...Mount Washington...Not a real high mountain compared with other peaks...but everything just seems to come together for a wild ride...

(Neil Lareau: as storms head up the coa st they tend to take a northeasterly turn and the mountain is really in an ideal location to enhance the wind speeds...so that a 50 mile per hour wind at the base...could be a hundred mile per hour wind at the summit...)

...At the summit...an observatory stands to testify to mother nature's ferocity...even to a world record 231 miles per hour...

(Brandon: Here we are at the summit of mount washington on the observatory deck at about 6300 feet in the air...the winds are blowing at about 91 miles per hour and it's around 15 degrees below zero...Kind of a normal day on the summit...let's see what it's really like...)

...In weather like this running into the wind is a mistake and it's not long before you're knocked off your feet and blown away into the darkness...

(Jon Cotton: The highest I can stand in is 129...130...I'm done...The constant wind has another effect...squeezing every last drop of moisture in the air and freezing it onto everything in site...resembling that of a sunken shipwreck...An underwater world at the top of a mountain...But outside the relative safety of the observatory..the fascinating quickly turns to the deadly...

(Mike Pelchat: There is no shelter on the summit when the park is closed...so hikers are on their own when they come up here...and they'll pound on the windows and doors and throw themselves at the mercy of the staff...cause they feel they're going to die...And that happens three or four times a winter time)

...There's been 139 deaths at the hands of the summit...most of them due to some sort of hypothermia that happens in all seasons...Nevertheless hikers continue to brave the elements for the breath-taking views...some more prepared than others...

(Diane Holmes: The mountains up here...as you can see over my should...are absolutely incredible...They bring a peace to your soul that is hard to find...And every body wants to experience that...but you gotta do it safely...because you want to be able to go home...and experience it for another day.)