Looking back at New Hampshire

My contribution to the AMC [Appalachian Mountain Club]:

- $34
- 3 and 1/2 hrs of work

In return, I got seven nights of shelter and six awesome meals. I was in the White Mountains from Aug. 13, when I climbed over Moosilauke, until Aug. 26, when I crossed NH Rte. 2, the northernmost road leading to Gorham. For the days I hiked in the Whites, my average daily distance was just more than eight miles.

Aug. 26-29

- Aug. 26: Imp shelter to Trident Col campsite, 14.9 trail miles

I read in the registers that I was catching up to people I've been hiked with previously. The hike from Imp shelter to US Rte. 2 rolled me out of the White Mountains. At the road I could have hitched back into Gorham easily, but I opted not to. At night it felt amazing to be in my tent again. The temp dropped to the 40s; It was maybe the first time I zipped up my 20-degree down bag all the way.

- Aug. 27: Trident Col to Full Goose shelter, 14.4 trail miles

I crossed the Maine border in the afternoon and caught up Prairie Dog and Angry Beaver and Gritty McDuff, and a host of other hikers I couldn't recognize in the shelter, or in the several tents set up around it - it was 7:30 p.m. and cold, everybody was laying low in their sleeping bags and boggons.

I cooked noodles and spent a chilly night in my tent.

- Aug. 28: Full Goose to Baldpate lean-to, 12 trail miles

The day started out with the hardest mile on the entire AT: Mahoosuc Notch. My trail book says thus: "Many call this scramble under, around, over, and between the boulders the most difficult mile on the Trail."

Ha. I played Mario - every time you lose your balance and fall, you lose a life. I lost 4 lives. I had a great time navigating the boulders.

Afterwards I ate my last lunch food: Tortillas with Nutella, peanut butter and jelly - pure energy :)

At the Baldpate lean-to a brave mouse flitted around the front of the shelter. He would return in the night...

Aug. 25 and 26: Zero day and reentry to the trail

- Aug. 25: Gorham to Gorham, 0 trail miles

I zeroed in Gorham but foolishly did not go to the Super Wal-Mart to resupply, which I would regret later.

On the good side, my loaner pack arrived in the afternoon. I mailed my broken-down pack [it broke near Lincoln, NH, which I note here] to California with a deliberately-worded letter of complaint tucked inside. Gregory, the company that made it, has told me they will repair the pack damage. I doubt it. The mainstay came completely undone from the bottom of the pack.

The weather alternated between brilliant sunshine and quick downpours all day long.

- Aug. 26: Gorham to Imp Shelter, 13.1 trail miles

I hitched a ride back to the Pinkham Notch visitors center to resume my hike. The center had already stopped serving breakfast so I had an early morning burger. My new earbuds, cheapies from Rite Aid, fell out of my ears repeatedly as I began walking. The third time they got wrapped around one of my trekking poles, and in a fit, I threw the pole down the trail. The earbuds were no more.

The hike took me 1,940 feet straight up Wildcat Mountain immediately. At the top I wrung my shirt out and got some sun while talking to an older hiker who was in the process of making up the miles he'd skipped on a 2002 thru hike.

I checked in at the last of the AMC mountain huts, Carter Notch hut, to drink a bunch of water, read the register and eat some snacks. On my way out I passed Brave Little Toaster and his dog, Pork, and Frank N. Stein.

The trail went up a grueling 1,480 feet and settled into a ridge walk with clear views of the Whites on all sides; the sun fell directly behind Mt. Washington. I was very tempted to stealth camp on Mt. Hight. But I was behind most people I knew, so I hiked.

I was hiking in the dark with my headlamp when Frank N. Stein caught up. The 1,000 feet slab ride down from North Carter Mountain had been fearsome - wet slabs, vertical drops, swinging from young pines and tree roots in the dark - I could only imagine how difficult it must be for Toaster and the dog.

At Imp, the shelter was the only place we could stay; the tent platforms were full. The shelter was crowded and dark. It was 9:15 p.m. I cooked up a double Ramen dinner outside the shelter. I crashed hard.

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.

Recap, Aug. 24-30 [Gorham, NH to Andover, ME]

There aren't enough USB ports on this comp for me to use the Internets, the mouse and upload photos, so I'm going to put just the words down for now and do a photo dump later this week, in Rangeley or Stratton. Please read above and bear with!

Fog rock hike day

[Early Bear hiking down Mt. Madison. Ahead of him are Gritty and Wispee, morning of Aug. 23. Very treacherous trail, but cool thing to do.]

