Peak Experiences

Illustration by Tyra Olstad, 2025

Viewed from their base, on the shoulder of a wildflower-strewn hayfield outside Lake Placid, New York, the Adirondack High Peaks are impressive. From their wild, windswept summits, they are transcendent. This is the second thing you learn as a Summit Steward.

The first thing you learn is Maslow. After driving five miles to the end of a winding, treacherously potholed road, where nestled among towering white pines, on the shore of a tranquil, loon-haunted lake in the heart of one of the largest wildernesses in the lower 48, stands the Adirondack Loj, a rustic hotel operated by the Adirondack Mountain Club.

During my phone interview, I was told (or warned) by Julia Goren, Summit Steward Coordinator, about the job, which at first seemed simple. Hike five days a week to the summit of one of the tallest mountains in New York State – Algonquin Peak, Wright Peak, or Mount Marcy (the high point at 5,344 feet) – to educate visitors about the rare and fragile arctic-alpine ecosystem, and to ensure they don’t trample it. The catch: a daily commute upwards of 14 round-trip miles and a few thousand feet of elevation gain and loss over some of the muddiest, rockiest, most unforgiving terrain anywhere. Nights would be spent camping alone in the remote backcountry, beyond the reach of cell phones. The weather would be, to put it mildly, uncooperative. I laughed nervously, wondering if I was in over my head—Am I really cut out for this? But beneath the nerves and excitement was something quieter, more private: a hope that solitude might shake something loose in me, something I hadn’t been able to name.

When I arrive for training in May, I am greeted enthusiastically by Julia, who is older than me (though not by much), but speaks with the earnest wisdom of someone twice her years. She wears her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, a khaki shirt with patches on the shoulders, and a sunny disposition at odds with the temperament I’d expect of someone who so regularly faces the hardships she described. Leading me into the Loj dining room, where I meet that year’s five other stewards, Julia takes her place before a whiteboard and easel, marker in hand. She begins by drawing a triangle divided horizontally into five parts. Abraham Maslow, Julia explains, was an American psychologist born in 1908, known for his theory of psychological health, called the “hierarchy of needs”. Each level supports the ones above; higher levels cannot be attained until the underlying ones are satisfied.

At the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, Julia continues, are the most basic physiological and survival needs: breathing, food, water, sleep, and so on. If these conditions are unmet, a person’s behavior is reflexive and instinctual, often influenced by adrenaline (fight or flight), and all their energy is devoted to staying alive. Above that are needs related to safety and security—of those same physiological systems, or of abstract ones such as employment and property (worry over paying the bills, or being the victim of crime, for example).

Once these basic needs are met and life is somewhat stable, a person becomes free to pursue psychological needs, the fulfilling aspects of life. The first of these levels relates to love and belonging. Every person craves the emotional support of friends and family, or a romantic partner with whom to share trials and triumphs. The next deals with esteem, prestige, and honor, including the need to feel respected by our peers and community, and that our talents and accomplishments are recognized and appreciated. The pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy is “self-actualization”, which he described as ultimate fulfillment of one’s life and purpose—achievement, that is, of one’s creative, moral, and spiritual potential. Maslow believed such “peak” experiences integral to human development and well-being.

What all this means to us, in plain language, Julia beams, is that a person’s immediate bodily needs must be met before their minds come online. I didn’t understand this until day seventeen, halfway up Wright Peak for the third time that week, when I was so dehydrated I hallucinated a ranger crouched in the krummholz. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t a hallucination at all, but some part of me watching myself flail and suffer. When they arrive at the summit, hikers need ample time to catch their breath, to put on warm layers, and to get a drink and a snack, even spend a few moments taking in the view, before an educational message will have any salience. Until then, it’s pointless to try—they simply won’t absorb it. 

As for us Summit Stewards, Maslow also had some advice. It would be a long summer, Julia continued. We should pace ourselves. Each day would be whiplash, from the complete solitude of camp to a flurry of nonstop activity on the summit, and back again. We’d need to eat four thousand calories a day to replace what we burn hiking and staying warm. Even then, fatigue will set in. To stay sharp, we’d have to dutifully manage our own hierarchy.

