1914.1 miles in

When we got to Tigger’s Tree House, we decided immediately that we liked the place.  The lady that runs the place is named Karen.  She had two RVs outside affectionately named The Tipi and The Tank.  In the house, her son had previously lived in the basement so his room was available, and the living room came equipped with a TV, Playstation 2, and a wide selection of movies.  Karen showed us where to find the shower, laundry, and freezer which was fully stocked with ice cream.  My mom had mailed brownies to Hanover, so we tossed them into bowls, topped it with ice cream, and sat down to watch Disney’s Aladdin.  Rain Dancer slept in The Tipi, Jackrabbit and Handstand in The Tank, Larb in Karen’s son’s room, and I crashed on the couch.

We decided Tigger’s Tree House was too comfy to spend just one night, so we talked to Karen and the next morning (Saturday August 13) she drove us 17.5 AT-miles North, sans-packs to Lyme, NH.  I carried my 583 ml gatorade bottle, 0.5 oz of bleach, and some Pop-Tarts in my pockets.  The five of us walked/jogged Southward back to Hanover, NH where we called Karen to be picked up for a second night at Tigger’s.  We had finished our miles by 2:00pm, and our shopping/eating by 4:00pm.  While in town I picked up some little brass hooks with screw threads so I’d be able to tent on the wooden tent platforms in the White Mountains (my tent is not free-standing, but rather needs to be staked to stand upright).  Once back at Tigger’s at a respectable hour, we watched The Princess Diaries and Pan’s Labyrinth, cooked some frozen pizzas, and ordered Chinese.  It was an all-around enjoyable evening.

Karen made us breakfast Sunday morning (August 14) including fried puff pastries, then drove us to Lyme again, this time with our packs.  The weather wasn’t the best – chilly, and kept threatening rain.  We climbed to the summit of Smarts Mountain and had lunch inside the fire lookout tower.  We continued on to Hexacuba Shelter and beyond to Cube Mountain which had a pretty impressive view.  From Cube Mountain we could see the fire tower where we’d had lunch.  I think Cube Mountain may have been largely marble.  We continued on and tented next to a stream.  We ended up stopping before 5pm, so we had a campfire and enjoyed our downtime in camp.  The water was cold and crystal-clear.  We taught Rain Dancer how to bear bag.  It started sprinkling just before sunset so we all ducked into our tents early.

Monday morning (August 15) we awoke to rain.  It had started raining in earnest around 11pm the previous night, and never stopped.  I woke up at 6am and it was raining so I dismissed any thoughts of getting an early start and went back to bed.  I awoke again at 8am and it was still raining, so I told myself I’d leave at 10am whether it had stopped or not.  I awoke again at 10am and it had not stopped.  While packing up my gear I noticed that a puddle had formed around my tent during the night, and water was slowly seeping through the floor (sil-nylon isn’t 100% waterproof – lightweight gear is all about acceptable loss).  There was a bit of standing water in the corners of the tent, and anything that had been touching the tent floor was damp.  I dried what I could with my shammy, ate breakfast and packed in the tent, then hopped out and quickly shoved the tent into its stuff-sack and moved out.  We hiked 4 miles to Ore Hill Shelter where we enjoyed the relatively dry environment for awhile, then continued on 8.6 miles to Jeffers Brook Shelter, at the base of Mt Moosilauke.  We all changed into dry clothes, threw the wet ones in the corner, and crawled into our sleeping bags early.  We bantered from within our bags with each other and with a SoBo named Nine Lives.  He told us about his experience hiking over Moosilauke that day in 80 mph winds and rain.  It didn’t sound terribly appealing.  Handstand got Nine Lives’ real name so he could send a chain letter to him in Dalton.  Rain Dancer brushed Larb’s teeth.  We group-hugged before bed.

