Mount Washington for an average of 110 days

6:18 a year or for nearly one out of every three days.

6:22 And during the winter season, the wind speeds will be at or above

6:25 hurricane force about every other day on average.

6:28 The most consistently dangerously fast winds

6:31 that are experienced anywhere in the world.

6:34 These wicked fast winds that blow over Mount

6:37 Washington are of course a frequent and significant hazard.

6:40 And they happen for an interesting combination of reasons.

6:44 Mount Washington, while not exactly a tall mountain compared to those out west,

6:48 is still a giant in the east.

6:50 Its summit is the highest geographic point

6:52 for nearly a thousand miles away in every direction.

6:56 It happens to exist at almost exactly

6:58 the midpoint between the North Pole and the Equator

7:00 and it's hit precisely at the intersection of three

7:04 major weather systems from the Atlantic to its south,

7:06 from the Arctic to its north and its west

7:08 and from the Gulf of Mexico to its far southwest.

7:12 These three clashing weather systems bring warm,

7:14 humid tropical air from the southwest, moist maritime air from the Atlantic,

7:19 and cool drier continental air from the north

7:21 all precisely to the summit of Mount

7:24 Washington where they clash and generate powerful

7:27 low pressure systems and strong pressure gradients,

7:30 which drives the freak storms and extreme winds up there.

7:34 Wind is usually slowed down by friction from the ground,

7:38 but since Mount Washington is by far the highest

7:40 point anywhere around for thousands of miles in most directions.

7:44 The higher winds that strike it haven't

7:46 ever been slowed down by this usual process.

7:49 The overall presidential range that Mount Washington

7:52 crowns in the north forms a B shape that points directly where the cold

7:56 winds blowing across southern Canada come from.

7:59 As the higher winds that haven't been slowed

8:00 down for thousands of miles reach the presidential range,

8:04 they're suddenly forced upward and accelerate in speed

8:07 through a process known as the Venturi effect.

8:09 Similar to how a river's velocity increases as it passes over a rapid,

8:13 this, combined with a clashing of cool dry air with warm moist air,

8:17 is what can create some of the most freakish weather on the planet up here,

8:21 and going well beyond just the insane wind speeds.

8:25 As you'd expect for a mountain at its elevation and its latitude,

8:28 it gets pretty cold up on the summit of Mount Washington.

8:31 The summit's all-time low recorded temperature was

8:34 -50° Fahrenheit back in January of 1885.

8:38 A high temperature of 0° Fahrenheit still occurs about 13 days a year,

8:43 while low temperatures at or below 0° Fahrenheit usually happens every

8:47 single day between the middle of November and the start of April.

8:51 Between December and March across the winter season,

8:53 the temperature on the summit will only get

8:55 above freezing for an average of just 15 days.

8:59 Across the whole year,

9:00 the average ambient temperature on the summit is just 27° Fahrenheit.

9:05 Now, a lot of that might not sound too bad, to be honest,

9:08 but you have to remember that none

9:09 of those ambient temperatures take into account

9:11 the crazy fast wind speeds and the absolutely

9:15 bone-shattering wind chill effect they have.

9:18 To give you just an idea of how nuts this can get,

9:21 consider the horror that the mountain summit

9:23 experienced on the 16th of January in 2004.

9:27 That day, the ambient temperature on Mount

9:29 Washington summit was -46.3° Fahrenheit or -42° Celsius.

9:35 Already very cold, but it was also sustaining wind

9:38 speeds of just over 87 miles per hour, too.

9:41 As a result, the wind chill value on the summit

9:44 that day was a brutal -102.6° F, or -74.7° C.

9:53 Enough to cause frostbite to exposed human tissue in under 5 minutes

9:57 and lethal in as little as 30 minutes without proper Arctic survival gear.

10:02 And then, somehow, even that brutal record was beaten pretty recently

10:07 over the night of the 3rd to 4th of February 2023,

10:10 when an ambient temperature of -47° F

10:13 and faster wind speeds of more than 100 mph

10:17 produced a new record low US wind chill

10:20 temperature on the mountain summit of -108° F.

10:24 Simply put, that is nearly as cold Simply put,

10:26 that is nearly as cold as the coldest

10:28 surface air temperature ever recorded in history,

10:30 which was measured at -128.6° F in 1983

10:36 at the Vostok Station deep within the interior of Antarctica.

