Nice trail

We woke up to more rain and it was coming down pretty hard all morning. We were convinced to bail a bit early into town as we slogged over a couple mountains and then very steeply down to the road. Megan fell a couple times and so did the other guys… By the time we all got down everyone was very muddy and wet.

Fortunately, the shuttle to town was waiting for us after our rough descent, so we were quickly into town, showered and off for a late lunch.

DBB
Atlantic Coal Porter (Atlantic Brewing, Bar Harbor, Maine)
While in Andover, Maine, we had the option of eating at 1 of 2 spots in “town” – the Andover General Store, or the Mills General Store, next door. Not much else to this town, period. Both places had 1-topping pizza on sale! We got a veggie pizza to go and were able to buy these beers in singles. Took it all back to our hostel (along with a green pepper I called “salad” from the 8-item “veggie section”) and had dinner on the swinging seats on the front porch of our hostel. Not my favourite Porter but hit the spot, cold, paired well with pizza, and gets a solid rating for the convenience of being sold in singles!

We got up today to solve the mystery of Megan’s pants – they had been ordered and delivered to Andover, but not, as expected to our hostel. Instead, someone named L. Shirey had signed for the package… But in a town of 400, by asking a few people, we were fairly sure this person wasn’t a resident of Andover.  After all that build up, it turns out that the pants company had screwed up and FedEx’ed the package to General Delivery (a nono that Megan had explicitly told them not to do). Normally that would result in the package sitting at the local depot, in this case many towns away, but the FedEx driver was nice enough to take it to the Post Office, and Lee, the lovely lady who works there, signed for it. Mystery solved, and if only the pants had fit, the story would have a happy ending. They didn’t, and she sent them back. The pants saga continues…

So, we got to the trail at 11 o’clock, and climbed some more mountains! We missed a morning thunderstorm too and we were hiking in the sun.  The trail had some character today, with a couple miles of river trail that we splashed through, but also a couple more of welcome, smooth, knee-saving descent.

(L-R): ATown, Ryley, Vanilla Thunder, Rabbi, Dr. Banner, and Robin

We ended up just shy of a big mountain at a shelter with the usual crew plus Dr.  Banner and Rabbi. They have been telling us of some sort of massive storm coming tonight and/or tomorrow. We have storm-proofed our tent (if you saw our tent you would laugh at this statement – “storm proofing” basically includes pulling up the sides of the tarp footprint a bit so there isn’t quite so close to the mesh wall, and putting Megan’s rain jacket up against the uphill side she was sleeping on where we expected the most water might get in) as much as possible, so hopefully it goes well (probably not).

Thanks for all the comments and well wishes, they are much appreciated.

Climbing in the Notch

We woke up early today due to rain starting and our neighbours leaving.  We climbed Baldpate in driving rain, and after we summited and were descending, we actually had rain being blow up the mountain at us. It was gross and kind of sharp! and we got very wet. Fortunately, once we got below the trees, things calmed down and we had a nice stroll down to Grafton Notch.  There, I used a picnic table to perform surgery on my trekking pole and replace its tip. Then, I found some delicious trail magic in the form of a cooler full of Cokes!

I powered up Old Speck on that soda, then the trail started to get ugly. It was very wet and slippery coming down and I fell pretty badly, deeply gashing my shin, which it turns out doesn’t bleed much, but does look pretty gross.  This was the worst section of trail yet, and it soon got worse as we entered the Mahoosuc Notch, which has a justified reputation as the hardest mile on the trail.  We climbed over and under giant boulders, trying not to slip on their slick sides. The trail is poorly marked and hard to follow as it often goes through very tight spaces. I had to take my pack off to squeeze through some spots, and we generally just went really slowly to avoid injury.  Unfortunately, I still managed to have my hand slip off a wet hold, sending me crashing down some rocks.  I magically landed on my pack though, thus mostly wounding my pride, and some bloody little cuts on my fingers.

Megan crawling through a tiny gap

Megan was totally fine this whole time too, which really made me look bad 🙂  She was actually having fun, as there were parts of the Notch that must never get sun, because they had snow in them! There are weird air currents down there, sometimes it was freezing, some times warm, very spooky.

We finally hacked our way out of the Notch and climbed up out of of the fog into a nicer day, except for the rumbling of thunder which chased us the last mile to a shelter, which we wisely decided to stay in. Within minutes, the sky opened up and it poured, but we were able to watch it high and dry.

Overall, we put in 11 hours of hiking to go 15 miles, including over 1.5 hours in the 1 mile of Mahoosuc Notch alone.  We are tired but pretty happy with ourselves for getting it done!

Crossed into New Hampshire!