Ecologists speak of mountains in terms of altitudinal zones, or layers of distinct forest types stacked in a predictable order, based on the climatic tolerance of their flora. Every thousand feet up, Julia tells us during a training hike, is equivalent to traveling five hundred miles north. Occupying the Adirondack lowlands, the warmest and most fertile, is the northern hardwood (deciduous) forest, dominated by sugar maple, beech, and oak, with a deeply shaded, sparse understory. Beginning around 2,500 feet above sea level is the cooler, rockier mixed forest of yellow birch, striped maple, and hemlock, with an understory of hobblebush, ferns, and ephemeral wildflowers. By 3,500 feet, where conditions are almost always windy, wet, and cold, conifers (primarily black spruce and balsam fir) take over, their upper margin a dense, stunted tangle of krummholz.

Above 4,500 feet lies the alpine zone, where only the hardiest plants survive. Here, barraged by ice and gale force winds, trees at last give way to open tundra: an expanse of sedges, heath shrubs, and dwarf plants virtually unchanged since the glaciers. Dormant for much of the year, in June the alpine zone erupts into life, carpeted by the tiny (white) flowers of diapensia, sandwort, Labrador tea, and (magenta) Lapland rosebay that lure the manic activity of bumblebees and sawflies. Goldenrods and purple gentians peek from crevices between rocks, while bilberries and cranberries offer promise of tart August bounty. Despite their hardiness to the elements, alpine plants never evolved to be stepped on by anything larger than a snowshoe hare, and are extremely susceptible to human feet. The 175 acres of alpine tundra that remain in New York is the last of a unique and sensitive ecosystem.

On the journey from trailhead to summit, hikers ascend through each of these life zones. Awaiting is a crash course in physical discomfort: sore feet and an aching back, burning quadriceps, sweat and mud and grime. No switchbacks—the trail goes straight up, demanding hours of high-stepping, balancing, and leaping across a seemingly endless jumble of cobbles and boulders. There are “ankle-breakers” that roll underfoot, icy streams to ford, downed trees blocking the trail, patches of algae slick as a waterslide, and vertiginous slabs of rock that make you gape incredulously—I have to climb that? Lightning storms that materialize out of nowhere, with rain and sleet in gusts so strong you have to crouch to stay upright; hypothermia can set in in minutes. Julia, who possesses the clinical patience of a psychotherapist, says of the relentless swarms of blackflies, “You have to Zen them out.”

If conditions hold, the ones who succeed arrive on the summit tired but ecstatic, high on endorphins, with a mix of relief and joyous accomplishment on their face. The reward? Mostly, the swirling, all-encompassing, ethereal whiteness of clouds, the air muffled and close with humidity, beading droplets on eyebrows and rain shell. Visibility no more than a couple dozen feet. But if you’re lucky, the full splendor of sun and sky, golden meadows and chartreuse lichen, glistening rockslides on adjacent peaks that seem so close you could reach out and touch them; the tumbling whistle of white-throated sparrows drifting across the chasm between. Self-actualization? I’m not so sure. How about “otherworldly, visionary,” as Kim Stanley Robinson writes of the topographic sublime, “then afterward exhausted, sun-blasted, clarified. Transparent to the world, lofted into a higher realm.”

Peak experiences are by no means limited to mountains. Maslow gave many examples how they might arise, including art, music, sex, scientific insight, introspection, and social or familial gatherings such as weddings or the birth of a child. All the ways we feel elevated. No matter their origin, peak experiences share some essential features, among them feelings of euphoria, unity, harmony, and deep meaning. They are often marked by a sense of ease or effortlessness, a dissolution of personal boundaries, and complete absorption in the present. Self-actualizers, who inhabit these states full-time are rare (less than 1% of people, in Maslow’s opinion), but we all have glimpses every once in a while, those moments when we are catapulted into the emotional stratosphere, tracing a searing arc across the sky.

Maslow was well acquainted with such states of consciousness. A mystically-minded man, he is said to have been able to reach rapturous states of wonder merely by lying in the backyard. In articulating his theory, Maslow had a few major insights:

First, the human mind is more than circuitry in a box. Rather, it is a dynamic system in need of continual growth and development. Everyone desires happiness, accomplishment, and fulfillment. Upward trajectory is an inherent feature of our biology.