Aug. 22 continued: The migrant worker experience

I reached Madison Spring hut at about 4:30 p.m. Normally it's best to arrive between 5:30 and 6 p.m. to ask for work-for-stay, but a hiker named Gritty McDuff and two European hikers, a couple, named Rock Lobster and Walkabout, were already slaving away in the kitchen.

Early Bear and Lil' Dipper sat at a table. When Gritty was finished working, we got a game of Jenga going, which was a freaking blast.

Hikers kept rolling in. We had to wait outside like migrant workers while the paying guests had dinner. We had a lot of laughs, though. It was raining so we smooshed into the vestibule.














[Gritty McDuff, Early Bear, Spaceman Cowboy, Rock Lobster, Lil'Dipper and Wispee, on the threshold of Madison Spring hut, Aug. 22.]

Aug. 22: The Presidential Range

As soon as I reached the top of the Tuckerman Ravine trail, which goes straight up - straight up - Mt. Washington from Hermit Lake shelter, a group of upstate New Yorkers wearing farm clothes and bonnets asked me where I was hiking from.

"West Virginia," was my response :)

It's getting very common for me to find myself explaining hiking the Appalachian Trail to tourists.

From there, it was a short day of hiking, 5.7 trail miles, to Madison Spring hut, over the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, where I saw the most spectacular views I've seen during my entire hike. It's 25 miles of above-treeline, alpine hiking. You can see exactly where you're going to go and you know how far that is. It's as though you have been dropped into a role-playing video game, somehow. Time actually flies while hiking, for once.














[The Presidential Range, Aug. 22, 2009]














[Looking back up to Mt. Washington, with summit building on top, across the Cog Railway. The railway is a short old-timey passenger train for tourists. It was once an AT tradition to moon it as it went by, but there was a crackdown in 2007 and nobody does it any more.]














[Approaching the mountains. The AT actually skirts all the peaks, but the views are still breathtaking.]

Aug. 21: Stranded on Washington

Man, it was foggy on the way to Mt. Washington. A weather bulletin interrupted the NPR program I was listening to to talk about a severe T-storm heading NE through Vermont at the moment.














[Hiking to Mt. Washington, elev. 6,288 ft., Aug. 21, 2009]

When I reached the summit, big objects began materializing out of the wall of white. A radio tower here, an ancient stone building there; I found my way into the crowded summit building. While I was walking around, Early Bear and Lil Dipper walked in through the front door. They'd gotten a mile down the trail when they realized they'd left Dip's camera battery charger plugged into the wall.

I had some food, two slices of pizza, a chili dog and an ice cream sandwich. It started raining:














[Wet entrance to the summit building]

The fog clung to the windows. On the computer screens they have set up showing the weather radar, a big patch of green, yellow and red rushed our way at 40 mph. We waited for it in safety. Sure enough, while I browsed the gift shop lightning bolts started illuminating the fog.














[Lil' Dipper, Early Bear and me, stranded on the summit of Mt. Washington]

Two former hikers calling themselves "The Brothers" approached us, bought us coffee and snack cakes and were very interested to hear about our hikes. The Brothers, two young dudes from Mass., started the trail southbound last September, which is a late start for southbounders, and finished in February this year. They saw hardly a soul along the way, they said, and they took Sundays off to watch Pats football games.

The trail magic gave Early Bear a chance to retell his skunk attack story. The story is without a doubt the most compelling trail tale of the year, and I heard it again, in greater detail. You'll either have to wait for it to come out in his book or maybe I can get it on the record here. In a nutshell, it involves a night of camping in Virginia with Prairie Dog and Angry Beaver that goes awry because of a rabid skunk :)

The Brothers were impressed.

EB also retold his bee sting rescue op story from Vermont, which I blog here.

My contribution was about a double trail magic that happened to me last Thursday. After a long, flat hike from Zealand Falls hut, I had a leiserely lunch in the parking lot with a veteran hiker named Rock Dancer, who said he's been doing trail magic there for 8 years. He had folding chairs and bologna sandwiches. Then I got my pack on, put my hands through the wrist straps on my trekking poles and was headed out when a car pulled in and the driver, a young guy, goes, "You a thru hiker?" as he's parking. I said I was, and he said, "Want a beer? Of course you do." So he popped his trunk and I had a lunchtime beer not 20 steps away from my most recent trail magic. And it had been a while since I'd received any trail magic before that!

So because the park rangers at the summit building are unfriendly to hikers, having been accustomed to dealing with far too many ignorant city-slicker types, and they don't let people stay in the building when it storms, I was convinced to join Early Bear and Dip in taking the shuttle off the mountain. It cost $29 - a ransomly price.

