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EDITOR

Reconnect with past Editors’ Choice winners and see for yourself why they received Yankee Magazine’ s highest accolade.

(Continued from p. 56)

Reconnect with past they received Yankee

Reconnect with past Editors’ Choice they received Yankee Magazine’s highest

SHERWOOD ISLAND STATE PARK, Westport. Encompassing New England’s westernmost Long Island Sound beaches, Sherwood is Connecticut’s oldest state park. Twin swimming areas, whose sands get their color from garnet (red) and magnetite (black), ank a point designated for surf casting; inland, there are hiking trails, a nature center, and even a model airplane eld. Picnic tables, a food concession, and showers round out the facilities. portal.ct.gov/DEEP/State-Parks

SILVER SANDS STATE PARK, Milford

Nestled along Long Island Sound between Bridgeport and New Haven, Silver Sands o ers calm, warm water; a boardwalk running nearly the length of the beach; and footpaths that wind through a restored salt marsh. Charles Island, where Captain Kidd allegedly buried treasure (where didn’t he?), lies a half mile o shore; access via low-tide sandbar is permitted only o -season, when birds aren’t nesting. portal.ct.gov/DEEP/State-Parks

Maine

CRESCENT BEACH STATE PARK, Cape Elizabeth. is sandy break in Maine’s famous “rockbound coast” is a mile-long gem just south of Portland. Sheltered from the open Atlantic by Cape Elizabeth (that’s the cape’s famous Two Lights to the east), the surf here is gentle and warmer than most Maine ocean waters, making Crescent Beach attractive to swimmers and sea kayakers. Add in picnic tables, grills, and a playground, and you’ve got a popular family beach, too. maine.gov/crescentbeach

FERRY BEACH STATE PARK, Saco

Only two miles from the heart of bustling Old Orchard Beach lies a 117-acre beach park ideal for families. Along with picnicking beneath a covered shelter and swimming o the white sand beach (accessible through an underpass from the picnic spot), the park is notable for its inviting walking paths, nearly two miles of trails that cut through forest, and a rare tupelo swamp over a raised boardwalk. maine.gov/ferrybeach

FOOTBRIDGE BEACH, Ogunquit. Ogunquit’s cli top Marginal Way gets most of the attention, but just to the north, the barrier sands of Footbridge Beach are right on the water. Accessible by a footbridge from town, the beach lies at the quiet northern end of a three-mile swatch of sand. Facilities include a snack stand and restrooms; for restaurants and chair rentals, stroll south to busier Ogunquit Beach. ogunquit.org

OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Old Orchard Beach. Approaching its 200th year as a resort destination, Old Orchard Beach holds its place as Maine’s liveliest seaside draw. Its seven-mile strand, embracing Saco Bay just south of Portland (and accessible via Amtrak’s Downeaster), fronts a busy mélange of motels, restaurants, snack bars, shops, and the Palace Playland amusement park with its recently built roller coaster and Ferris wheel; a 500-foot pier carries the fun out to sea. oldorchardbeachmaine.com

POPHAM BEACH STATE PARK, Phippsburg. ere’s nothing manicured about this rare spit of sand sandwiched between rocky shores. Pieces of driftwood lie on the beach, backed by dwarf pines and uprooted trees. When the water rolls in, kids swim in the warm (yes, warm) waters of the tidal pool as parents take long beach walks, watching three-masted schooners and lobstermen cruise past pinestudded islands and lighthouses. Let the cool breeze blow through your hair and breathe in the salty air. is is the raw, genuine Maine coast you’ve yearned for. maine.gov/pophambeach

ROQUE BLUFFS STATE PARK, Roque Blu s. Few coastal parks o er as much variety of terrain as Roque Blu s—and hardly any give visitors a choice of salt- or fresh-water beaches. e pebbly shore along Englishman Bay is the place for a typically bracing Maine dip, while shallow Simpson Pond is a hot tub by comparison. On dry land, enjoy six miles of trails that weave through nearly 300 acres of woodland and meadows and along the rocky blu s. maine.gov/roqueblu s

SAND BEACH, Acadia National Park

Sand is in short supply along Acadia’s rocky shores, but this 300-yard beach on Mount Desert Island’s east side has its share, largely composed of pulverized shells. It’s a great spot for an invigorating swim in water that struggles to reach 55°F, and the starting place of scenic trails, but beach glass collectors come here for the translucent jewels (even pink shows up on occasion) tossed and polished over decades in the ocean. nps.gov/acad

Massachusetts

COAST GUARD BEACH, Eastham

A regular honoree on national “best beaches” lists, Coast Guard Beach marks the beginning of what oreau called “the Great Beach.” Part of Cape Cod National Seashore, Coast Guard Beach is wide, with sand dunes, marshland, and pounding waves. Parking in summer is reserved for residents and vehicles with handicapped placards, but free transportation is provided via a shuttle bus at the Little Creek parking area in Eastham. e beach itself is handicapped accessible and also rents out beach wheelchairs. nps.gov/caco

