Thursday, July 28th

Lakes of the Clouds Hut (1860.0 mi) to Pinkham Notch Visitors Center (1874.9 mi)

Hiking Miles: 14.9

Total Ascent: 3,677.2 ft

Total Descent: 6,665.4 ft

Total Grade: 694.1 ft/mi

Steps: 45,697

SEALS & CROFTS – Summer Breeze

Gator/Sunrise: Fun night (haha) with being on the top (stacked three high) bunk and needing to hit the bathroom three times. The good thing was after you shimmy your way into and out of a triple bunk (with literally zero clearance head room) once, you learn how to effortlessly do it thereafter.

We each ate a Cliff Bar rather than waiting for the hut to serve breakfast so that we could get a relatively early start on Washington. Unfortunately we weren’t early enough to catch the sunrise at the summit however we would not have seen it anyway due to the cloud cover. The winds were particularly strong too. A 6-person hiker family passed us as they descended the mountain and confirmed there wasn’t much to see.

A young woman was nice enough to take our pic at the summit using my phone. She accidentally took a pic of herself in the process. We subsequently found a nook, protected from the high winds, to sit and cook some oatmeal, Instant Breakfast and coffee to fuel up for a tough hike. Our plan was to hike through Mount Madison and down (large descent) into Gorham, NH where we planned to stay the night at the Barn Hostel.

On the way to Madison, we passed Jefferson (to our left) and Adams (to our right) and briefly pondered whether it would be worth climbing either one to check off another NH 4K footer. Any detour off the AT today would alter our plans of staying overnight in Gorham, and essentially forcing us to stop at the Madison Hut. Knowing this would have added at least a half-day (perhaps more) to our overall schedule, we pushed on. Mount Madison (up and down) was effectively one massive rock pile where each step was deliberate for me. I kept thinking one misstep could cause a significant ankle injury. And given we were well above tree line, that could potentially involve an undesirable rescue situation.

Once below tree line our pace fortunately increased and there were less rocks, however the trail was muddy. At one point I lost the metal tip on my trekking pole in the mud, but luckily I was able to backtrack only 50 feet to recover it. Our goal was to reach the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center by 4:30 pm and call for a complimentary pick-up from the Barn Hostel. Word on FarOut was if you missed that cut-off time, you would need to find an alternate means of getting into town.

When we arrived at the Visitor Center, we bought ice cream and cold sodas at a shop. We then joined a group of three female hikers sitting at a picnic table waiting for a fourth to arrive from the trail. Two of their trail names that I recalled were Teardrop and Moth Man, and the fourth was Gin (we first met her back in Vermont) who hadn’t arrived yet. We actually saw all of them during the course of the day in our travels.

We unfortunately missed the cutoff time for the complimentary pick-up, but were able to locate a driver who was more than obliged to take us all into Gorham in one ride, or separate for $45 per trip. I offered to cover the ride for all of us, however the girls opted to shuttle separately as they were still waiting for Gin to arrive.

Upon arriving at the Barn, Croc and I reserved two beds on the second floor. There was an older hiker sitting up in the bed to my right who was nursing a leg injury. He had already been there a few days, and was in no hurry to leave. In fact I never saw him leave the bed during the two days we were there. He reminded me of the poor sedentary grandparents in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory who never moved from their bed, except of course for Grandpa Joe after Charlie found a Golden Ticket!

One pleasant surprise we got was meeting Keystone, the hiker we first met way back on Day 9 at the Bear’s Den in Virginia. He recognized us at first as the father-and-son team on trail. We remembered him being a strong hiker, however his pace had slowed (or our’s comparatively increased) as we clocked an additional 864 miles than him since that time. He looked good, but confirmed he was taking things slow these days.

