he top of a mountain is an inhospitable place. The higher the peak, the less accommodating the climes. When the brothers of the Order of Carthusians purchased 7,000 acres at the top of Mount Equinox in Sandgate, Vermont, the men of peace were headed into war with nature — including the building of two hydroelectric dams to power their monastery, the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration. To subdue their new home, which opened in 1960, they would need not guns and bombs, but at least military-spec equipment to match the elements atop Vermont’s tallest mountain.