10:39 The summit of Mount Washington can therefore literally get

10:42 as cold as the depths of Antarctica can during the winter,

10:45 and it is rather surprisingly the site of the coldest

10:48 temperature ever measured anywhere in the United States,

10:51 even beating out anywhere in Alaska.

10:54 During that event in 2004,

10:56 when the wind chill effect plunged the temperature down to as low as -102.6° F,

11:02 the wind chill never once rose to be warmer than -50° F for more than 71 hours,

11:09 or for nearly three straight days.

11:11 Even throughout the summer months,

11:13 temperatures can unexpectedly plunge and winter-like

11:16 conditions can exist at the summit,

11:18 which is the next big dangerous problem on the mountain.

11:21 Due to Mount Washington's location along clashing weather patterns,

11:24 its relative proximity to the Great Lakes that brings

11:27 lake effect snow along with the Canadian winds,

11:29 and its relatively high elevation compared with its surroundings,

11:33 Mount Washington gets a ton of snow,

11:36 which is extremely unusual for its modest elevation.

11:39 Mount Washington's summit will see an average

11:41 of almost 97 inches of precipitation per year,

11:45 the vast majority of which falls on it as snow,

11:47 which is surprisingly even more precipitation than

11:50 the summit of Mount Rainier in Washington receives,

11:52 despite it being about twice as tall.

11:55 Mount Washington receives by far the most snow of any

11:58 mountain of its height or lower anywhere in the United States.

12:02 For basically the same reasons why it's so windy up there, too.

12:06 Huge volumes of snow will get picked up all along the lower Presidential

12:10 Mountains and then gets blown up around

12:12 Mount Washington over to its eastern side,

12:14 where the snow packs and fills up deep ravines there like Tuckerman,

12:19 that can sometimes reach up to 50 feet deep during the winter.

12:23 In the winter and the spring,

12:24 this thickly packed snow, especially in Tuckerman Ravine,

12:27 can morph into an almost concrete like

12:30 layer that can easily fracture and generate avalanches,

12:34 which is a major hazard for hikers and backcountry

12:36 skiers all throughout the winter and spring seasons as well.

12:40 Many of whom might not expect such a potentially

12:42 high avalanche risk for such a relatively small mountain.

12:46 As recently as 2024,

12:48 backcountry skiers have lost their lives because of this here

12:51 in the Tuckerman Ravine by falling hundreds of feet.

12:54 And as recently as 2012, a man slipped and slid down the side of Tuckerman

12:58 Ravine in April [music] and then fell into a hidden crevasse.

13:02 And his body wasn't able to be recovered for 7 weeks.

13:06 Others have gone missing on the mountain

13:07 for years until their remains were discovered,

13:10 sometimes [music] being buried beneath dozens of feet

13:12 of snow during particularly catastrophic avalanche events.

13:16 While others simply wander off too far away

13:19 from the road or the railroad that takes you up

13:21 safely to the summit and get trapped alone up

13:23 there when the weather suddenly turns for the worse.

13:26 Near the summit, it can literally go

13:28 from relatively nice to blizzard-like and life-threatening within minutes.

13:33 While temperatures can plunge by upwards of 20° just as quickly,

13:37 and they're very difficult to predict.

13:39 And if all of those hazards weren't enough,

13:41 there's also the added concern of what is often very,

13:44 very limited visibility on the summit of Mount Washington as well.

13:47 With all the wind, storms, and precipitation that falls on Mount Washington,

13:51 cloud cover up there is nearly constant all throughout most of the year.

13:56 In fact, only about 50 days out of the entire year

13:59 on average are clear on the summit between sunrise to sunset.

14:02 Visibility conditions near the summit can

14:04 and do rapidly deteriorate within minutes sometimes,

14:08 just like with the temperature.

14:10 Including complete whiteouts and literally zero visibility where you can't

14:14 even see more than a foot or two ahead of you.

14:16 These poor visibility conditions, when they happen suddenly and unexpectedly,

14:20 can be particularly dangerous for hikers or backcountry skiers when

14:24 they're nearby [music] massive cliffs and drop-offs like the Tuckerman Ravine,

14:28 which features plunges of up to 600 ft in some locations.

14:32 If you get blinded during a total whiteout

14:35 up there to become disoriented on your location,

14:37 it's not inconceivable to see how you might just

14:40 take one wrong step into an abyss like that.