When we awoke Tuesday morning (August 16), the rain had eased up a fair bit, but it hadn’t stopped.  We all changed back into our cold, wet clothes and headed up Moosilauke, the first of the White Mountains.  The climb looked pretty intense on the elevation profile in the guidebook, but I was surprised at how easily we reached the top.  The weather became progressively colder and rainier as we ascended, and as soon as we got above treeline we were blasted with sustained 30+ mph winds.  I was freezing, my hands went numb, and I could barely see through my fogged and wet glasses.  I focused on moving over the summit quickly and getting back to the relative safety of the trees.  Shortly after reaching treeline I came to Beaver Brook Shelter where I stopped temporarily to dig my gloves out of my pack.  I hadn’t wanted to do so above treeline for two reasons – first, if I open my pack outside a shelter or tent then everything gets wet, and second, if I stop moving then I start feeling the cold.  After donning my gloves I continued down the incredibly steep North face of Moosilauke, paralleling a waterfall the whole way.  The trail was treacherous and beautiful and actually very well maintained.  At the bottom some weekend hikers gave me a plum and a muffin.  I hitched into Lincoln and dried everything at the laundromat.  I picked up my 20F sleeping bag at the post office and returned home my 45F bag.  When the rest of Comedy Central arrived, they informed me that we were not going back onto the trail until the sun came out.  We got first dinner at Nacho’s – I had an enchilada, chimichanga, taco, rice, beans, chips & salsa, and some french fries that the table next to us didn’t finish.  Immediately afterward we headed to McDonald’s for second dinner, where I had three double cheeseburgers, a yogurt parfait, and an apple pie.  We slept at Chet’s, which is a secret hostel.  Chet was a hiker himself, but ran into some bad luck and now he’s in a wheelchair.  Chet’s garage is a bunk room, and the place had a very relaxed atmosphere.  The rain let up that afternoon, so our time in town was actually quite pleasant.  I slept on a couch.

I awoke Wednesday August 17 at 6am, with a headache – probably from sleeping on the couch.  We had arranged a ride (a very nice lady named Tanya) back to the trail for 7am, so I popped some pills, chased it with coffee, and concentrated on recovering.  We left a lot of gear at Chet’s because there was a second road-crossing to Lincoln 16 miles further North on the AT.  I packed clothes, food, and water.  The trail was very wet, full of mud and standing puddles of water.  For the first few miles the AT was literally a stream, and we were climbing up miniature waterfalls.  A bee stung me in my left calf early in the hike, so I got to enjoy that for the rest of the day.  Lovely.  Some of the mud was incredibly deep, so I was occasionally surprised when my trekking pole would slip effortlessly 3 feet into the ground.  I considered filming myself jumping into one such mud pit, but decided against it.  The water in all the streams was pretty high, and one bridge had been washed out, so a few of our stream crossings were pretty hairy, and most of them were pretty wet.  We stopped for snacks under some power lines, and while we were eating we noticed a helicopter flying lower than us.  It started coming our direction, so Larb mooned it.  The pilot waved.  We had wonderful views atop Kinsman Mountain, and we saw the first of the AMC huts – Lonesome Lake Hut.  It was a lot fancier than I’d expected.  The area around the hut, and the trail in general, was pretty crowded with tourists/day hikers.  I was surprised at how affronted I was by their presence.  After walking 1800 miles to the White Mountains, it felt like the beauty of the area was my reward for persevering, and these people didn’t deserve to be there.  Also, I was in the wilderness, hiking the AT – it was my world, and crowds shouldn’t be a part of it.  It felt like a group of tourists had wandered into my house, and they were annoyed to find it inhabited.  Rain Dancer wanted to swim in Lonesome Lake pretty badly, but we had to refuse for the second time that week because we were pressed for time.  When we got back to Lincoln I bought ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, sprinkles, and cherries that night and made sundaes for everyone to cheer her up.  We bought 5 days of food and spent another night at Chet’s.  I slept on the floor this time.

On Thursday (August 18) we got a ride from Tanya again, this time with all of our gear.  We started the day with a big climb up to Franconia Ridge, which was beautiful.  The trail was above treeline for a few miles, and the weather was perfect.  The place was crawling with tourists, but we ignored them and they tried to ignore us.  We did some yoga on top of Mt Lafayette, then hiked on to Garfield Ridge Shelter.  We would have liked to stay at that shelter, but all of the shelters in the White Mountains have an $8 fee, and the place was crawling with boy scouts, so we got water and found a place to camp at the base of Garfield Mountain.  I constructed a fire ring and made a campfire, and everyone went to bed early.  We’re all starting to get rather annoyed by day hikers – they don’t know any of the trail’s social rules, and it still feels like they don’t have a right to be in these mountains, since they drove here.