The long shuttle ride down was interesting. Two weekenders said they'd thrown off their packs and run for it once the lightning started, and they had no plans to go back and get them. Two other weekenders said their response to the lightning was to cower, in the cold, driving rain, for 30 minutes before making a run for shelter.

No wonder rangers charge an arm and a leg for mountaintop rescues these days.

When we reached the bottom of the hill we decided to hike about two miles back up the mountain and stay at Hermit Lake shelter, resuming the walk in the morning in order to start over at the summit.

My Mizpah

In a post before I entered the Whites, I explained the deal with the shelters and huts. I also said I'd maybe try to work-for-stay at one hut. That's turned into three successful work-for-stays, and I think I've actually gained weight from all the home cookin' :)

I still have one last hut to go. If I get out of Gorham in time, that will be tonight. Only a steep 2,000-ft climb up Wildcat Mountain stands in my way.

The day after Zealand Falls hut I hiked with the goal of making it to the biggest hut, Lakes of the Clouds, but only managed to reach Mizpah Spring hut in time for dinner, which is went you want to arrive if you're going to ask the croo to stay there.

A group of three hikers put on an hour-long, overcooked presentation as part of their work-for-stay. The gist of it was that they started in May, two months later than most northbounders, wake up at 5 a.m. and average more than 20 miles a day while fighting off hordes of bears. They have a Web site, too.

Hikers of that sort - the before-sunrise wakers who write in trail journals about feeling guilty for only doing 15 miles, or for not being able to get out of a town before 9 a.m. - and they're uncommon, have their own category. They're not in it to experience the culture of the trail, or to find something while letting the adventure take shape under their feet. They're in it for the math. The miles hiked, the packs' weight, the pounds lost. All that stuff I've come to think is inessential.

Anyway, mornings at the huts start before 6 a.m. when the croo - the six or so young people doing summer jobs in the mountains - starts cooking breakfast. Hikers sleep on the dining room tables or on the floor. At Mizpah, I killed time until breakfast and then I swept the hell out of the six bunk rooms and the main room for my work-for-stay.

Before that, though, the croo put on a performance about what guests should do...














[Two croo members do a "Hanz and Franz" skit that teaches guests at Mizpah Spring hut to pack out their trash, make their beds and exercise their heart muscles by leaving generous tips, Aug. 21, 2009]

I hiked out, got about half a mile before I realized I'd left my Thermarest at the hut, dropped my pack, turned around, hiked back, got it, turned around, hiked back and then hiked on towards a date with Mt. Washington, the biggest mountain [though not the biggest climb] of the entire northern half of the AT. The advertisements about the summit having "the world's worst weather" would prove accurate...

Photo blogging the Whites

When I have more time I'll add narrative. But for now, sit back, relax and travel the AT through New Hampshire National Geographic style...















[Looking north towards Mt. Lafayette, Aug. 18, 2009]














[Participating in a Q & A panel with two other hikers, Brave Little Toaster and Frank N. Stein, about thru-hiking at Zealand Falls hut, Aug. 19]














[Frank N. Stein, Toaster and me, breakfast at Zealand Falls hut, Aug. 20. As part of our work-for-stay, we talked about the trail with the hut's paying guests, did dishes and swept the floor. We had a huge dinner and homemade pancakes for breakfast.]














[Mt. Washington, the tallest mountain on the northern half of the AT, in the distance.]

Aug. 24: Still in the Hampsh

I'm coffee wired at the moment, sitting at one of two terminals in the Gorham, NH public library, incredibly antsy to hike today but also full of blog updates. It's going to be hard!

Since my last update eight [!] days ago I've hiked most of the Whites. More mountains remain. The first one up is the Wildcat, a 4,422-ft mountain that requires a very steep 2,000-ft climb to reach.

To hurry things along I'm going to photo blog a bit.

Aug. 16: Summer hits with a fierceness

It's freaking hot today. I'm in Lincoln, NH staying at "Chet's Place," aka the One Step At a Time hostel. I'm a big fan of Chet West. Today I did my first work-for-stay for real: I bleached down the shower and reorganized the shelves of hiker stuff in the hikers room.

I'm waiting for my mail drops at the PO tomorrow. In the meantime, I replaced the tips on my Leki trekking poles. They were worn down to nubs - the guy at the local outfitter, where, incidentally, Chet used to work, and I teamed up to knock the old tips off with a wrench and brute force.

I'm also supergluing my pack. No, that isn't good. I'm going to contact Gregory tomorrow to see how I can get it replaced and when and where.