14:43 Now, there's a lot of places in the world that have

14:46 worse conditions in a single category than Mount Washington does,

14:49 but very few of them combine all

14:51 of these factors together in such an overwhelmingly negative way.

14:55 The Vostok Research Station in the middle of nowhere

14:58 in Antarctica might get colder than Mount Washington does,

15:01 but it has nowhere near the same level of wind

15:03 speeds with a yearly average of just 11 mph,

15:07 and it also receives virtually zero precipitation or snowfall either.

15:11 Hurricane and tornado-prone areas may experience similar freak wind speeds,

15:15 but they're nowhere near as frequent,

15:17 and they're never in areas that get anywhere near as cold.

15:20 Denali in Alaska might have a much higher summit and lower

15:23 oxygen levels in a more remote location with similar visibility issues,

15:27 but Denali gets virtually zero precipitation

15:30 and doesn't get anywhere near as windy.

15:33 And again, for the most part,

15:35 Mount Washington doesn't exactly appear to be dangerous for most

15:38 of the climb up it until you get beyond the mountain's tree line.

15:43 The wicked fast winds that whip across Mount Washington contribute

15:47 to a very unusually short tree line at only about 4,400 ft up

15:51 in elevation with the climate any further up simply too hostile

15:55 to support any plant life more than just a few inches in height.

15:59 The climate also radically changes very

16:01 quickly as you climb up Mount Washington.

16:04 In [music] the mountain's parking lot,

16:05 you're experiencing a humid continental climate that's typical for New England,

16:09 but as you move up it,

16:10 you quickly transition through a subarctic climate until you reach

16:13 the end of the tree line where it immediately transitions

16:17 into a tundra climate not too dissimilar from Labrador

16:20 or Greenland the rest of the way up to the summit.

16:23 This can often catch hikers off guard on Mount Washington who

16:27 don't expect to be going from a calm walk through the woods

16:29 at the mountain's lower elevations to a potentially lethal walk through

16:33 the Labrador or Greenland tundra further up beyond the tree line.

16:37 The treeless upper reaches of the mountain towards

16:39 the summit are fully exposed with zero cover to hide

16:43 behind or take shelter in when weather conditions rapidly

16:46 turn for the worse with the infamous super fast winds,

16:49 whiteouts, and plunging temperatures.

16:53 The total of 65 acres of Mount

16:55 Washington's peak is classified as tundra terrain,

16:58 which is, again, perhaps unexpectedly the most tundra

17:01 present on any mountain east of the Rockies.

17:04 The potentially extreme, life-threatening danger of being exposed to the brutal

17:09 elements beyond the tree line on your climb

17:11 up towards the summit is not apparent to most people who climb the mountain,

17:16 and it's only when you're far removed from both

17:18 the tree line and the summit about halfway

17:21 up that you might realize just how deep

17:24 into this quiet danger zone you've gotten yourself into.

17:28 While the elevation of the tree line ends at 4,400 ft above sea level,

17:32 it only takes about 3 mi worth of hiking

17:34 from the parking lot in order to reach it,

17:36 which is notably significantly less hiking than it even takes

17:40 to reach the base camp on Mount Rainier in Washington.

17:44 In other words, you can reach the most dangerous zone on Mount

17:47 Washington before you even reach the base camp on Mount Rainier,

17:51 which is a recipe for disasters for hikers who aren't

17:54 coming as well prepared as they usually do for Rainier.

17:57 Near where the tree line ends on Mount Washington,

18:00 the US Forest Service has put up ominous signs on trails like this one,

18:04 warning that the area ahead beyond

18:06 the trees contains the worst weather in America,

18:09 and that hikers have lost their lives

18:11 to the elements out there exposed even during the summer.

18:16 Then, there's also the fact that Mount Washington is actually a lot

18:19 more of a climb than many people might initially expect as well.

18:23 While it is only the 550th tallest mountain

18:26 in the United States by elevation above sea level,

18:29 Mount Washington's prominence is substantially more impressive than that.

18:33 Prominence is a measurement of how much

18:35 a mountain stands out relative to its surrounding terrain,

18:38 and is basically the vertical distance between a mountain summit and the lowest

18:41 point you have to descend to before climbing up a higher peak.