We started the day on Thursday (August 19) with a steep climb up South Twin Mountain, then enjoyed the view for awhile before moving on.  We blue-blazed along a 1.4-mile side trail called the Zeacliff Trail, which cut off 2.8 miles of the AT.  It shortened our hike by 1.4 miles, but really make it any easier – the Zeacliff Trail is steeper and has more elevation change than the AT, and the 1.4 miles of AT that we cut off is actually perfectly smooth, level terrain because it used to be a railroad track.  The main reason we decided to follow the Zeacliff Trail is because it bypasses a section of the AT that goes right past Zealand Falls Hut, and we didn’t feel like pushing through a crowd of tourists again.  The Zeacliff Trail started with a very steep descent down a few sheer rock faces,  then continued steeply down to a stream with some campsites, then up through a boulder field where it rejoined the AT.  We followed the AT to a perfect stealth camp site 2 miles South of Ethan Pond Campsite.  The site had room for three tents, the trees were spaced widely enough for hammocks, it was right next to a cool stream with a huge rock slab in the middle, and there were blueberries and firewood everywhere.  Handstand really wanted to do work-for-stay at Lakes of the Clouds Hut the next night so he kept moving that night to ensure he’d be able to reach the hut the next day.  The remaining four of us sat on the rock slab in the stream for awhile, then I built a fire ring and made a campfire.  We ate next to the fire, and then a strong thunderstorm rolled in so we grabbed everything and scrambled into our tents.

I awoke Friday morning (August 20) at 7:00am as Larb was walking out of camp.  Rain Dancer and Jackrabbit left at 8:00am, and I was out shortly after.  I caught up to Jackrabbit and Rain Dancer on the Webster Cliffs, which were the first views along the Presidential Range.  We hiked together to Mizpah Hut where we caught up to Larb, who had caught up to Handstand.  We bought soup from the hut to supplement our lunch, filled our water, and continued on.  We continued on from Mizpah to Lakes of the Clouds Hut.  Most of that section was above treeline, and the weather was pretty good so we had amazing views the whole way.  By the time we reached Lakes of the Clouds Hut, we’d been ascending nonstop along the Presidential Range for 10.7 miles toward Mt Washington, and we still had another 1.5 miles uphill before we were finished.  That day however, we decided to stop at Lakes of the Clouds Hut.  Realistically we didn’t have much choice – there are no camp sites for 14 miles after Mizpah Hut, and the terrain in that area is challenging enough that 14 miles would be a very long day.  The hut master informed us that they only had 8 positions available for work-for-stay, and 7 were already filled.  Larb took the eighth, and the rest of us paid $10 to sleep in “The Dungeon”.  I was denied a refill on the “bottomless” bowl of soup I’d purchased, because they were “out”.  Larb and 7 others were fed a salad, fresh bread, mashed potatoes & gravy, peas, turkey, and unlimited soup (yes, that soup) for free.  Larb was nice enough to share his food with us.  “The Dungeon” turned out to be a 10’x10′ stone room under the building.  There were six bunks packed in there.  It was damp and musty, had a thick steel door, and was right next to the privy tanks so it smelled wonderful.  The work they asked of Larb was trivial, but apparently it’s worth $10, a bed, and two hearty meals.  Some nice day hikers gave us some flatbread and beef sticks when they learned how the AMC treated us, which helped a lot to assuage our distaste for day hikers in general.  I was told later by another AMC employee that the hut master most likely pocketed the $10 we paid for space in The Dungeon.  We don’t like the AMC.