CORN HILL BEACH, Truro. A pleasant bayside alternative to the colder, heavier surf on Cape Cod’s Atlantic shores, Corn Hill (named for the spot where the Pilgrims were said to have found a stash of Wampanoag corn) is a narrow, dune-backed stretch of sand just north of Pamet Harbor. e calm, shallow waters are ideal for kids, though there are no lifeguards. Facilities are limited to porta-potties. truro-ma.gov

CRANE BEACH, Ipswich. Considered a crown jewel among the Trustees of Reservations’ 100-plus properties, Crane is a spectacular white-sand beach … and then some. e 2,100 acres donated by plumbing- xture magnate Richard Crane and his family comprise dunes, salt marsh, and a maritime scrub forest laced with trails. In summer, there are lifeguards, bathhouses, refreshments, and outdoor showers; year-round, naturalists guide birding walks (snowy owls are regular visitors, and piping plovers nest here) and other outdoor adventures. thetrustees.org

JETTIES BEACH, Nantucket. An easy bike ride from the center of town brings you to a seashell-strewn north-shore beach notable for a sandbar where bathers can hang out in ankle-deep water. A family favorite with lifeguards, restrooms, playground, and gentle surf, Jetties is also known for its beach-friendly wheelchairs as well as a long plastic mat along the beach to help with going to and fro. e seagulls here will thieve your lunch in a second, so come prepared with a covered basket when you swim. nantucket-ma.gov/2426/jetties-beach NANTASKET BEACH RESERVATION, Hull. A 1928 carousel is all that remains of Nantasket’s amusement park heyday, but the mile-long beach is still there and o ers one of the Boston area’s best places to swim in clean ocean water while enjoying a skyline view of the Hub. Perhaps because of its urban location, Nantasket is one of Massachusetts’s prime spots for collecting sea glass, especially as high tide recedes. mass.gov/visitmassachusetts-state-parks

RACE POINT BEACH, Provincetown is sizable beach at Cape Cod National Seashore’s northern extreme has it all: miles of ne tawny sand, ocean waves, lifeguards and bathhouses, and spectacular sunsets. Race Point Light is a two-mile walk from the beach, and bike trails weaving through the dunes from Provincetown are an alternative to parking fees. e Old Harbor LifeSaving Station opens as a museum in summer; the Province Lands Visitor Center is also nearby. Evening camp re permits are available. nps.gov/caco

South Beach

(KATAMA

BEACH),

Edgartown. Located on Martha’s Vineyard, an island famous for its beaches, this three-mile-long dune-backed beauty has long, rolling waves for those who love the exhilaration of body sur ng, as well as a protected saltwater pond for the surf-averse. Located a few miles from downtown, in the residential area of Katama, the beach is one of the few on the island with restrooms. Beach driving is allowed with permits, too. mvy.com/beachesmarthas-vineyard

WINGAERSHEEK BEACH, Gloucester. A favorite among Gloucester’s public beaches, Wingaersheek embraces the calm waters at the meeting of the Annisquam River and Ipswich Bay. Tides in the bay are substantial; at low tide, the beach reaches out to a sandbar hundreds of yards from the high-tide line, which makes for a great wet-sand walk and a gradual drop-o when the tide is in. Lifeguards in season. Parking is limited; nonresidents must reserve online. gloucester-ma.gov

New Hampshire

CARRY BEACH, Wolfeboro. ere are better-known beaches on Lake Winnipesaukee, but they’re bigger and busier. Carry Beach, on Winter Harbor, is as low-key as they come, with shallow, kid-friendly water; a small sandy beach set in parklike surroundings; and lifeguards in season. It’s also home to a water aerobics program and the swim portion of the annual Granite Man Triathlon. e beach’s name? is was once a canoe portage spot. wolfeboronh.us/parks-recreation

HAMPTON BEACH STATE PARK, Hampton. New Hampshire’s only slightly more sedate answer to the rollicking shore towns of New Jersey features a boardwalk; a full complement of lodgings, restaurants, and snack bars; and the pop-androck venue of the Hampton Beach Casino. All these attractions stand behind a miles-long state park, with a pristine white-sand beach (rated one of America’s cleanest), ve bathhouses, RV camping sites, and a special section for surfers. nhstateparks.org/visit/state-parks

ODIORNE POINT STATE PARK, Rye.