Croc and I walked to McDonalds, ate our usual big meal, then walked back to the Barn to rest and finalize plans for tomorrow. The hike down Madison did a number on my feet, and the big question for me was how was I going to hike a 21-mile slack pack up Wildcat Mountain, the Carters and Mount Moriah. Keystone was doing it in two days, but thought we could easily pull it off in one. Still, I wasn’t convinced until three hikers entered the Barn at 8 pm who had just finished that stretch: Two females (Beast Mode and Bumble Beast) and one male (Rollo). Back at the Hikers Welcome Hostel, Croc mentioned a story that he would later get to (related to these hikers), so you can read that below. But in a nutshell, it was Bumble Beast who influenced me to hike tomorrow. She was one of the most present, fact-based and likable hikers I met on trail.

Croc: Surprisingly, it seemed like nearly half of the people staying at the hut decided to get up early to hike Washington and see the sunrise. I was shocked to find everyone moving around at 5:00 AM and skipping breakfast (unless they planned on hiking back afterward). We weren’t even the first people out of the hut because we crossed a family coming back down from Mt. Washington and also found another group of hikers on the peak taking shelter from the wind. It was kind of a dreary mile hike to the top of Washington since we were inside a cloud the whole time and the temperature was dropping. It’s no wonder why it is considered one of the most dangerous mountains in the world with its extreme weather changes because it was fairly hot during the week (late July) at lower elevations.

Mt. Washington is on record as the coldest location in the United States, with a wind chill once hitting -101°F. I believe the coldest recorded wind chill on Earth was −128.6 °F in Antarctica. Washington also held the record from 1934-1996 as having the fastest wind speed at 231 miles per hour, and it still remains the fastest wind speed not associated with a tornado or cyclone. Although these were recorded in the heart of winter, and we were hiking in the middle of summer, it still shows how deadly it can become.

When we did reach the summit, it was completely empty and we still remained in a cloud. I was actually joking that this was perfect since the highest point in New England (Mt. Washington) and the highest point on the AT (Clingman’s Dome) were both cloudy days without views. It was also fun getting to walk around the peak without having to wait in line since Washington typically has hundreds of people come up a day by train, car, or by foot. There’s legitimately nothing worse than hiking up a mountain and seeing someone drive up in their air-conditioned car, eating McDonald’s, and then stand in front of you in line to take a picture of the summit (that they didn’t even climb). We did make some breakfast behind a wall to avoid the wind but quickly became cold. I’m glad we kept our winter hats for the summer! So we decided to start hiking down the mountain and push forward.

We shortly crossed the cog railway that shuttles people up and down the mountain during the day. It is an old AT tradition for hikers to moon the trail as it drives by, but we were lucky enough to avoid that embarrassment by hiking early in the morning. As Gator mentioned, we opted to skip the blue blaze up Mt. Jefferson (third tallest) and Mt. Adams (second tallest) since those two hikes would definitely slow us down too much. I also know from experience that those two hikes are fun day trips for a future date. It was the right decision because we had a lot of hiking ahead of us. We did stop at the Madison Spring Hut, which was right on trail, about 7 miles in to fill up on water and grab some leftover food for a couple of bucks. It was a nice place to stop and recalibrate. The huts are very welcoming during the day and encourage people to come in and stop by as long as it’s not intruding on dinner time.

Seeing that we had to make it to Pinkham Notch before dark, we quickly jumped back on the trail to go up and over one of our last big mountains of the day: Mt. Madison. It was a very steep and rocky incline/decline and probably one of the hardest ones in the whole mountain range since it felt like we were starting from the bottom of a mountain. Although Washington, Jefferson, Adams, etc., are all higher elevations, it felt like those were smaller, intermediate ups and downs to reach their summits. This was straight-up rock scramble over 1,000 ft in less than half a mile. Of course, we embraced the suck and kept trudging along hoping to get below the alpine zone soon. We had heard a storm was coming, and there was still an ominous cloud engulfing Washington, so we were eager to get below the tree line. At this point, since we stayed at the hut the night before, we had been above the tree line for almost two days. As we were hiking down Mt. Madison, we crossed a Boy Scout troop that was heading towards Washington, but I recall thinking it was very late in the day (maybe 2:00 PM?) for them to go another 7 miles and also make it back down. They didn’t have any camping gear, nor were they staying at a hut, so I hope they made the decision to turn around at the peak of Madison.