On Sunday August 21, we started hiking at 8am without Larb.  Larb stayed behind to help serve breakfast to the guests and to have breakfast himself, since the AMC inexplicably deigns fit to feed him but not us.  We have no hard feelings toward Larb for this, of course.  All anger is directed toward the AMC.  We easily covered 1.5 miles to the summit of Mt Washington.  We checked out a bunkhouse-turned-museum, then went to the basement of the main building to charge our electronics.  I made a postcard and mailed it.  I bought a present but couldn’t mail it because the post office didn’t open ’till later that day, so I packed it out.  Unfortunately the snack bar was not selling hot food for some reason, so I couldn’t get a pizza.  The skies looked a bit ominous all day, and we knew thunderstorms were in the forecast, so we didn’t spend much time on Mt Washington.  On our way out we crossed the cog railroad.  I stopped to take pictures of the cog, and Handstand stopped to moon the cog.  The cog was originally coal-powered, and it caused a lot of pollution which the hikers found distasteful, so it became tradition for thru-hikers to moon the cog.  Most of the engines have since been replaced with diesel, but the tradition remains.  However, most people don’t moon the cog anymore because word is that they film you from the cog, and if you moon it then they find you down the trail and slap you with a fine.  The cog Handstand mooned was coal-powered (it still runs once a day), and he hasn’t been fined yet.  We continued on to Madison Hut where we had a few bowls of soup, then hiked out when the sky started to darken.  We only had about 2 miles to go from Madison before we hit tree cover, but those two miles turned out to be pretty tough.  At one point Rain Dancer slipped, twisted her knee, and fell backwards down the mountain.  Luckily she carries and absurdly large and heavy pack, so it saved her from any serious damage.  We got her back upright and encouraged her to move as quickly as possible despite her brush with death, because the storm was almost on top of us – we’d been hearing thunder for awhile and it was starting to rain.  I made it to the trees first and met a girl headed up.  I informed her that she was almost above treeline, but there were a couple places to pitch a tent ahead on her right.  I continued down and met a mother and daughter and told them the same thing, and also informed them that I’d warned one girl.  I continued downhill, and passed a man helping Simarron down.  Simarron is 89 years old and is trying to beat the record for oldest thru-hiker.  He’s a jerk, so I hope he doesn’t make it.  In Tennessee he yelled at everyone in a shelter to quiet down, even though it was still a couple hours ’till sunset, because he was trying to sleep.  Generally the rule is that if you want to sleep before sunset, you either pitch your tent or you use earplugs – you don’t enforce your schedule on the entire shelter.  Also, Simarron introduces himself unprovoked as “I’m Simarron.  No photos please.”  I learned this day that apparently he also gets himself into dangerous situations he can’t handle, and then relies on the kindness of strangers to save him.  I continued downward and ran into a woman heading up, looking for the guy saving Simarron.  Finally I reached the camp site at the base of the mountain, and waited quite awhile for my friends.  Eventually Handstand showed up and informed me that those three girls I’d passed at the treeline were destined for Madison Hut, and since they’d expected to sleep at the hut they hadn’t brought a tent.  Also, given their pace and the difficulty of the terrain to Madison Hut, there’s no way they would make it by dark, and more thunderstorms were going to hit that night.  My friends had been unable to convince the group to come back down the mountain, presumably because they intended to continue to Madison Hut the next day.  As such, Rain Dancer had given them her 2-person tent.  It was getting pretty cold, wet, and windy up there, so Rain Dancer, Jackrabbit, and Larb came down to the campsite with Handstand and I, leaving the tent up there.  It turns out the three women had been trying to meet up with the husband at Madison Hut, so we called the AMC and notified them that the three were safe so they could inform the husband.  Rain Dancer stayed in Larb’s tent, Handstand and Jackrabbit hammocked (as always), and Larb shared my 1-person tent with me.  I usually keep my backpack in the tent with me, but there wasn’t room with both of us in there.  Larb and I put our packs under the tent platform and wrapped them in my poncho, hoping for the best.  Larb’s body was blocking the ventilation of my tent, and with both of us breathing in there, we had a huge amount of condensation.  By morning, we were both pretty sodden and there was standing water in the tent.  Also, we both woke up sick, and the poncho hadn’t worked – both of our packs were soaked.  We decided to henceforth refer to this day as The Day Handstand Mooned The Cog.