Odiorne is a top alternative to sandy swimmers’ beaches, with a rocky shore peppered with the remains of the WWII gun emplacements, trails threading through dense brush, and the Seacoast Science Center with its ne exhibits focusing on the area’s human and natural history. e park is popular with sea kayakers, and with birders life-listing redthroated loons, broad-winged hawks, and many other species. Limited parking can be booked in advance. nhstateparks.org/visit/state-parks

WALLIS SANDS STATE PARK, Rye. For a state with an 18-mile seacoast, New Hampshire does more than all right. Facing the Gulf of Maine between Rye and Odiorne Point, with views of the Isles of Shoals, Wallis is an aptly named arc of sand ranging the length of a small state park. Facilities at the north end include a picnic area, shop, and bathhouse; 500 parking spaces sound like a lot, but you’d best reserve a spot in advance. nhstateparks.org/ visit/state-parks

Rhode Island

EAST BEACH STATE BEACH, Charlestown. While Charlestown’s Blue Shutters Beach draws a family crowd with its full facilities, the community’s Ninigret Conservation Area o ers a quieter, more remote setting. With three miles of sandy shoreline, a scant 20 campsites, and limited parking, this barrier beach at the east end of Quonochontaug Neck provides an away-from-itall experience—though seasonal lifeguards in one section make it great for kids. riparks.com

EAST MATUNUCK STATE BEACH, South Kingstown. Broad sands and vigorous surf combine with ample facilities at this popular state beach near Rhode Island’s southeastern corner. Amenities include indoor and outdoor showers, restrooms and changing areas, lifeguards, and Salty’s Burgers & Seafood. Get there early for parking, especially on weekends; during o -hours (the beach closes for swimming at 6 p.m.), it’s a prime surf-casting spot. riparks.com

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MOHEGAN BLUFFS, New Shoreham (Block Island). Towering up to 200 feet above the ocean, the blu ’s clay cli s are aproned by one of Block Island’s nest and most remote beaches, well worth the 141-step descent on a wooden staircase (just remember, you have to climb back up!). It’s a popular spot for surfers, so expect some serious waves—this isn’t Block Island Sound, but the open Atlantic. blockislandinfo.com

NAPATREE POINT, Westerly. is mile-and-a-half swath of sand arcs out from Westerly’s Watch Hill village and past a private club as it separates Little Narragansett Bay from Long Island Sound. Napatree is known as a walker’s beach, but swimming is ne in the gentle waters of the Sound. Protected by the Watch Hill Conservancy, the point is without facilities (including lifeguards); wardens occasionally patrolling the beach are there to protect piping plovers. thewatchhillconservancy.org

NARRAGANSETT TOWN BEACH, Narragansett. e smooth curve of sand near the mouth of Narragansett Bay sets the standard for town beaches. Look for full facilities, with lifeguards all summer, a rst-aid o ce, plenty of parking, two pavilions, a boardwalk, an observation tower, and 19 acres of beachfront that accommodate the crowds—without overcrowding. And while this isn’t Maui, beginning and intermediate surfers nd decent waves in a set-aside zone. narragansettri.gov

SACHUEST (SECOND) BEACH, Middletown. Everyone rides the waves at Second Beach, located just outside the Newport town line. Surfers can be found to the west, near Purgatory Chasm, a deep cleft in the bedrock rising above Sachuest Bay; atop the rise is the campus of St. George’s School, its limestone chapel tower a dramatic backdrop to the powdery sand. Families, meanwhile, grab their boogie boards and head to the center of the scenic mile-long beach to try their luck. Board rentals and lessons are available during the season, as well as a Del’s Lemonade truck and concession stand. middletownri.com

Vermont

ALBURGH DUNES STATE PARK, Alburgh. A beach isn’t a beach without sand dunes, so freshwater beaches are out … right? Wrong. One of Vermont’s newest state parks was established to preserve an incongruous feature of northern Lake Champlain, a duneland left behind by retreating glaciers. Along with the dunes, erosion and winds have created one of the lake’s longest beaches, enclosed within a day-use park that features a picnic area with grills, and restroom/ changing facilities in a rustic setting. vtstateparks.com/alburgh.html

BOULDER BEACH STATE PARK, Groton. One of seven state parks in 26,000-acre Groton State Forest, Boulder Beach may sound rocky, but the eponymous boulders merely dot a stretch of sandy shoreline along Lake Groton. ere’s a de nite wilderness feel to the terrain in this southern threshold of the Northeast Kingdom, but the park is well equipped with changing facilities, boat rentals, a concession stand, and a broad lawn dotted with picnic sites behind the beach. vtstateparks.com/boulder.html

CRYSTAL LAKE STATE PARK, Barton. One of the glacially carved jewels of northern Vermont’s lake country lies just outside the town of Barton and features a sandy swimming beach with a spectacular view. Located at the northern end of three-mile-long Crystal Lake, the park o ers canoe and paddleboard rentals, tables and grills, and concession facilities housed in a distinctive, Civilian Conservation Corps–built changing station. ere’s also a kitchen-equipped cottage for rent. vtstateparks.com/crystal.html

SAND BAR STATE PARK, Milton Vermont’s most popular day-use state park is home to its nest stretch of Lake Champlain beachfront, a 2,000-foot strand with a dropo so gradual that it seems you could wade from the mainland to the Champlain Islands. e shallow waters make this an ideal beach for kids, who’ll also enjoy the play area and ice cream stand. Get there early to snag a table and grill. vtstateparks.com/sandbar.html

Tickle your puzzler!

