There’s an old story about a grandfather clock that had been running for so many years that the shadow of its pendulum had worn away a semicircular groove in the back of the case.

That may be what happened to Mount Chocorua. It looks pretty impressive, seeming to stand alone, and shaped like Vermont’s Camels Hump. But its summit is only 3500 feet above sea level. When you read that it’s one of the most photographed mountains in the world, you begin to understand why it’s so low: All those cameras have worn it away to a nubbin of its former self.

Nubbin or not, it’s a pretty respectable climb: 2600 feet in 3.9 miles from its base to the summit via the Liberty Trail, compared, for example, to 4800-foot Mount Moosilauke, that claims only 2450 feet of climbing in 3.7 miles. Chocorua’s most-touted feature is its view. The last half-mile of climbing is in the open, over steep, bare ledges and ice-shattered granite, and from the summit, the panorama of lakes to the south, a tumbled wilderness of peaks to the west, and the Presidentials looming in the north is magnificent. But I found, as I perched on the almost artificially flat surface at the very top, that my mind was most occupied with the fascinating challenge of getting back down. This, I reflected anxiously, is not an old man’s mountain.

A peak as low as Chocorua shouldn’t be as bare as this one so conspicuously is. According to the Saco Ranger District office, a terrific hurricane in 1815 leveled most of the forest on the peaks in the area. A year or so later a forest fire ignited in the slash and burned over the summit, which is now very slowly beginning to develop new soil and sprout small spruce trees. It’s likely the current warming trend will accelerate the reforestation.

No one seems to know what the Indians who lived in the area called the mountain. It was named for an Indian who may or may not be historical. Tradition has it that Chief Chocorua (all Indians in legends are chiefs) was friendly to the early settlers, particularly the family of Cornelius Campbell, whose home was in what is now Tamworth.

Here’s where tradition begins to morph into legend. Apparently, Chocorua went off to a meeting in Montreal and left his son with the Campbells, who were much attached to the boy. But in his father’s absence, the boy ate some wolf poison and died. His father returned to find his grave. In a passion, he killed Mrs. Campbell and her son and ran away grieving toward the mountain. Campbell formed a posse and went after him. As they closed in on Chocorua near the summit, the Indian clambered onto a projecting rock just below the peak, hurled imprecations and curses at the white men, and then hurled himself off the rock to his death. You can see the rock up there today and reflect upon how legends get started. Some say the curse worked; two years later Campbell’s corpse was discovered, mangled by wolves.

In spite of – or perhaps because of – the curse, Chocorua has become one of the most often climbed of the White Mountains. The Liberty Trail that we hiked today has nothing to do with unalienable rights; it was named for Jim Liberty, a local who in 1887 improved an existing trail with an entrepreneurial eye toward charging tolls to users. His interest was purchased in 1892 by a pair of hardy businessmen, one of whom built a two-story hotel at the base of the summit cone. The Peak House, as it was called, was blown down in 1915, and a subsequent shelter soon lost its roof to another windstorm. Now there’s a sturdy stone-and-plank shelter here, with nine bunks and two mighty chains running over the roof and anchored to the ledge on either side.

Climbing the trail today, it’s impossible not to reflect upon the tremendous effort and expense of hauling everything up here, over three miles, to build, furnish, and stock the hotel for vacationers. The trail is studded for miles with railroad ties for water bars and steps. How’d they drag those up here? The hotel had a stable for the horses that carried guests up the mountain. Beyond the stable, it’s not likely that any horses could have managed the steep slabs. Some of that “ice-shattered granite” that I mentioned was, it turns out, shattered by drilling and blasting, to ease the way for the dudes in leather-soled shoes and ladies in ground-length skirts and petticoats. Those guests must have had nerves of steel. I’d no more try to climb this thing without rubber-soled hiking shoes than I would barefooted.

This is the last trip of the season for our little television crew. We’ve been up and down mountains, in and out of rivers and swamps, and even out to sea several miles. It’s been great fun, but the producer’s relief at the end of shooting is palpable (mine, too, if the truth be told). We have with us today a young man who was the high bidder in NHPTV’s auction of “A Day With the Crew.” He’s brought along his Siberian husky, and the two of them seem to be having a wonderful time. Still, as we sat on a ledge looking at Chocorua’s leaping rock and I silently contemplated the possibility of making it back down alive and unbroken, I said, “You know what the losing bidder in the auction got? He got two trips with the crew.”