Monday morning (August 22), we knew our fellow thru-hikers Terminator and Bo Knows had spent the night at Madison Hut, so we tried to get the AMC to contact the hut, so they could tell our friends to grab our tent on their way down the mountain.  Try as we might, we couldn’t convince the AMC to call the hut.  After standing there cold and wet for awhile, unable to get any help from the AMC at all, we decided we needed to do something lest we become hypothermic.  As such, Larb hiked back up the mountain to retrieve Rain Dancer’s tent while I did my best to dry all of our stuff.  Rain Dancer, Jackrabbit, and Handstand hiked 5 miles to Gorham and arranged hotel accomodations.  I discovered that two of the hikers at the campsite with us during the night had been forced to hike that exposed ridge during the thunderstorm because the AMC won’t allow them to stay at the huts with their dog.  AMC stands for Appalachian Mountain Club.  Most people nickname it the Appalachian Money Club, because they charge unreasonable rates for shelter and campsite use, and they have a complete monopoly on shelters and campsites in the White Mountains.  We decided this day that we’d nickname it the Appalachian Murder Club, since they obviously don’t care about the well-being of any thru-hikers.  Anyway, when Larb returned he and I packed up and hiked 5 easy miles to Gorham where we devoured some Burger King (5 cheeseburgers and 20 chicken nuggets), then checked into a hotel and spent the afternoon drying all of our gear in the pool area.  The ladies we’d saved on the mountain left a note with $60 in thanks, which we really appreciated because it paid for our badly-needed hotel stay.  Sadly, the hot tub at the hotel was broken.  We went to eat at Mr Pizza, picked up a care package from Gumby at the post office, and we unexpectedly ran into Avo in town.  We invited him back to our hotel room for the night, and we all drank beer, ate snacks from Gumby, and watched Top Gear ’till bedtime.

We slept late Tuesday (August 23) and then went to Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast.  All the other hikers have been raving about Dunkin’ Donuts, but we just found it to be average.  I stopped by the post office to mail the present I’d purchased on Mt Washington then we did a miniature resupply at a gas station.  At the gas station we met a guy who used to be involved with the AMC, but now he agrees that the group is entirely focused on making a profit.  He informed us that if you want to volunteer for the ATC (Appalachian Trail Conservancy) and help them perform trail maintenance, they provide you with food and lodging for free.  The AMC however, charges volunteers $200 per week for the privilege of volunteering.  I can’t even begin to understand how that works – it’s insanity.  Anyway, there are two AT road crossings that lead to Gorham, and because of where shelters were located we decided it worked better to hitch out to the Northern one and hike South back to Pinkham Notch.  We hitched out and hiked 8 miles South to Imp Shelter, where we gritted our teeth and actually paid $8 to stay there.  The caretaker gave me a receipt – I asked him if he would throw it away for me, and he said no – I had to pack it out.  I informed him that despite the strict “no fires” policy, I was going to burn the receipt immediately.  He walked away and I did exactly that.

On Wednesday (August 24) I woke everyone around 6:40am and we hiked out shortly after 8am.  Since we were hiking South, we were again headed toward the Presidential Range, and we got quite a few decent views of the range.  We stopped for a snack on Hight Mountain, then hiked on to Carter Notch Hut.  This hut is the exception to the rule – the AMC employees here were all very friendly.  They treated us like respectable humans, not like second-class citizens.  The girl working when we got there was named Beth.  She offered us leftover pancakes and oatmeal and told us there were unlimited work-for-stay positions for thru-hikers.  Beth is even planning to thru-hiker herself next year, so she had some questions for us and we wished her the best of luck before we left.  I’m confident that if we’d stayed at that hut, it would have been a pleasant experience.  Instead of staying though, we pushed onward toward Gorham.  Rain Dancer really, really hates steep, rocky, challenging descents, so when she learned that there’s a gondola from the top of Wildcat Peak D to the highway, she was thrilled.  The rest of us agreed to ride the gondola instead of descending Wildcat Ridge.  The guy at the top of the gondola told us we’d pay at the bottom, and there was no one at the bottom to pay, so we ended up with a free ride.  The gondola-blaze skipped 2.7 miles of the AT, but Rain Dancer was in a stellar mood for the rest of the day, so the group decided it was worth the effort.  Also, the White Mountains officially end at the Northern Gorham crossing, and since we were headed South from there that meant the gondola-blaze was the end of the Whites for us.  It was a cool way to finish the Whites.  We hitched into Gorham again and went to Burger King again, where I had 24 chicken nuggets with buffalo sauce, a three-pepper burger, a BK BIG KING, a parfait and a soda.  That didn’t fill me up so I ordered 3 cheeseburgers too.  We stayed at the same hotel, hitched to Wal-Mart to resupply, then Bo Knows and Terminator came by to drink beer and watch Top Gear with us.