Tomato Joy

(Continued from p. 40)

12 ounces dried rigatoni

1 cup whole-milk ricotta

½ teaspoon lemon zest

1¼ teaspoons kosher salt, divided, plus more for the pasta water

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

6 garlic cloves, sliced

½ cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained, rinsed, and finely chopped

Red pepper flakes

6 cups fresh baby spinach

Grated Parmesan, for serving

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the rigatoni and cook according to the package directions. Drain, reserving ½ cup of the pasta water. While the pasta cooks, stir together the ricotta, lemon zest, 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Set aside. Warm the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, 1 minute. Stir in the tomatoes, 2 generous pinches of red pepper flakes, the spinach, and the remaining ¼ teaspoon salt. Cook until the spinach is wilted, about 3 minutes. Add the cooked pasta and toss for 2 minutes to warm through.

Transfer the pasta to a serving bowl and add the ricotta mixture, along with 2 tablespoons of the reserved pasta water. Toss until the pasta is well coated. If the sauce is too thick, add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time. Serve immediately, with grated Parmesan on the side. Yields 4 to 6 servings.

Southwest Quinoa Salad

To make a really good vinaigrette, you need an emulsifier—something that keeps the oil and vinegar (or in this case, lime juice) from separating and gives the dressing a smooth, almost creamy texture. Here, tomato paste does the trick. In addition to making the dressing for this recipe extra tomatoey, it helps bring together all the other flavors. Don’t skip letting the quinoa cool completely before you dress the salad, or it will end up less luscious than intended.

FOR THE DRESSING

Juice of 1 lime

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 garlic clove, grated

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

¹⁄ 8 teaspoon chipotle chili powder

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

FOR THE SALAD

1 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained

1 cup halved cherry or grape tomatoes

¾ cup frozen corn, thawed

¼ cup finely chopped red onion

½ small red bell pepper, chopped

½ small yellow bell pepper, chopped

3 cups cooked quinoa, chilled

1 avocado, diced

¼ cup crumbled queso fresco (or feta)

¼ cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro

To make the dressing, whisk together the lime juice, tomato paste, garlic, salt, paprika, and chili powder in a small bowl. Add the oil in a slow, steady stream, while whisking vigorously until emulsified.

To assemble the salad, combine the beans, tomatoes, corn, onion, and bell peppers in a large bowl. Add the quinoa and dressing, then stir to evenly coat. Spread onto a platter and top with the avocado, queso fresco, and cilantro. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve. Yields 6 to 8 servings.

OVEN-BAKED COD WITH DILL AND SUNGOLD CHERRY TOMATOES

The classic French cooking method called en papillote—a fancy way of saying putting food in a packet and baking it with steam—is a quick, incredibly easy, and nearly foolproof technique for preparing fish. To do it, you season the fish and layer it with aromatics, then wrap it in parchment paper and place into the oven. You can make it into a meal by adding quick-cooking vegetables like (surprise!) the tomatoes in this recipe. For the best results, portion your ingredients evenly so all the packets are ready at the same time.

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1 garlic clove, grated

1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish

¾ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning fish

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning fish

4 cod filets, 4–6 ounces apiece

1½ cups halved Sungold cherry tomatoes

1 small lemon, thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Cut four 12-inch squares of parchment paper. Stir together the butter, garlic, dill, ¾ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper in a small bowl.

Center a filet on each parchment sheet and season with salt and pepper. Dot each filet with one-quarter of the compound butter. Divide the tomatoes evenly among the packets and top each with 1 or 2 lemon slices.

Fold or twist each sheet of parchment to seal in the ingredients. Arrange on a baking sheet. Bake the fish for about 12 minutes, or until it is no longer opaque. Garnish with more dill before serving. Yields 4 servings.

‘In Trouble. Can’t Move. Could Die.’

(Continued from p. 93) snow, and a minus-zero windchill— stopped moving near the summit of Mount Clay, the northern shoulder of Mount Washington. He wouldn’t get below treeline again until after midnight, when an elite mountain rescue team went to find him in conditions that, even by the standards of Mount Washington, were extreme for late June.

“These [Presidential] mountains are weird, because they’re tame most of the time,” says rescuer and veteran ice climber Michael Wejchert. “Something like Mount Washington, it’s unique because people try to climb it 365 days a year. It doesn’t have the worst weather, it’s not the tallest, and it’s not the steepest. But it has a version of all three of those things. And sometimes that mountain can fight back.”

Gu might not have shared Chen’s love of the outdoors, but he understood his friend’s ambitions. The two men’s bond went back to the mid1980s, when both were physics students at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. Gu says his friend then was much like the person he later knew in Andover: hard-working with an appreciation for solitude.

The oldest of two boys born to archaeologist parents, Chen spent his formative years in Fuzhou, the capital of southeastern China’s Fujian province, but it was his early childhood in the countryside that he would recall most glowingly to his wife and children. He had loved to ramble around the fields that radiated out from his grandmother’s house, looking for wildlife, and watched with awe as older boys jumped fearlessly into a nearby river.