Second, it is one thing to know intellectually, and quite another to know intuitively, with the unshakeable conviction of experience. Though purely subjective and not overtly religious, peak experiences frequently land with the gravity of revealed truth. Something happened, even if I’m never able to articulate exactly what.

Which brings us to the final quality of peak experiences—they are ineffable. In their aftermath, experiencers report that they perceive themselves and the world in a new way, but the transformation defies expression or easy categorization. It simply cannot be described in words.

Still, I try. In my journal one night after an exhausting, sun-drenched day among expansive alpine vistas, I write: “BREAKTHROUGH”. An epiphany of self-discovery? Or merely what it’s like to watch clouds part beneath my feet? Does it matter? When I reread it the next morning I know exactly what I meant.

Wilderness, in particular, presents a powerful frame for such experiences. Raw and elemental, laden with risk, and lacking the normal guideposts of everyday life, wilderness is a blank slate onto which we project and process trauma, and forge powerful bonds of connection with companions and the natural world. Perhaps it’s the arduous physicality of hiking that catalyzes this reaction. Pushing hard for extended periods of time, to the limit of one’s exertion and endurance, we more easily drop into effortless pleasurable concentration, called “flow”. Or perhaps it’s the alpine zone itself, the daily revelation of emerging from the confinement of treeline, into vastness.

By July, I am strong and sure-footed, bounding upward each morning, where I’m usually the first to arrive and, except for the ravens, the last to leave. When hikers crest the summit, I remember my training, and give them time. Only then do I approach to deliver my spiel. My other duties include tending lines of small rocks, which stewards have placed as a visual marker of where not to step, and maintaining a string fence that guards a vulnerable patch of plants. Once a week, I make careful observations of alpine plant phenology – the stages of flowering, seed production, and senescence – to track long-term trends. As the season progresses, I become acquainted with every rock and root on the trail, and witness countless moments of shattering, incomprehensible beauty. I grow increasingly attached to what I come to think of as “my” summit, and relish a budding sense of respect and responsibility that I take to be the very essence of stewardship.

One week, though, on the fourth day in a row of rain, I find myself huddled in the mediocre shelter of a boulder, my clothes already damp and smelly, eating with mittened hands the same soggy food and seriously reconsidering the choices that led me here to steward the Adirondack summits. After an hour passes without a hiker, and then two, this summer job starts to seem more like pointless suffering. What the hell am I doing here? No one would know if I just left. The idea is so tempting I sit with it awhile, gnawing cold peanut butter from a tortilla. But then I look down—really look—and see how a tendril of dwarf willow curls delicately around a crack in billion-year-old anorthosite, how rosebay petals glisten through the mist like glass. Here, at my feet, a lesson in resilience, the tenacity to hold firm to a tenuous existence – to flourish, even – under the harshest conditions. And in that very instant something changes. The internal storm of discomfort and self-pity is replaced by quiet, confident solace, a contented warmth spreading from my chest. Instead of struggling against the mountain, I am absorbed into its embrace. I am the mountain. The steamy breath flowing from my nostrils the same as the droplets carried on the wind, the plants an extension of my own body. Maybe I too can grow through adversity.

There are no words to express exactly what happened. Believe me.

French alpinist Lionel Terray described mountain climbers as “conquistadors of the useless”, by which he meant that climbing mountains is a glorious achievement but serves no practical purpose. As September approaches and my body and boot soles wear thin, I am starting to agree with him. There are days when it feels absurd, hauling a wet tent and five pounds of granola up 4,000 vertical feet just to explain to someone why they shouldn’t step on the moss. So why do it? What good are peak experiences?