Thursday August 25 was the day we left the Whites behind and started the Mahoosucs.  I was slow to rise on account of the cold I’d contracted while sharing a tent with Larb.  I took a hot shower, ate some clementines, then went to McDonald’s for coffee and breakfast.  We got a hitch out of town with a veteran thru-hiker named Radar.  We hiked 11.9 miles to Gentian Pond Shelter, and that was enough.  The uphills were really tough for me because I was short of breath from the cold.  I almost fell in mud once because I expected my trekking pole to support my weight, but instead it sank effortlessly 3 feet into the mud.  At the shelter we met an entirely new crowd of NoBos.  Comedy Central never zeros, so we tend to catch up to a lot of other hikers.  One of the NoBos at the shelter was named Leap and hails from Des Moines, IA.  It rained, but only after we’d reached the shelter.  The shelter had a nice view of a valley.

Friday morning (August 26) I awoke, ate, and trimmed my toenails.  I expected to reach Mahoosuc Notch, and wanted to minimize the potential damage of a stubbed toe.  I saw a moose walking through the woods across the AT early in the hike.  I tried to take a picture of it, but I’m not sure if you can see the moose in the photo.  We made it to Maine which was awesome, but we fell short of Mahoosuc Notch.  The terrain in Maine is surprisingly brutal, and it ended up taking us 6.5 hours of hiking to go 9.6 miles.  Because of how long and frequently we stop for breaks, we didn’t reach the shelter until 4pm.  I figured it would take us at least 3 hours to reach the far side of Mahoosuc Notch, which means we could end up night-hiking.  We didn’t want to do that, so we stayed at the shelter.  Larb started complaining about stomach pains, and he might have Giardia.  Rain Dancer’s being faced with her worst possible terrain – wet rocks, technical downhill.  Larb doesn’t have a cold anymore, but both Handstand and I do.  Jackrabbit is the only one at full strength, strangely.  We had story time before bed.

I awoke at 6:20am on Saturday August 27, and was ready to go by 6:50am.  I waited a few minutes, then decided I wasn’t going to wait for everyone else.  I headed out on my own and hiked to Mahoosuc Notch.  Once I reached the notch I stuck my poles in my backpack and proceeded on all fours.  The notch was ridiculously fun.  It’s described in the guidebook as a “jumbled pit of boulders”.  It was certainly that.  The boulders are huge, and they’re not rounded at all – all of the boulders are kind of rhombus-ular.  There were lots of right angles.  It’s hard to explain.  It was very challenging though, and very fun.  On average people spend 2 hours in that 1 mile.  In the shelter register, the fastest I saw anyone getting through was 1.5 hours.  I finished in 1:10.  After the notch I climbed up Mahoosuc Arm, which was quite a bit more strenuous than the notch, because it was a steep uphill.  Mahoosuc Arm was almost entirely smooth rock slab, so you have to rely on trees and roots to help you up the slick slope.  Once I reached the top I shouted triumphantly, then sat down and waited for everyone else.  They caught up in an hour and a half, then we headed to Speck Pond Shelter.  There was a note there warning of Hurricane Irene (80 mph winds, 6-8″ rain).  I was prepared to hike in the rain for a couple days (it can’t be any worse than Moosilauke), but I was overruled by the group and we hiked on to Grafton Notch where we hitched into Errol, NH and got a room at the Errol Motel.  The room is pretty nice, and all of the walls and ceiling are stained wood, so it smells wonderful.

Today (Sunday August 28) Rain Dancer leaves us.  She has a flight out of Portland tomorrow (unless Irene decides otherwise) and she resumes her teaching career in Seattle, WA on Wednesday, I think.  The rest of us are just watching TV in the hotel room all day long, or in my case, updating a blog.