While Chen was at the University of Shanghai, his mother died suddenly of liver cancer. Until then, Chen had never imagined leaving his home country. Yet as China began to open up to the world, and he saw friends leave for the United States, he began to wonder what might be next for him.

He found it in an unlikely place: Kansas. Chen arrived at Wichita State University in January 1994 with $5,000 in savings to pursue a master’s in industrial engineering. As it happened, Wichita was also where his future wife, Lian Liu, had arrived nearly four years before from Sichuan province in southwestern China. A nursing student in her final year at tiny Bethel College,

Liu met Chin at a house party hosted by the Chinese Student Association at Wichita State. Two weeks later, they began dating. Six months after that, the two married.

“I had friends who thought I was crazy—‘Why are you getting married so fast?’ they asked me,” says Liu. “But it felt right.”

In Wichita, Liu worked at a local hospital while Chen finished his degree. In 1996 Chen graduated and accepted a job with a flute manufacturer in Waltham, Massachusetts. The young couple found a small apartment in nearby Framingham, and Chen kept life in perpetual motion.

“He never wanted to just stay home,” Liu says. “We went to the Cape, we’d go up to Maine. He liked going to the movies, going out to eat, and he liked shopping, much more than me. We’d be out and he’d see something and say, ‘Why don’t you try that on? You’d look pretty in it.’ We’d get home with all this stuff and he hadn’t bought himself anything.”

In 2000 their first child was born, a daughter named Megan. Two years later Liu gave birth to Kaiwen, and in 2005 the couple’s second daughter, Meiling, arrived. Soon after, the Chen family moved to a five-bedroom colonial just a few doors down from his old friend, Dennis Gu, in Andover.

Even as the kids grew older and schedules became more complicated, Chen and Liu, a cardiac nurse at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, made time for family travel. There were camping trips to Maine, weekends on Cape Cod, more adventurous sojourns to the Grand Canyon and other national parks, and holiday treks through Europe. But even on family trips, Chen was always looking for extra adventure—when the family visited Iceland a few years ago, for example, he and Kaiwen arrived there a week early so they could hike and camp along the 34-mile Laugavegur trail.

“He was always looking for ways to challenge himself,” says Kaiwen. “Whether it was his work or the kind of hikes he wanted to do, he never wanted to feel like he was stagnating. And once he set his mind on something, he did everything in his power to actually do it.”

At 9:44 on the morning of June 18, Xi Chen took a series of short selfie videos atop Mount Madison, the first of the four presidential peaks he planned to traverse that day. In several of them he beams widely from beneath the hood of his jacket. The scene around him, however, is a stark contrast. The morning is gray, the peak shrouded in fog, the wind snapping Chen’s outer shell.

Over the next several hours, as Chen made his way up and over the boulder-strewn tops of Adams and Jefferson, a steady rain fell. At 2:50 p.m., Chen stopped briefly to text his wife: Got wet, three miles from any civilization. A bit concerned [about] hypothermia. Chen, who’d set his phone so Liu could track his general progress, then added, Keep an eye on my location

At 4:26 p.m. Chen texted again. Heading [to] Mt. Washington or Lake in the Clouds hut.

Liu, who had recently returned from picking up Kaiwen in Worcester, felt her worry turn to fear. It’ll get dark early with the weather, she texted back. Let me know when u get there

Chen replied: If I stop moving then in trouble.

Another hour passed before Liu heard from her husband again. By then, the weather had taken a turn for the extreme. On the summit of Mount Washington, gusts of up to 80 mph were driving the windchill down to 5 below. Sleet and snow had descended across the Presidential Range. Not even the best rain gear could have kept Chen dry, much less warm.

In all probability Chen was already suffering from hypothermia, which strikes when your core temperature drops below 95°F. As it attacks the body—forcing it to shiver excessively and reduce blood flow to the skin and extremities, to protect vital organs—it also attacks the mind. Causing memory loss, incoherence, disorientation, and sheer exhaustion, it can complicate a person’s ability to get help or find safety. At its most extreme, hypothermia can even trick the victim into feeling overheated, causing them to shed clothing.

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It’s unclear exactly when Chen stopped walking, but at 5:30 p.m., just a mile from the Lake of the Clouds Hut, he sent out a desperate text to Liu. In trouble. Can’t move.

Do I need to call rescue? she asked.

Yes, he replied at 5:47. Could die.

Liu immediately dialed 911, but she was told that without her husband’s exact location, no rescue could be mobilized. As Liu urged her husband to message or call 911, Kaiwen sprang into action, taking the general location that his father’s phone had shared and using Google Maps’ satellite view to get a fix on his father’s approximate longitude and latitude. Liu relayed that information to a 911 dispatcher, who told her an officer with New Hampshire Fish and Game would call her back.

As Liu waited for the call, she tried again to reach Chen. When he didn’t pick up, she texted, pleading with him again to message 911 to solidify his location. Called 911, she wrote. They want you to call, or text 911 though I told them latitudes/longitudes . She waited a few minutes more, then: Are you awake?