Eventually, we made it back below the tree line with only a few miles left of our hike, so I decided to go ahead of Gator to keep my downhill pace. I reached a junction that led to Osgood Tentsite, which is one of the few free campsites in the Whites, so I decided to wait for Gator to (1) make sure he didn’t go down the wrong path and (2) confirm he still wanted to hike another 4 miles to Pinkham Notch to get picked up. After about 30 minutes of waiting, I started to get nervous that I hadn’t seen Gator yet. I even did the infamous backtracking up the mountain but gave up after a few minutes. What got me more nervous was that I saw a guy coming down the mountain and I asked if he had seen Gator shortly up the trail. I even described Gator down to his age, outfit, buff, and backpack. The guy responded that he hadn’t seen a single person coming down the mountain (other than the girl he was with: Teardrop) and then proceeded to bombard me with his plans to camp out at the Osgood Tentsite tonight and do a resupply in the morning (great dude…not what I asked). No less than 5 minutes later, Gator came hiking through and I was so relieved. After I told him the story about the guy who swore he “didn’t see anybody” Gator told me that he had a conversation with that guy!! I don’t know what goes on with people sometimes. Funny enough, we’d end up seeing this guy again at the hostel the following night and he continued to talk to us about his future hiking plans (unsolicited of course).

We finished off the last few, relatively flat, miles to Pinkham Notch and grabbed some ice cream and soda as we waited for our ride to the Barn Hostel. While we waited we also met a group of hikers that we saw at the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, and coincidentally they were also hiking with Gin (from VT section). Eventually, we got picked up and were dropped off at the hostel where we grabbed a couple of beds in a large open space loft. They must have squeezed at least 15 beds up there, but I was glad to grab the “cat” bed, which was outfitted in a cat blanket. The Barn was pretty cozy, but definitely a low-quality stay. It only had one bathroom/shower for nearly 20 people, so we were often waiting to take turns. It did have a kitchen area and fridge which was a nice touch though.

We capped off our night by walking 0.5 miles down the road for some McDonald’s (the infamous McDonald’s everyone who drives up Washington eats) and talked about our plan for the next few days. We had the option to slack-pack 21 miles over the notoriously difficult Wildcat/Carter/Moriah Mountains, which would (1) offer us a slack-pack to ease the difficulty and (2) allow us to stay at the Barn again and grab Subway tomorrow night. The downside is that it would be an extremely challenging day after just doing the Presidential Range. We were trying to gauge people’s thoughts but weren’t getting much help. As Gator hinted at above, one hiker (Beast Mode) was adamant that we could not complete the slack-pack and would regret doing it. She said it was one of her worst days on trail hiking the 21 miles after hiking down Madison the day before. Of course, in typical AT hiker fashion, she didn’t ask a single question about our pace, or hiking strategy in general, so there was really no way for her to know if we could do it or not. I tried to see if her response would change when I said we were on a 120-day pace, but she completely ignored it and re-iterated not to do the slack-pack. Honestly, her adamancy of not wanting us to slack-pack I think made me WANT to slack-pack the next day just to do it and beat her time. Fortunately, another hiker (Bumble Beast) was confident in our abilities and recommended we try it. It also helped that the hostel owner said it wasn’t that bad and was confident we could complete it too.

It does make me wonder if someone like Kristian Morgan, an ultra runner who holds the fastest known Southbound time and second fastest Northbound time, came across Beast Mode and jokingly asked her if he could do the 21 miles… she’d probably say “No way!”

PS: Like Gator mentioned, we met Keystone again which absolutely blew my mind! There’s a crazier story that I’ll leave for the last day of the blog, but the odds of running into him again were insane. The trail does crazy things. Especially keeping us around Dijeridoo (who we’ll see again).