A Long, Hard, Climb Up Mount Washington

After 30 years in the sport, climbing’s made me wish for a meal plenty of times, but only once has a rock climb helped produce one. In the wintertime, ferocious weather swirls around Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England, but on the right day in the summer or early fall, the mountain can offer a placid alternative to boiling in the valley below. 

Evan Hennessey near the start of the climb and well above the boulders and slabs of Huntington Ravine.

Photographer Joe Klementovich and I wait in the Great Glen Trails parking lot and watch as the sun rises higher and higher in the sky. Joe, a frequent partner on assignments, moved to North Conway in the 1990s. Like most of us, he bounced around as a climbing bum, working as a gear manufacturer, snow ranger, and mountain rescuer before settling down behind a camera lens. As we sort climbing equipment and camera gear out of the back of his Rav4, another car pulls up, and we’re met by Evan Hennessey and his teenage son Kaden. True to his age, Kaden’s taken the opportunity in the passenger seat to nap the whole way up from Dover. 

I’ve never met Evan, but I’ve heard enough by reputation. Hennessey’s first restaurant, Stages, has repeatedly been voted one of the top 100 in North America. At first blush, Dover — even New Hampshire in general — seems an odd place to nurture a successful restaurant. But Evan and Kaden aren’t heading up Mount Washington because it’s an escape from the grind —they’re about to climb a mountain with us because for Hennessey, wild places all over the state are where inspiration for his day job begins.

Evan Hennessey watches as his son Kaden, and writer Michael Wejchert climb toward the finish from one of the upper belays.

We pile into Joe’s SUV and drive up Mount Washington’s Auto Road, pulling into a lot just below the summit. Cars throttle up and down the road, but when we dip down into the alpine garden, it grows quiet. It’s September now, and the whirlwind crowds of summer have ebbed and diminished. The four of us drop down the Huntington Ravine trail, steep and notorious for bad accidents, carefully descending one at a time, sometimes turning inwards and downclimbing on the trail’s steeper, exposed parts, ropes and some climbing gear dangling from our packs. Below us, the greyish slab of gneiss cedes to a talus field and then onwards onto the undulations of the ravine itself.

The tawny colors of alpine zone plant life are about to change; tufts of brown grass, yellows of plants going into their winter mood. Rain threatens — it often does. If you look close enough on nice days, you can just about see clear across the state to the ocean. The view is vast, as are the possibilities in New Hampshire, and it’s from this wide palette of view — all of it — that Hennessey takes his culinary cues.

Evan Hennessey closely watches his son follow up through one of the more difficult section of Pinnacle Butress a classic New England rock climb.

Hennessey grew up in Dover, but he left the state to pursue a culinary career that had him working in Michelin-starred restaurants in New York and Chicago. But when it came time for Hennessey to start a restaurant on his own, in 2012, he moved back to Dover, hoping to lend his expertise to the community that raised him. Plus, the decision put him and his family at the doorstep of the myriad recreational opportunities the state has to offer. Rock climbers learn to trust their own instincts, making decisions that, at the outset, seem radical and risky; for Hennessey, this philosophy applies to his work, too. 

After a little while, we cross the subtle brook guarding the entrance to our objective for the day: the northeast ridge of the Pinnacle, a meandering rock climb first ascended in 1928 by five enterprising alpinists. It’s one of the oldest technical rock climbs in New England. On the first ascent, the climbers worked their way up the most difficult sections with hemp rope fastened around their waists, occasionally aided by standing on the shoulders of their companions to overcome difficult passages. 

With sticky rubber climbing shoes, modern nylon ropes and plenty of equipment to secure ourselves, the climb is less groundbreaking enterprise and more casual undertaking, especially for Kaden, who climbs impossibly difficult boulder routes in his local climbing gym with ease. 

But outside, there are ropes to sort and logistics to uncover, and I find myself regressing into my former profession — that of rock-climbing guide, turning to the real challenge of figuring out how to make it up the eight or so rope lengths with three other climbers while at the same time avoiding pandemonium. By some miscommunication, we’ve brought about half the gear we need, but here we are. We can either abandon the day, or figure out how to do something with the ingredients we have.

Wild Blueberries survived by being tucked into warm sheltered spots even this high in the mountains.

It turns out that’s what Evan does as a chef, too. “I wanted to take the long road — not the easy or fast path. My angle was to change the way restaurants operate, to shorten their wingspan as far as food goes — and prove that it works,” he tells me. When Joe and I swing by Dover for a visit, we take the lift in a renovated mill building up to Stages. Evan and his small team — just a sous-chef, a sommelier, and a chef de partie — are already at work preparing tonight’s dinner. Stages seats only six guests, and there are two seatings a night, Thursday through Saturday. 