The mountains have been beautiful and difficult.

On Thursday, I summitted Moosilauke with Col. Mustard, strolling through the scraggly, mossy pines that formed low hedgerows on either side of a narrow trail. A heavy fog rolled over our luncheon. Little black flies or gnats swarmed rocks, the orange Moosilauke sign and invaded my can of peanut butter.

I've found my mileage dropping and my calorie intake upping.

Gotta go, internet cafe is closing,

-JH

Next up, the Whites

Soon I'll be on Moosilauke, elevation 4,802 feet, the highest of my hike so far. Yesterday it was cloud shrouded:














[Mt. Moosilauke, NH, the first of the White Mountains, Aug. 12]

My companion book tells me that snow, sleet and ice can strike the peaks in any season. After Moosilauke, we've got Mount Wolf [elev. 3,478 ft], North and South Kinsman Mountain [4,293 and 4,358, respectively] and the Presidential Range: Mt. Lincoln [5,089], Mt. Garfield [4,500], South Twin Mountain [4,902], Mt. Webster [3,910], Mt. Jackson [4,052], Mt. Pierce [4,312], Mt. Franklin [5,004] and the biggie, Mt. Washington [6,288]. Then Mt. Madison [5,366], Carter Dome [4,832] and Mt. Moriah [4,049].

All in all, it's 90 miles of mountain climbing bliss.

Unlike previous sections of the AT, camping in the Whites isn't as simple as picking from any shelter you come across.

Most shelters and campsites cost $8 per night. Caretakers stay in residence at each of them. And a lot of the Whites area has "forest protection areas" with a lot of rules about camping that include a] no camping above treeline [where trees are smaller than 8 feet tall], b] no camping within .25 miles of huts, shelters or campsites except at those places, and c] no camping within 200 feet of the trail.

Then there are the "huts."

The Appalachian Mountain Club has 8 mountaintop huts modeled after huts in the Alps. Each costs a lot of money - $74 to $90 - because there are tourists who will pay that much to stay in bunk beds, without showers.

The huts serve cheap bean soup and have water for thru-hikers during the day.

At all pay sites in the Whites, hikers can offer to work off their stays. It's very limited, though. I'm not sure how it's going to work when I roll through because, as you can see in the hostel posts below, there is a raft of northbound hikers entering the mountains this week.

To start off, there are a couple of free shelters. Some southbounders have passed the word along that stealth camping can be had at the "notches," or the valleys with road crossings between the mountains. I'd like to do work-for-stay at one of the huts.

Off to mountaineer,

JH

Aug. 12: Hosteling, cont.

Yesterday was fun. Rain paranoia kept us all here at the hostel. It's widely said that if you have to wait to get sunny days to hike the Whites, it's worth doing.

I started reading Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle" and got about 30 pages in before I realized I've already read it.

I played some Euchre [Nutmeg and I beat Col. Mustard and Prairie Dog], read the Times, played Monopoly and grilled some little steaks. I added too much water to the camp potatoes I was cooking so I called them grits instead.














[Behind the Welcome Hikers hostel, Aug. 12, 2009]

Moose? Check.

The hostel shuttle took a group of us hikers into Warren yesterday to resupply. On the way back, we spotted us a moose.














[Moose next to NH Rte. 25, between Glencliff and Warren, Aug. 12, 2009]

The driver pulled over. A couple of us went up to it. It stepped out of the muck with a swarm of bugs around it and studied us.

I think that completes the animal checklist.

Moose: 1.

Aug 11: hosteling

I'm at the tail end of a long "Family Guy" marathon here at Hikers Welcome Hostel.

We hikers are spoiled for choices here...














[The media wall, Hikers Welcome Hostel, Glencliff, NH, Aug. 11, 2009]

Today I hiked roughly 8 miles of AT. I got laundry done, finally, after a week of wearing the same socks and shirt over and over again. Another hot shower, always good. I resupplied at a mini mart in Warren, NH, which I normally don't like to do because marts are more expensive and have smaller selections than grocery stores. My bill was about $50, but that included all my food and drink for today.

At the PO I found that my phone has yet to catch up with me :( Apparently they lost the slip of paper in Hanover where I said to forward my packages to Glencliff.

A man who is working on the hostel here broke out the guitar at the fire ring this evening and we had a bit of a singalong to Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" and some Bowie.

If you haven't tried Ben and Jerry's Key Lime Pie ice cream, you must do so today.

Off to my bunk...

Aug. 10: The two month anniversary!