Several minutes passed before Chen messaged his wife for the last time: I am lost. Need help.

When Lieutenant Mark Ober of New Hampshire Fish and Game received a report at 6:34 p.m. of a missing hiker near Mount Washington, it had already been a long evening. A few hours earlier, he’d coordinated the rescue of a group of hikers who were experiencing hypothermia near Mount Madison. Now, Ober was stationed in his truck in Shelburne, overseeing the rescue of an injured hiker on Mount Hayes by three of his department’s conservation officers.

For nearly two decades, Ober has been in charge of the state’s rescue operations in the northern White Mountains. It’s the heart of a busy region for hikers: Just a day’s drive from places like Boston, New York City, and Portland, Maine, the White Mountain National Forest attracts more than 6 million visitors a year. In a given year Ober fields some 80 emergency calls, though not all require a rescue effort.

“You get people here in the summer who are literally just tired and want to be carried down,” says Ober. “Or they’ve lost a shoe, or a sole has come off a sneaker, and can we hike some new boots up to them? Or they didn’t bring a headlamp or flashlight and they’ve underestimated the time it’s going to take them to make it down. If it’s summer and the weather is nice, I’ll tell them, ‘You’re going to spend the night, because we’re not coming to get you.’”

For true emergencies, though, Ober has a choice of different teams to deploy. In the summer and early fall he leans on his department’s own specialized group of conservation officers or the region’s two main volunteer outfits, the Androscoggin Valley and Pemigewasset Valley searchand-rescue squads. But when the situation calls for navigating harsh winter weather above treeline— where both conditions and terrain can be especially treacherous—he turns to the “special forces” of the Whites: Mountain Rescue Service, or MRS.

Composed of some of the world’s most elite guides and climbers, MRS was born in 1972 as a response to the region’s growing popularity and the increasing number of dangerous backcountry rescues that came with it. Fatalities in the Whites were nothing new—the first reported hiking death on Mount Washington happened in 1849, and 77 additional lives had been lost on the mountain by the time MRS was founded—but pressure to prevent them had reached a tipping point. A coalition of officials from the Appalachian Mountain Club, Fish and Game, and the U.S. Forest Service came up with an innovative plan: Build a dedicated rescue operation with the growing number of young, expert climbers who had moved to the White Mountains. It was just a matter of months before the newly formed MRS proved its worth.

“There was a guy in just his bathing suit who had decided it would be a good idea to hike Whitehorse Ledge,” says Rick Wilcox, a worldrenowned ice climber and MRS cofounder who led the organization from 1976 to 2016. “A few of us went over there, and there were these firemen standing around at the bottom, looking at each other and this climbing rope they had. I went over to the chief—‘Hey look, we are a part of this rescue team that can help you.’ He kind of brushed us off. ‘Nah, we got this.’ Then an hour passed and nothing had happened. I went back up to him and said, ‘Give us 15 minutes and we can get that guy down.’ That’s what we did, and that really started things off for us.”

In the half century since, MRS— whose 40-member team spans generations of climbers—has led more than 350 missions. There’s nothing glamorous about being a part of the crew. You’re on call 24 hours; many rescues, especially the most complicated ones, happen at night; and outside of a free ski pass to the local mountains, there’s no compensation.

“Climbers take care of other climbers, and that means anybody who goes into the mountains,” says Joe Lentini, a member of MRS since 1976. “I’m still a climber and I love the mountains, and as long as I’m able to help, why wouldn’t I do this work?”

Shortly after receiving the 911 dispatch, Ober called Lian Liu. He told her that a team would be assembled to find her husband, but that it might take a few hours before the rescue could begin. MRS crew members were scattered around the White Mountains region, equipment needed to be gathered, and it would take time to reach the most viable trailhead— which happened to be just below the summit of Mount Washington. And given the conditions, he couldn’t guarantee they’d even reach Chen. “We’ll do our best to rescue your husband, but not at the cost of the rescuers’ lives,” Ober said.

Ober then contacted Jeff Fongemie, vice president of MRS and lead snow ranger on Mount Washington. At 7:26 p.m. Fongemie sent out a rescue request to all MRS members through a WhatsApp text:

We’ve been asked by Fish and Game to get a hypothermic hiker off the summit of Mt. Clay to the Auto Road . It’s currently 32 degrees [with] freezing rain and northwest winds 50 to 60 miles per hour, with rain turning to snow. We are needed for this non-technical but nonetheless challenging rescue.

One of the first to respond was MRS president Michael Wejchert. A 35-year-old writer and climber who lives in North Conway with his wife, Alexa Siegel, a nurse and MRS team leader, Wejchert had just returned home from the grocery store when Fongemie’s text appeared on his phone. He immediately began pulling together supplies—stocking a couple of thermoses with hot Gatorade, stuffing extra clothes, including a dry suit, into a pack. Then he met up with three other MRS volunteers at International Mountain Equipment, an outdoor gear retailer that Wilcox owns in North Conway, where MRS keeps a cache of essential rescue gear such as sleeping bags, wilderness stretchers, and makeshift tents.

