Date: 2012-08-11
From: Nauman Tentsite

To: "Dungeon" @ Lake of the Clouds Hut
Miles today: 4.8
Weather: broken clouds

Last evening there was never a break in the rain to take the food out to the bear box so I just slept with my food last night. When I was getting up I realized that there was a really fat mouse inside of the tent and it had gotten inside of my food bag. I did not know what to do with it but it soon found the hole it chewed through the tent and got out by itself. After all that excitement I realized that the entire bottom of my tent was soaked along with all my gear. My sleeping bag, pillow, sleeping pad, clothes and pack were all wet. We decided not to leave till around 11:00am so we could try and dry out as much as we could. The sun came out at around 10:45am and we decided to head toward the next hut while the weather was nice. We were soon above tree line and up in the clouds. We were going slow because we did not want to get to the hut too soon and be told to keep moving on again. We decided to take a break after going up 1200 feet to the top of Mt. Franklin. While we were there two south bounders decided to take a break with us. We talked and exchanged information about what is to come for each other, we ended up talking for almost 45 minutes. We decided to keep moving on down to The Lake of the Clouds Hut. We got within seeing distance of the hut and decided to sit along the trail for a few hours because it was still too early to get there. The hut is located just below the peak of Mt. Washington about a mile trail wise from the top. The peak has been in the clouds all day so far but while we were sitting there the clouds finally lifted and we got to see the whole peak. After sitting by the trail for about an hour we started to hear thunder off in the distance so we decided to just head to the hut. We got there at around 3:00pm and the crew said that we could do work for stay or stay in the "Dungeon". We decided not to do work for stay because this hut is the biggest hut in the Whites, it holds over 100 guests so we were afraid that we would have to do alot of work. We paid the $10.00 per person then headed down to the dungeon which turned out to be a very small 12 foot by 12 foot stone walled room in the basement. There was one small window and a big heavy steel door. There were three bunks inside and just enough room to stand up and turn around...it is a trail famous place and a must stay place. The thunderstorm ended up going to the west of us.   We laid all our gear out on the rocks to dry in the wind. We ate our supper in the dungeon because it was only 51 degrees and the wind was blowing. It then started to rain so we quickly brought all our gear back into the dungeon but by then most of it was dry, all but our tents we did not have anywhere to set them up. Once again we felt the same way as the last hut we stayed at, the guests kept stareing at us and looking at us like we were scum. We called it a night a little early because we had nothing else to do in the Dungeon but once again we were kept awake from the guests walking around and talking upstairs and I was in the top bunk so the celling was only a foot away from my face so I could hear everything. It continued to rain off and on but the wind really started to blow and howl, it was really cool though sleeping up this high on the mountains. Tomorrow we will summit first thing in the morning. We have a really big day tomorrow because we have to go to town. We are a day short on our food because we stayed at the Nauman Tent Sites last night instead of here so we have no choice but to go 15 miles into town. I need to get to bed...night all.