18:45 In Mount Washington's case, you have to descend from its summit all the way

18:48 down to 140 ft in elevation at the Champlain

18:51 Canal before journeying toward a higher peak at the Potato

18:54 Knob all the way down in North Carolina.

18:58 This means that nearly all of Mount

19:00 Washington's sea level elevation is pure prominence,

19:04 since it rises from a very low elevation.

19:07 6,148 ft of its height is prominence to be precise.

19:12 And this gives Mount Washington astoundingly the 24th highest prominence

19:17 of any mountain in the contiguous 48 US states beyond Alaska

19:21 and Hawaii with a greater prominence than even some of the 14,000

19:26 footers out west in Colorado like the well-known Pikes Peak.

19:30 This means that despite its overall elevation being

19:33 only a fraction of most mountains out west,

19:36 actually hiking up Mount Washington includes a similar

19:38 vertical height to that that hikers truly experience.

19:42 Something that inexperienced hikers who only look at elevation

19:45 values alone might not anticipate or plan for.

19:48 Few might plan more seriously for a 14,000

19:51 foot mountain than a 6,000 foot mountain

19:54 without realizing that the actual vertical climb you

19:56 experience on both of them will be comparable.

20:00 There are just so many factors at play on Mount Washington that deceive people

20:04 into underestimating its true hidden danger only

20:08 for them to end up getting trapped unprepared,

20:10 exposed to the brutal freezing blinding windy

20:14 weather with nowhere to hide all to either

20:17 fall down off of a cliff or to succumb to hypothermia and the elements.

20:22 Mount Washington's reputation to serious climbers is

20:25 such that it's actually a preferred training

20:27 ground for the way higher peaks up in the Himalayas like Everest and K2

20:32 because you can experience similar weather

20:35 and climatic conditions on Mount Washington as them

20:37 without the added threat and danger

20:39 of altitude sickness complicating things even further.

20:42 And that's great and can be managed when you're prepared to face it,

20:46 but it's not at all for when you're not.

20:48 And there are many many examples from history of the more

20:52 than 160 recorded deaths that have taken place on it since 1848.

20:58 There's an entire Wikipedia list that is

21:00 specifically dedicated to all of these victims.

21:03 If you'd like to go down the rabbit hole into their individual stories later.

21:08 And while you're probably not planning a dangerous hike on Mount Washington,

21:12 even your usage of the internet right now

21:13 in the safety of your own home can still be dangerous.

21:17 And a great way to add a layer of security to whatever

21:19 it is you do on the internet is by using a trusted VPN.

21:22 Like this video's sponsor, NordVPN.

21:25 With NordVPN's no logs policy, your internet service provider isn't able to see

21:29 whatever it is you're searching and neither does NordVPN,

21:32 which actually gives you a true incognito viewing experience

21:35 on the internet that Google's incognito mode doesn't truly provide.

21:39 I especially like to use Nord whenever I'm

21:40 using unfamiliar Wi-Fi networks at airports or cafes.

21:44 And Nord is much more than just a VPN.

21:47 I've known creator friends here on YouTube who've gotten their accounts

21:50 hacked after a successful fishing attempt or a password leak.

21:53 have even seen one or two of them every so often whenever a normal

21:56 channel you love suddenly becomes a crypto

21:58 hype machine seemingly out of nowhere.

22:01 This unfortunately happens way too often and NordVPN's threat

22:04 protection includes specific features that warn you about fishing leaks.

22:08 Along with features like a blocker for malicious ads and dark web

22:11 monitoring to alert you if any of your passwords have been leaked.

22:15 And of course, NordVPN also does great VPN things, too.

22:18 With Nord, you can safely browse the internet

22:20 anonymously and your location always stays private.

22:23 It enables me to set my location anywhere in the world

22:26 and access all the different versions of my favorite websites.

22:29 And it's the fastest working VPN on the planet that provides

22:32 24/7 customer support to help you whenever you need it,

22:36 along with a 30-day money-back guarantee for all users.

22:40 So, if you'd like to give NordVPN a try,

22:43 scan the QR code here on your screen right

22:45 now or click the link down below in the description.

22:48 Every purchase of the 2-year plan will receive four bonus months

22:51 on top and it's completely risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.

22:56 So, click or scan to get started with NordVPN today and as always,

23:00 thank you so much for watching.