Moosilauke Mountaineer

When Larry Huntdey '50 read in his class newsletter that one of the reunion activities was to be a hike up Moosilauke, he didn't think anything was strange about it. Why not take a 40th Reunion hike up a 4,000 footer? He was all for it. Larry didn't notice anything was amiss until he showed up for the event and found that he was the lone 62-year-old in a Fifth and Tenth Reunion crowd. And he didn't mind at all.

"I just wanted to see if I could still do it," Larry says. Though limited time made for a rough pace, Larry prevailed. This is no surprise, really, since the retired Congregationalist minister lived in New England for 25 years, and has climbed 23 of New Hampshire's 4,000 footers. He was active in the Outing Club, and as a trail crew worker in the summer of '48 he helped cut the Ridge Trail up Moosilauke.

For his latest mountaineering feat, he cites his mother as a role model. On her 60th birthday, when Larry's family came to visit him at Moosilauke, his mother went out for a casual stroll and ended up at the summit! She needed no help from the rescue squad that met her on her way down.

Larry moved on to a line of work less strenuous than trail-building, but he never lost his love for the mountains. After being ordained at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth, and while holding various posts in the church and aca deme, he led scout troops on hikes in the Whites. Since moving to Gainesville, Florida, where he retired six years ago from the chaplain's post at a center for the mentally retarded, he has trekked north frequently. This summer's 40th Reunion was just a stop on a ten-week tour of New England and Nova Scotia. The trip included walking tours of bookshops in Cambridge, small New England towns, and Canadian cliffs. Why not Moosilauke? "I'm having a ball," Larry says.