The Long Walk
JUST after midnight on May 31, 1920, two determined Dartmouth undergraduates stepped briskly onto the dark highway near Skyline Farm in Littleton, New Hampshire, ready for a spectacular test of physical endurance. William Fowler '2l and Sherman Adams '20 were setting out on a walk that was to take them in record time the entire distance along the chain of cabins of the Dartmouth Outing Club, of which Adams was then president. The two young men were accompanied at the outset by Frank Tonis '23, who had intended merely to see them off but decided at the last minute to join the trek.
Dartmouth students had been trying all spring to set walking records. The D.O.C. sponsored an annual "Mileage Contest," awarding medals to undergraduates who covered the most miles on foot, skis, or snowshoes within the period of January to April. Time for such excursions being limited, it naturally developed that a great many miles were crammed into weekend hikes.
By April 30 of that year, Fowler had chalked up a total of 681 miles to break the previous mark of 533 1/3 miles. To achieve this record, he and a companion had walked the 32 miles from Hanover to Pike in a single day. Adams, in a similar attempt with Ellis Briggs '21, had covered 42 miles to Bellows Falls in one day, then on the next day 34 miles to East Northfield, Massachusetts. On May 4, Adams, described by Fowler as a "relentless walker, with muscles of steel," walked 62 miles to Putney, Vermont, in 17½ hours. The 24-hour walking race was on.
A week later, Fowler set out with a classmate, John Herbert, on a hike of 66 miles, breaking Adams' short-lived record. On the very same day, Warren Daniell '22 completed 69 miles, walking alone from Hanover to Woodsville and part way back.
If one man can be said to have sparked this fervor, it was "Doc" Leland Griggs, biology professor, outdoorsman, and adviser to the D.O.C. He dreamed of bringing the most distant cabins within a day's walk of Hanover. When Fowler and Adams began to talk of joining forces for a record walk, Doc Griggs offered the use of his car for transportation to the starting point. He lined up teams of students to provide food along the way and to massage the aching and stiffened legs of the walkers. Griggs planned to follow along in the car with a generous supply of adhesive plaster for blisters, drinking water in a jar, and changes of clothing.
Fowler and Adams had begun to train for the walk by hiking 20 to 40 miles each weekend. They averaged five miles each day around campus, usually in an hour's time. This was practice; Adams was famous for his rapid pace, having been clocked at seven miles an hour. Fowler tried to toughen his feet for the ordeal by soaking them in alum water twice a day. Both men had trained so vigorously and were so keyed up that when they reached the Chalet, most distant D.O.C. cabin, with Doc Griggs and Tonis on May 30, neither was able to sleep in the few hours until midnight.
Tonis had done considerable walking and skiing during his first winter in Hanover, but was hardly ready for such an arduous experience. He started out with Fowler and Adams in a cheery mood. "I was a supernumerary," he recalled in a recent conversation. "I walked along beside them telling jolly stories." He lasted about three hours before the fierce pace forced him to drop far behind the two hikers who reached Profile House at 3:03 a.m. Tonis trudged on far enough to see the Old Man of the Mountains at sunrise, a sight he has never forgotten.
In an article called "From Midnight to Midnight" in the December 1932 issue of Appalachia, journal of the Appalachian Mountain Club, Fowler wrote: "We reached Agassiz Basin Cabin at 5:45, having gone 25½ miles. Doc Griggs had not got there, as we were so far ahead of time, so we got up all the freshmen in the cabin and made them feed us some eggs and get cold water to soak our feet in. We spent three-quarters of an hour there and left at 6:30."
With the coming of daylight, Fowler and Adams left the paved road and took to the trails. They grew warm and shed some of their heavy clothes. With frequent stops to drink water, to bathe their feet in cold mountain brooks, and to tend Fowler's blisters, they slowed their pace as the day went on. "At Great Bear Cabin," Fowler wrote, "we both got a good rub-down by a fellow who knew how to do it - Harry Hillman." They ate raw eggs, toast, and oranges, and were on their way again by noon, with another student acting as pacesetter. By 4:30 in the afternoon, they had walked 62 miles to Cube Cabin, where they were, in Fowler's words, "pretty far gone."
"After 60 miles," Fowler said recently, reminiscing about the hike, "if a man has any weak spots in his physical makeup they begin to show up." In his case, it was a painful stiffening of his knees, aggravated, he believes, by his height of six feet and weight of 168 pounds. Adams, not so heavy as Fowler, had no trouble with his legs or feet, but did suffer from stomach cramps and nausea. The heat intensified their discomfort; from noon to about 9:00 p.m. the day was oppressively hot.
The last 21 miles was torture. Tonis and Victor Baldwin '23 joined them at Bass Hill, and Doc Griggs walked between them with his jar of water. Knowing that time was growing short, they pressed on at a pace of four-and-a-half miles an hour, resting briefly every mile or so. Fowler now believes that he and Adams might not have finished the walk without the three men who rallied them on in the last miles. "Fowler and Adams had gumption all right," Tonis remembers. "Neither one wasted any energy talking. They were bound they would make it, and nothing would stop them."
Fowler and Adams reached their destination, Webster Hall, on the north end of the campus, at 13 minutes before midnight. They had walked 83 miles, climbed a total of 5,600 feet and descended about 6,500 feet. Except for an attempt in September of that year by Daniell to walk to the Massachusetts line, the craze for distance walking at Dartmouth was at an end. The "Chain-of-Cabins" walk has never been attempted again.
Neal O'Hara, a columnist for the old Boston Post summed it up well. "Others have covered longer distances in the given space of 24 hours," he wrote in 1921, "but such feats have been achieved on well-kept roads or circular tracks where the surface is free of rocky impediments, underbrush, felled trees, streams, and ruts. . . . Fowler and Adams made two-thirds of that distance over a course that was crammed with natural obstacles."
Fowler, Adams, and Tonis, now in their seventies, still enjoy vigorous good health. Tonis, a retired educator, has kept himself in shape with a set of exercises known as "Contrology" and by bicycling each day. Sherman Adams, former governor of New Hampshire, skis regularly on the slopes of his Loon Mt. ski resort. Fowler, a practicing attorney, runs up and down the stairs of his three-story house several times a day. One of the founders of the Ledyard Canoe Club, Fowler has also kept active as a member and one-time president of the Appalachian Mountain Club. The habit in all three men of regular exercise and physical conditioning was honed on D.O.C. trails back in the days of "Mileage Contests" and of the Chain-of-Cabins walk.
Olive Tardiff also wrote "Sisters of Dartmouth" in the issue of October 1974.