In the morning I realized, in my groggy stupor on the wood floor of the Firewarden's Cabin, that it was August 10: Two full months on the AT.

In the month since my one-month anniversary, I have hiked 355 miles through New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire to get within 406 miles of Katahdin.

I had lunch sitting on the side of the trail itself with the Divas group and Mustard joined us. There it was decided that a lot of us would go that evening to the Dancing Bones village, a place my guide book calls "an independent community" that is hiker friendly, located a mile off the trail. We got a lot of mileage out of speculating on what kind of cult we'd find.

The hike went up, gradually, over nice trail.














[Rocky slope going up, Aug. 10, 2009]

In the afternoon everyone met up again on the rocky top of Mt. Cube for snacking and gazing around at the mountains. Personally, I wrung my shirt of sweat.














[Me, Nutmeg, O.G., Col. Mustard, Prairie Dog and Angry Beaver on Mt. Cube, Aug. 10, 2009. Four people in the photo are from Ohio.]

I lost the Divas when I stopped for a lake swim with the other hikers. The beach was otherwise deserted but for a father who read Popular Science while his young daughter swam alone. I waded out. The girl was like, "Can you do a handstand? Do a handstand!"

I was relieved as hell to see the Divas clustered in an outdoor kitchen at the Dancing Bones village. I thought they might have chickened out.

We ate a bunch of the food from the help-yourself fridge on the front porch. Daal, cous cous, rice, beans, salsa and cheese sauce - we ate it right next to the porch.

The woman in the house came out to chat with us, after two other guests left, and that's when we got an idea of what the commune is all about: PanEuRythmy.

Basically, it's a circle dance that's part hippie, part moving Tai Chi that hails from Bulgaria. Nutmeg asked for a dance lesson that night, and the woman, Bekah, headed up the drive to fetch the music.

Meanwhile, I had the first shower I'd had since Rutland, nearly a week earlier. A row of shower stalls lined the back porch. The hot water never ran out.

The woman taught a few of the girls in a dancing pavilion where we later camped out. They circled a vase of sunflowers doing slow arm movements.














[Bekah teaching Billyhoot, Nutmeg, Rocket and Storm to do PanEurythmy moves, Aug. 10, 2009]

I slept in my tent under the pavilion. Later, the acorns made a lot of noise falling on the shelter. It rained hard early in the morning.

Aug. 8 & 9: Hiking the Hampsh

The short and dirty version.

- August 8

I woke up in my tent at the edge of a Dartmouth athletics field in Hanover. A curious dog's snout poked under my rain cover before its owner called it back.

I stretched outside and looked around me. To the north was the swampy woods where I'd sloshed around in my sandals the night before, looking futilely for a tent site. Drops of water hung on the top of all the blades of grass.

In the parking lot of the Hanover Co-op I ran into Billyhoot and Nutmeg, the Georgia Girls, and inside I ran into Gromet, Rocket and Storm [the Packadivas] and Katchup and Miss Muster [the Condiments]. My brunch was two donuts, a raspberry pastry, a deli sandwich, a bag of Doritoes, a coke and a coffee. Plus the Times.

When I rolled up to Moose Mountain shelter 11 miles later, I was shocked - shocked - to see Prairie Dog and Angry Beaver playing Euchre with O.G. and Colonel Mustard, all sprawled out on their Thermarests in the shelter, burning incense. I thought they'd all be way ahead of me. A pleasant surprise.

I cooked up some noodles and finished the rest of the chapters of "Almayer's Folly" in my tent.

- Aug. 9

I start hiking relatively late. Not for me, but for the general hiking population, around 10 a.m.

It's another easy day of hiking, 12.4 miles. All the same people end up at a place called the Firewarden's Cabin, at the summit of Smarts Mountain, elevation 3,230 feet.














[Billyhoot and Nutmeg, Firewarden's Cabin, Aug. 9]

I picked up the second half of a new book, "The Scarlet Ruse," an airport novel. Col. Mustard has the first half. So far we are finding the story radically different.

This time, I partnered Prairie Dog in a game of Euchre against Angry Beaver and Col. Mustard. It came down to the wire; we lost on a knife's edge.

Update, August 11: The rain falls outdoors

I'm at Welcome Hikers Hostel in Glencliff, NH. The rain just exploded out of the sky and snuffed out a backyard fire in a fire ring. A lot of hikers rushed in. We are now watching CNN about the health care town halls. Knowledge is funn! I'm staying here tonight and hiking Moosilauke, the first of the White Mountains, tomorrow, so I'll have time to update again after we get me sorted out.

400 miles to go!