Research has shown that spending time outdoors elicits a positive effect on mental health and overall well-being. Exposure to airborne organic compounds, such as the aromatic essential oils produced by trees, improves immune and cognitive function while decreasing anxiety, depression, and anger. Habitual exposure lowers blood pressure and, according to one study, “may help to decrease the risk of psychosocial stress-related diseases.” These findings help to explain the popularity of wilderness retreats as an effective setting for healing. For veterans suffering from PTSD, addicts in recovery, even college freshmen beginning a new chapter of their lives, the alpine zone affords a superior vantage point – literally, orientation – from which matters that once seemed daunting appear smaller and more manageable. For the rest of us, too, mountains provide a remedy for fear and existential despair, relief from physical or psychological pain, and a counterpoint to drudgery and the diffuse anxiety that characterizes our time, the claustrophobia of our digital lives.

Maslow’s primary interest, though, was not treating the sick, but betterment of the well through maximizing “human potential”. The goal of the therapist, he wrote, is to help the patient identify and overcome obstacles that prevent him from attaining it.

According to psychologist Dacher Keltner, awe is a fundamental human emotion, one that evolved because of its power to override narrow self-interest and promote altruistic behavior. It’s advantageous for the species, Keltner believes, to have an emotion that makes us feel part of something larger than ourselves. As anyone who’s spent time in the midst of the High Peaks knows, it’s impossible not to be awed by them. The majesty of the summit view, the power of wind and water, the depth of time, the patience of trees – dwarf self-concern and underscore the smallness of humans in the grand scheme of things. The opposite of bleakness or isolation, awe reifies – and renders totally appropriate – the cliché of mountains as a place of spiritual rejuvenation. “True,” writes author Robert MacFarlane in Mountains of the Mind, “you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realization that you do exist—as unlikely as it may seem, you do exist.”

That’s what this summer has given me. I’ve never been so tired, or so hungry, cold, dirty, or sunburnt. And I’ve never felt so well. It’s also what I noticed on Julia’s face the day I met her, what I was so impressed by—the effect of cumulative awe.

              The Adirondacks are among the busiest peaks in the northeast, and more people than ever are lacing up their boots and discovering therapy and thrill on their slopes. The Loj parking lot fills by 9am any day of the week, with cars lining the shoulder of the road for miles. Along with crowds has come trash, human waste, and inordinate trail damage, a constant struggle for managers to keep up with.

But even if stewards do their job and hikers’ boots are meticulously corralled, climate change presents an even greater threat. Mountain areas worldwide are warming faster than the global average, with potentially devastating consequences on their flora and fauna, and the myriad benefits (such as drinking water, flood protection, and pollination) they provide. Some alpine plants, for example, require substantial winter snowpack to protect from breakage and desiccation, and as insulation from extreme cold. As the climate warms and snowpack becomes sparser, their future, and ours, is increasingly uncertain.

If there’s one lesson to be drawn from decades of exasperated climate activism, it’s that science alone is not enough to change people’s minds. One reason why action on climate has failed to reach critical mass is because most people are occupied with meeting daily needs, and do not have the luxury of thinking about abstract, long-term problems that seem only distantly related to their lives. In much the same way, Maslow understood that peak experiences alone are not sufficient to ensure personal or societal well-being. He emphasized that to have a lasting positive effect, the insights we glean must be integrated into conscious daily actions. 

So as I stand day after day in that rarefied air atop the High Peaks, reciting facts about glacial geology and the remarkable adaptations of alpine plants, my desire naturally grows to instill in visitors a deeper sense of reverence and appreciation. Many hikers come with a vague notion that something valuable but intangible is to be found here. The subversive, largely unspoken aspect of my job, I come to understand, is to arm them with incontrovertible evidence that that is the case.

The true blessing of mountains, MacFarlane continues, is not merely that they provide a challenge, but that they “return to us the priceless capacity for wonder which can so insensibly be leached away by modern existence, and they urge us to apply that wonder to our own everyday lives.”

The highest role of a steward—the ultimate fulfillment of my purpose—is not only to preserve the wild places that remain, but to widen visitors’ circle of identification, and by extension, responsibility. This year, Summit Stewards interacted with tens of thousands of people. Imagine if even a fraction of them became lifelong wilderness advocates. Imagine the coalition that could be mobilized to speak, work, and fight on its behalf.

This is the third thing you learn as a Summit Steward. There are always more mountains to climb. And somehow, I’m no longer afraid of the ascent.