Each dinner at Stages is unique, dictated not by what diners want, but by what Hennessey can forage, or by what his suppliers can bring, prone to the fickle weather and seasonal changes of New England as a whole. Hennessey’s relationships with farmers and foragers and fishermen are singular; nearly all the livestock served at Stages comes from Loudonshire Farm, as it has since the restaurant’s inception in 2012. 

Inside the functional, almost spartan confines of the kitchen are jars with everything New England has to offer: sumac, dried cranberry, mushroom powder. The kitchen is deliberately simple and adaptable, able to turn on a dime alongside New Hampshire’s weather. The process rewards creativity in the kitchen. Everyone at Stages is remarkably relaxed, considering guests are due to arrive any minute. But that’s because the real work’s already been done. “Each dish takes weeks, months, even a year to create,” Hennessey tells me, “but we put it together in a matter of minutes.” 

Tonight’s menu includes ingredients like elderberries and fried oysters, fennel pollen, squash cooked over a simple, campfire-like open flame with a sea-urchin glaze, and a salted tuna seared on the same simple fire, but each iteration is different — driven by what ingredients Hennessey is able to source or forage himself — sometimes in his backyard, sometimes after a trail run or a rock climb.

Hennessey focused on the last few steep moves at the end of the “Fairy Tale Traverse” on Pinnacle Buttress.

Taking a meandering route up Mount Washington, we reach a broad plateau where the route veers left, its nature changing entirely. It was here, in 1928, that climber William Allis struggled to climb the route’s defining chimney — a wide, 50-foot chimney system. The slick, sloping walls allow little purchase. Last year, I watched as a National Guard helicopter airlifted a solo climber who had misjudged this section and fallen without any ropes onto the ledge below. (Landing on a grassy hummock, he made a full recovery). Even with a rope and spring-loaded camming devices dangling from my waist, the passage gives me pause, never mind the fact it was first climbed in a pair of leather boots. On top, I stop to take a breather before bringing Kaden, Evan, and Joe up one at a time, Joe replete with thousands of dollars of camera equipment dangling from his chest and harness. 

Author and guide for the day, Michael Wejchert at the start of the Fairy Tale Traverse near the top of Pinnacle Buttress.

After a few moderate rope-lengths, we get to the climb’s signature feature: a massive section of rock that overhangs Pinnacle Gully like a pitched roof with a huge eave. Below your feet, a waterfall tumbles down the gully as you cross the slab — a section dubbed the “fairy tale traverse.” Kaden comes across first. Compared with what he’s used to, the moves on Pinnacle are trivial, and I’m worried he’ll be bored. But it’s impossible not to be wooed by the stunning background and the feeling of climbing high up above Huntington Ravine on a gorgeous day. 

“Whoa,” he says. “This is really, really, cool.” Then Evan, out of sight and out of line, follows, while Joe stands to shoot photos and give encouragement on a broad, prominent ledge above. We happily recollect ourselves in a messy heap of ropes. 

Kayden Hennessey following through the picturesque and airy “Fairy Tale Traverse”

Watching Evan in his kitchen, it’s clear the same things that make him tick as a climber — yearning for the creative process, being in a harsh, unforgiving environment — are applicable in the kitchen, too. His hard work has paid off: He’s competed on the Food Network’s “Chopped,” winning three times. Stages has appeared on Opinionated about Dining’s “100 Best Restaurants in North America” list nine years in a row. And in 2026, Evan won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast, becoming the first New Hampshire-based chef to garner the prestigious accolade. 

When we visited, he was months away from opening a second Dover restaurant, Topolino, which serves Mediterranean fare in a casual dining atmosphere. Now, it’s booked until October. It must have been quite the gamble for Hennessey to settle for a career in his hometown, but it’s paid off. It’s no wonder “Travel + Leisure” magazine called Dover the most underrated dining destination in New England. 

Hennessey is also the founder of Finding Thyme, a mobile kitchen of sorts where guests merge outdoor experiences and food in places as far flung as Alaska or as familiar as the White Mountains. Step-by-step, or climbing handhold by handhold, the program forges a strong connection between
the nature that gives Hennessey his meals and the people who enjoy them. As we top out the climb, looking out toward the Seacoast of New Hampshire from Mount Washington’s Alpine Garden, tinged with the beginnings of fall, it’s hard not to buy into Evan’s philosophy. 

Changing out of our sticky rubber shoes into flip flops at Great Glen, everyone’s glowing, happy with the experience of having ascended one of New England’s historic routes. On a mountain with a plethora of ways to the top including a road, Pinnacle certainly isn’t the easiest way to experience the mountain, but it’s one of the most rewarding. At Stages, where diners watch a creation in its final iteration from forest or seashore or mountain to fine cuisine, they often ask Hennessey how long it took to come up with a dish. “Well,” Hennessey says with a smile, “my entire career.”