Between swipes of the windshield wipers, I get a drizzly glimpse of the majestic and densely wooded White Mountains — a rugged 750,000-acre range which has been the muse of countless artists, covers nearly a fourth of the state and has even killed an inexperienced hiker or two at its higher, frigid elevations.

But it’s not too dangerous for Quizno’s.

Chomping on an Italian sub, I turn down route 302 into a narrow mountain gorge called Crawford Notch. Here lies the Highland Center, a three-year-old lodge-cum-cafeteria-cum-art-gallery, owned and operated by the outdoor org Appalachian Mountain Club. It’s where I’ll be hiding out the next few days.

The staff is all very friendly and all very international (say sawatdi khrap to Sine, an outrageously cute 20-year-old coed from Bangkok who mans the lodge at night).

Its guests, however, are a mixed bag. There’s the casual weekend warrior, like the heiress to a certain rapid oil change company fortune that kept insisting we get drunk and crash the Jacuzzi at the nearby Mount Washington Hotel (it’s awfully hard to say "no" to heiresses).

And then there are the very hardcore hiker types — usually with more rings around their trunks — who’d walk through a field of landmines were it on an incline.

After checking in, I walk up the stairs and find my dorm room. As I swing open the door, I notice right away that something’s missing. It has to be here somewhere. In the dresser drawers? Nope. Under the bunk beds? Zilch. Behind the toilet? Nada, but this plunger will come in handy after that Quizno’s.

The dreadful reality soon sets in: there is no television. And during the week of "24", "House" and "Lost" finales, no less. At Highland, they mean business about staying outdoors and active. I’ll have to adapt or die. (Well, not entirely—there’s in-room DSL.)

The boobtube-less Center is as much a school as it is a lodge, where classes range from the practical, like what constitutes proper hiking clothes ("NO COTTON," you’ll be told ad nauseam), to the extremely practical, like how to start your own yoga studio.

Come sunrise the next morning, I pick up my rental hiking gear: Lace-up boots, fleece shirt and pants, gloves, a hat, jacket (feel free to bring your own, germaphobes).

Everything’s designed to fight off the rain and cold that’s par for the White Mountains’ trails where snowcaps chill year-round above tree line — in fact, a 231-m.p.h. gust, the fastest wind ever recorded on Earth, blew atop the range’s most famous peak, Mount Washington.

Most of the gear has been donated by L. L. Bean, and doesn’t exactly smell wonderful — used, and permanently sweat-stained as it is — but I’m not entering a hygiene contest. I’m just trying to survive the cold.

Guests of Highland have their pick of dozens of trails, all within walking or short driving distance — Mount Willard has the best views of the notch, the Ammonoosuc Lake and Red Bench Trail makes for a great lunch spot, and Mount Pierce is a 6.4 mile doozy that will keep you busy all day.

My first day out, I take the very easy, hour-long Pearl and Beecher Cascades hike, which begins minutes from the lodge. I’m in a small group led by Becky, an avid outdoorswoman who’s also a marine biologist of sorts. She’s quick with the cute factoids about the waterfalls and flora along the way; pointing out which flowers are sweet to the smell, and which reek like rotten corpses (they do so in order to attract flies that pollinate them).

The soft serenity of the path is interrupted by a woman from the UK who keeps freaking out about the one or two mosquitoes we see (she claims she’s never seen one before – "bloody vampires", she calls them). Luckily, we all remain bite-free and jolly on this very crisp, 60-degree morning.

Later on, I choose to go it alone up the 2.6 mile Arethusa Falls trail which leads to the tallest waterfall in the northeast (each trail has some superlative or another attached to it as selling points).

The lodge’s crew might recommend a ski pole (er, walking stick, as they call it) to scale this one, but I get away with using a severed birch tree limb I find along the way. The path is well-manicured by an alphabet soup of acronymed conservation groups; trees marked with blue dots along the way make it almost too easy to follow.

Along the way — passing more people with their dogs than I do on the UES — I learn an important lesson: If you’re hiking alone, take an iPod to occupy your mind. Talking or humming to yourself — no matter how soothing and meditative — only makes you look insane to passers by.

Panting and sweating, leg muscles sore, lungs imploded and hands bloody from the stick, I finally reach the spectacular, roaring falls — freshly reloaded with rain water from the stormy night before.

As its golf ball-sized beads of mist hit my hot face with sweet relief, Im reminded of what one sage and brutally honest hiker told me at dinner: "The worst thing about hiking is the hiking. What makes it all worth it is where you end up."

Amen to that, sister.

Info: From $68/non-member adults in the high summer season, children are $42. www.outdoors.org.