We slept in a bit late, but got to hiking at a semi-respectable 9:10. We were feeling the effects of yesterday though, and it was very slow going til lunch. We crossed into New Hampshire mid-morning, one state down, 13 to go!  We made it 6 miles by 1:30, and called a stop near the top of Mt Success, which turned out to be our best lunch spot yet.   Great views, a perfect rock backrest, and enough wind to keep the bugs off.  We lingered as long as possible but pushed off and quickly piled up some miles, leaving us with a reasonably short hike to town tomorrow.

Lunch views

On top of Mt Hight

We woke up for our included breakfast (awesome) – creme brulee french toast (and coffee of course). Yum!

We had signed up to stay 2 nights at the White Mountain Lodge and take advantage of “slack packing” a 21 mile section of the trail. We took all we needed for a day hike, got driven 20 minutes to Pinkham Notch, and started hiking the trail Northbound for a day back to our hostel. About 20 minutes in Ryley gave a “whoa!” and I looked up to see a big brown body turning in the trail ahead of us – our first moose we’ve run into out here! It headed in to the woods off the trail and had a pretty new-looking calf trailing after it.

We were warned by the hostel owner, Marni, that this 21 miles is not for everyone, but only for “trail beasts”. It was a big climb up the side of Wildcat Mountain (also a ski hill) and we got to the top around 9:15am to see the attendant getting out of the gondola – well that would’ve been easier than a 2000ft+ climb…then we walked along a ridge line of different mountain summits/peaks – Wildcat A, B, C, D, E (very imaginative summit names), Carter Dome, Mt Height, Middle-Carter, and another couple I don’t remember the names of. We were tired at the end of the day but the beginning felt a bit like flying with the light packs and we made good time.

Megan with Clara Hughes

A very long steep descent from the last peak down to a fairly flat 3 miles out,  and we ran into Windwalker, who had come up the trail to wait for Red Feather (Clara Hughes), who was doing the same 21 mile section as us today and started a 8:20am, 1/2h behind us! He and Ryley chatted about the PCT and CDT (Windwalker had hiked the PCT in ’93, the CDT in’ 94 and ’13, and had hiked most of the AT previously and had just  filled in the last sections to complete his triple crown). He decided to walk out with us as he and Ryley we’re having a good chat about the trails – I decided to take his place and wait for Red Feather. She wandered down the trail a while later and so I did indeed get to meet her and hike the last couple miles of trail with her! I warned her about my dorky sign – she liked it and indulged my request to get a photo with me 🙂
It was very cool to get to meet her after looking up to her as an athlete and Canadian and for her continuing humanitarian work.

Ryley and I considered actually taking a day off tomorrow and staying at this awesome hostel one more day but after briefly looking into it – they’re all booked up tomorrow anyways! Easy decision – onwards tomorrow to hike Mt Washington.

On top of Mt Madison

Day 2 of awesome included breakfast (breakfast burritos today), wished Clara luck on the last 300 miles of her hike, and around 8:45am we got a ride back to Pinkham Notch but this time to continue our hike Southbound. We knew it was going to be a big day – 15 miles, a 3000ft continuous climb up to Mt Maddison, and our end goal of Mt Washington at 6300ft – the second tallest peak in the Appalachian Mountains. It was sunny and cloudy, definitely a sweaty climb up to Mt Madison. The alpine hiking was a lot of sharp gnarly rock so some of it was pretty slow going. We made good time between Mt Maddison and Mt Washington, which consisted of climbing up and down (of course, that is the AT way) some side ridges and passes up in the Alpine, and got there before 5pm. I think we saw more people today than we have on the entire trail put together so far (it’s Saturday and everyone is out hiking, apparently!). Most of them were going the other way because there is an option to take a cog train to the top – so a lot of people opt to do that then to hike back down. The top itself has a bunch of information a structure – towers, the train cog/railway, and a big summit hut with food, viewing balconies, gift shop, bathrooms – the works. It was an absolute zoo up there and we only stopped in to use the bathrooms and drop off our days garbage.

Working our way towards Mt Washington

There are also “huts” up top that you can stay at for $125/night and include dinner and breakfast, so many non-thru-hikers were also doing this option. $125/night/person isn’t in our hiking plan and budget, but there is an option at most of these huts for a very limited number of thru-hikers to “work for stay”. The idea is that you get to eat leftovers for dinner (and possibly breakfast), and can sleep on the dining room floor once the guests have gone to bed in exchange for doing some after dinner and/or morning chores. It is also hugely appealing because there are very limited camping options in The Whites – sometimes to get off trail and out of the alpine (where camping is prohibited) and down to somewhere flat you have to go off-trail and drop way down 1000 or so feet – and no guarantees you’ll actually find a good place to camp.

