Aug. 24: Wrong turn to Gorham

- Aug. 24: Madison Spring hut to Gorham, NH, *7.8 trail miles

After the fog rock hike down Mt. Madison, which comprised about 10 hikers, three of us got lost at a trail junction. The trail-maintaining club for the Whites, the AMC, is notoriously bad at marking the AT, and nowhere have they done a poorer job than at the Osgood campsite. The wooden signs there reveal nothing; no white blazes are in evidence on any of the hundreds of trees on which a white blaze could be painted with a couple of brushstrokes.

Three of us forged straight ahead when we should have taken a 90-degree right turn. The trail turned out to be a leisurely ski slope to the highway, and from there, we road walked 1.5 miles to a visitors center, where we ate lunch. Then the three of us - Spaceman Cowboy, Gritty McDuff and myself - stood on the highway shoulder, thumbs out, focusing our attention on trucks.

I've hitched into towns half a dozen times now, and I've never gotten a ride in anything but a truck driven by a dude. And 30 minutes of hitching later, we were in the back of a pickup truck, headed into Gorham.

We got out at a hostel called The Barn, a open-air hostel attached to a B & B that flies both the US and Canadian flags. A woman with an Eastern European accent came out and had us register and pay immediately. I asked if she had Internet.

"Yes, but you can't use it," she said. Not sure what effect she was going for, but my reaction was to laugh.

That also kind of set the tone for Gorham as a trail town. But at least I got to shower away a week's worth of mountain and to sleep on a bed instead of a table. That was sooo refreshing.

For an unknowable number of hours, a group of us hikers sat mesmerized by MTV's "Nitro Circus," a Jackass-type of show [Johnny Knoxville produces it and makes cameos] involving professional Xtreme athletes and absurd stunts.


*not actually that many miles. More than half of that I blue-blazed or road walked or outright didn't do.