By 9:25 p.m. Wejchert was at the base of the Mount Washington Auto Road with his five-man team: Ryan Driscoll, Tim Doyle, Joe Klementovich, Charlie Townsend, and Steve Lar- son. Because freezing rain coated the upper reaches of the auto road, Ober had phoned for a truck with chains from the Mount Washington State Park crew to ferry the rescuers to just south of the summit. Klementovich and Townsend climbed into the cab while Driscoll, Wejchert, and Larson lay down in the bed and covered themselves with a tarp to fend off the rain.

“We’re bouncing around with no idea where we were,” Driscoll recalls. “Then the truck stopped and I remember hearing, ‘OK, this is where you guys get out.’ We pulled that tarp off and the rain was just pouring down. I looked around for a second and thought, This is going to be pretty bad.”

Waiting in Andover for word about the rescue seemed excruciating to Lian Liu, who wanted to be as close as possible to her husband. So she told Kaiwen and her younger daughter, Meiling, that they would drive to North Conway and find a hotel room. She phoned Dennis Gu to tell him the news and asked him to pick up her other daughter, Megan, after she finished work in Boston, and bring her home, where Liu’s sister would eventually meet her.

Meanwhile, Kaiwen pulled out his winter hiking gear. If the rescue team couldn’t get to his father, then he would. Maybe he didn’t have the strength to get him back down, he reasoned, but he could at least bring his temperature back up by getting him inside a sleeping bag with dry clothes on and pocket warmers stuffed around him. Kaiwen showed Liu a map. “If we go up the Mount Washington Auto Road, we can pick up a trail that’s a mile from where Dad is,” he told her. “You can stay in the car while Meiling and I go find him.”

Liu stayed quiet. She understood her son’s desperation but knew she couldn’t allow her children to put their own lives in danger. As Kaiwen continued gathering his equipment, she decided to not talk about the idea until they reached North Conway.

Shortly after Liu and her children left Andover, she received a call from Ober letting her know a rescue team had been mobilized. Relief washed over her. A plan was in place to find her husband. She wouldn’t need to talk Kaiwen out of a search. She told herself her husband would be OK. Maybe he was injured, she thought, but he was going to get off that mountain, and perhaps in a day or two he would be home. She repeated this hope inwardly as she drove. Kaiwen stared stoically ahead; his sister cried softly in the back seat.

Shortly after 10 p.m., they arrived in a rainy North Conway. Liu pulled into the parking lot of the first hotel she found and reached for her phone. Are u awake? she texted her husband. We arrived in North Conway now.

Then she called Ober. He had more good news: The MRS team was hiking to her husband’s location.

Wejchert and the others moved briskly in single file. Their course was a quick descent along the Gulfside Trail, the northern Presidentials’ main hiking artery and the route Chen had seemingly tracked since leaving the top of Madison. From the moment he stepped out of the truck, however, Wejchert was cursing himself for wearing glasses instead of contacts. With freezing rain pelting the lenses, he took them off and positioned himself in the back of the line, allowing his headlamp and the lights of those in front of him to guide him over the ice- and snow-covered terrain. The group moved largely in silence so they could concentrate on their footing.

At about the one-mile mark, Doyle and Driscoll, who had taken the lead and were tracking the group’s position by GPS, saw that they were coming up on Chen’s approximate location. They motioned to the others to begin looking for signs of him—a flickering headlamp, perhaps, or a stray piece of gear. Seconds turned to minutes as they pushed farther north on the Gulfside before circling back to where it junctions with the Jewell Trail. It was there that the men finally spotted Chen, about 15 feet off the path. He lay on his back, unconscious, his bare hands clenched on his chest. He was wearing his puffer jacket, an outer shell, rain paints, and boots. He did not have a hat on. Nearby were the scattered contents of his pack, including his tent, which he may have tried to set up for shelter.

After Doyle, a trained EMT, did a quick assessment of the unresponsive Chen, the crew worked quickly to get him into a sleeping bag, wrap him tightly with a tarp, and strap him down on the rescue stretcher. At 11:03 p.m. the squad began to carry Chen to the Mount Washington summit. Minutes later, they were joined by a second team of six Fish and Game conservation officers and three more MRS members.

The expanded team hiked uphill through 80 mph winds and steady freezing rain. Crews of six carried Chen for short stretches, switching off to conserve energy. For the final push to the summit, the team followed the tracks of the Cog Railway. At 12:45 a.m. they reached a waiting state park truck. Just over a half hour later, Chen was loaded onto an ambulance at the base of the Mount Washington Auto Road and sped 19 miles to the Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin.