We decided to give the first Hut – 1.5 miles down the other sides of Mt Washington – a try and if nothing else add “work for stay” to our experience bank. Lucky for us there weren’t and thru-hikers ahead of us so they took us in and we got to hang out in the swanky hut out of the way while they served the guests dinner.  It’s a bit painful to wait while you’re very hungry, but eventually we had a delicious dinner of Moroccan soup, pork chops, salad!, and as much carrot cake as we could eat.  Then once the guests went to sleep, we got access to the floor and were asleep within minutes.

We were woken up before 6 by anxious guests wanting coffee and discussing the deteriorating weather.  The wind was howling outside at a steady 60-70mph (96-112km/h) with gusts up to 85mph (136km/h).  No one has any business on the exposed ridges of the Whites in that kind of wind, so everyone was figuring out ways to bail down to below the tree line. As a result, nothing happened fast, breakfast was slow, people were slow getting out onto the trail, and we didn’t get to eat or do chores til 10ish.  We ended up sweeping out the bunkhouse and dining room as our “work for stay” which was nice and easy… And also delayed our leaving, which at this point seemed fine, as we had 2 miles of exposed ridge walking to do before we would drop down into cover.  The weather was supposed to improve in the evening but we decided we wanted to get going sooner.

As we were getting ready to brave the world, one of the cooks had gone outside and coming back in couldn’t close the door due to the howling wind. It took 3 of us to get the job done. Not a great sign. In the end we plunged out into the wind at 11ish, and immediately were in trouble, as the welter of trails exiting the hut were quite confusing, since the key sign had been knocked askew by the wind. Fortunately, someone inside at a window vigorously pointed us to the right trail. After that, it was 2 rough miles of getting knocked over sideways, sailing down the trail, and generally just fighting for every step. A few times we had to play “be a rock” to wait out the worst gusts. We eventually figured out a strategy where I broke the wind, and when I got buffeted hard enough to run into Megan, she would prop me up. Somewhere in there though, she got blown off the trail and banged her knee on a rock, which bothered her the rest of the day.

We clawed our way off the ridge and down into some stunty alpine trees that gave us enough cover to make it the rest of the way to the next Hut. We stopped in to recover and have lunch (and were offered more free leftovers from the night before’s dinner, which were great), before reluctantly heading back out. We also told a few northbounders that we really wouldn’t reccomend the trail up and ridge until the wind had died down… Oh, and I met a well known hiker personality, Starman, who helps thru hikers with GPS issues a lot on the Internet. I had actually met him in 2007 while prepping for my PCT thru hike but only briefly.

Anyways, we charged down the rest of the ridge and up the other side to a shelter quite late, squeezed into the shelter and are ready for a decent night’s sleep. Hopefully Megans knee bruise doesn’t cause her any longer-term ill.

Megan lays out the Red Carpet for me

Didn’t have the best sleep, crammed in with multiple snorers, but we managed to be some of the last out anyways. Our hike started with 5 flat miles including the 3 best miles of trail yet – smooth sailing!

We stopped in at Zealand Hut and had a little gingerbread cake, then pushed on to Galehead Hut, where we met up with Pete, who works at Lake of the Clouds, and we had chatted with him there about possibly helping him sing O Canada to the guests on Canada Day.  Unfortunately, we’re 2 days early so we just talked to him a bit, ate some carrot cake, and headed back out into the rain. With the day being fairly easy, we got to our destination campsite by 5 and that suited us fine.  The shelter has 2 levels and probably sleeps 16+ comfortably.  We met some southbounders who started almost a month before us!  Nameless and Detective Cloussou, are quite slow 😉  We hung out with them and others for a bit but were in bed by 7. 
My feet are a mess again from more days of being soaked.  Tomorrow is supposed to be more bad weather, so my feet are definitely only getting worse.

Megan’s knee was OK today, although still a bit sore beyond normal. We definitely did some hobbling today but hopefully back to business tomorrow…

We woke up today to beams of sunshine streaming into the shelter, which got us moving more quickly than usual.  I decided to put on my emergency socks (kept dry the whole trip til now) as my feet couldn’t handle another day of wetness. We hiked up Mt Garfield and got a nice view of Franconia Ridge, our hike for the rest of the morning.  We dropped down and climbed back up towards Mt Lafayette, running into some of our shelter-mates from last night. We got up onto the ridge, and it was all exposed walking, today only, in the sun!  So, we had a lovely morning with views all around before stopping for a long lunch to dry all our stuff out.

The Franconia Ridge

Next, a long steep descent to Franconia Notch, where we originally had planned to go into town and resupply. Instead, we pressed on, still loaded down with a few days of food, due to all the free meals we got in the huts.  So, we passed under a highway and climbed up to Lonesome Hut, where we did a work for stay again. This time, we scrubbed the gas stove and replaced some tinfoil below, not bad for delicious lasagna, soup, hallah bread, and salad. The Hut isn’t full either, so the whole process was much more chill, and the staff less frazzled. We got to bed pretty early and are going to head out early as well in the morning.