Lian Liu was already at the hospital when her husband arrived shortly before 2 a.m. Concerned about Covid and still not allowing herself to even consider that her husband might not survive, she had come alone, leaving Kaiwen and Meiling at the hotel. In the ER, Chen was settled onto a bed, his arms strapped down, a CPR machine on his chest. At the same time, a respirator machine worked to get oxygen into his body, as he wasn’t breathing on his own. His core temperature hovered in the 60s. Liu waited outside his room for a few long minutes before the doctor invited her in. “It doesn’t look good,” he warned her.

Over the next two hours the ER team worked frantically to revive Chen. Heat lamps surrounded his bed, and he was hooked to an IV that circulated warm saline solution through his body. As the doctor and nurses labored, Liu sat quietly by her husband’s left side, her hands clutching his, her head bowed and pressed down against them, as though in prayer. Increasingly desperate to get Chen breathing, the team tried to intubate him but couldn’t unlock his jaw. As a last-ditch effort, they performed a tracheostomy, but his condition never improved. He didn’t even have a viable pulse by then.

Shortly before dawn, the doctor approached Liu. “Do you want us to continue?”

Liu told him she needed more time. “I can’t do anything until my kids are here,” she said. Liu called her sister and asked her to drive Megan north and then bring all three of her children to the hospital.

As a nurse, Liu understood what she was seeing and knew what it meant, but as she waited for her family to arrive, she veered between hope and despair. She made calls to the major hospitals in Boston to see if she could have her husband transferred—though without a stable pulse, Chen couldn’t be moved. But she also thought about what survival might look like for Chen, a man who prided himself on his physical fitness. He had told his family that if he were in an accident that left him dependent on others, he didn’t wish to be kept alive. Liu began to realize that even her husband’s best-case scenario wouldn’t be what he wanted, and that she would have to carry out his last wishes. “I needed to advocate for him,” she later said.

It was a little before 9 on Sunday morning when an exhausted Liu greeted her children in the ER lobby. Then she led them to Chen’s bedside, where they all held his hands and said their good-byes.

By the end of the day, most of the MRS team had learned of Chen’s death. He was one of 21 hiking fatalities in the White Mountains in 2022, including three right at the end of the year. For rescuers like Wejchert, their work can immerse them in a person’s worst moment—maybe even the final moments—and the impact of that can linger long after the exhaustion and adrenalin have disappeared.

“Many people that next day just go to work at their jobs, whether it’s guiding or banging nails,” says Wejchert. “But it doesn’t mean they’re not thinking about it. They’re just trying to keep going. When you’re [on the rescue] you kick into this gear where you don’t humanize the situation, in a way. You’re in this mode of doing what you have to do. It’s only afterward where you start to feel sad. You read a news story about who they were, the family they had.

“It’s hard, but we do this for a reason. There are people who need our help. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a situation where somebody on the team was like, ‘I’m sick of these people.’ I think when you first start climbing or hiking you think, Oh, that person’s an idiot for [making that mistake]. You feel like you’ll never be that person. But we’ve all been around the block a few times. We know it either has been us, or it could easily be one of us.”

Aweek after Xi Chen’s death, a local hiking group of Chinese-Americans completed the entire Presidential Traverse in their late friend’s honor. Over the course of the 16-hour trek, the hikers placed a framed photo of Chen at different cairns and took pictures of it to share with Liu and her children.

Liu showed me a few of the snapshots when I met her last November at the family home in Andover. It was the first of several meetings, including interviews with her two oldest children. Like their mom, Kaiwen and Megan often spoke in the present tense when discussing their father. “It still doesn’t feel real,” Liu said at one point, quietly.

Chen’s presence in the house was impossible to ignore. His vast collection of hiking gear was still clustered in the basement. Framed pictures from hikes and family trips hung on many of the walls. On a coffee table were photo albums he’d meticulously constructed. One had a cover photo of his three young children, smiling and piled on top of each other, at a rest stop just off New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway. “Foliage camping trip on Columbus Weekend is a new family tradition,” read one of the captions inside. In the kitchen there still hung the map of Chen’s completed 4,000-footers. “You can see he only did two of those with me,” Liu said with a small laugh.

Over the course of our conversations, Liu returned to the questions she kept asking herself. How had a man who was so meticulous gotten himself into such a dangerous situation? Why had he waited so long to ask for help? What else could have been done to save his life? There are no answers, of course. No easy ones, anyway.

And yet, there have been some moments of comfort. Discovering photos from a favorite family trip. Remembering how her husband loved to watch American Idol and how he playfully insisted on cueing up the song “Home” by contestant Phillip Phillips whenever the family returned from a vacation. Recalling how a food-obsessed Chen would keep his family waiting no matter how hungry they might be so he could find the perfect restaurant.

Or this:

A few years ago, Chen told Megan that when he died he hoped to be buried by a tree. Last fall, as the family visited a nearby cemetery, they came across a pretty little spot that sits a bit off on its own and is slightly shaded by a red maple. It was as though the plot found them, says Liu. Later this year it will become Xi Chen’s resting place. A pretty little spot that’s drenched in sunshine and fresh air. The kind of place he always relished finding.