Date: 2008-09-06
To: Lakes of the Clutz
Miles today: 0.0

      We arose at 6:40 am. Erik went to fetch our food bag from the bear box, which was located a couple hundred yards away. He had brought cereal and powdered milk for his breakfast, and I had a Lara ginger and nut bar (probably my most meager breakfast ever!). After packing up, we headed over to the hut to use the bathroom and brush our teeth. A woman outside of the hut asked me how I liked my pack, and I answered, ¢I hate it!¢. I felt so stupid because it looked like I had packed so much stuff into it, but really, it was the sleeping pad taking up most of the room. She had been interested in the same one because of the color, but the salesman had dissuaded her from buying it due to the lack of support. I agreed. Erik kept referring to her as Laverne Difozzio after that because of her Long Island accent and bangs.       We started on the trail at 8:00am with another party directly behind us. There¢s nothing like a good, steep climb to start off your morning! We made our way up a wooden ladder and a tall, slim southbound girl passed us. (She had started the morning at Lakes of the Clouds hut). At 8:15, we reached our first vista, where a mother and daughter were sitting. Erik reluctantly dug my camera out of my pack pocket so I could take a couple of pictures before we headed on. The party behind us was coming up as we left. We would hear them for most of the morning, making our hike a little uncomfortable and not as pleasant as if we were alone. However, it was a pretty morning, and we could see our destination ahead of us, which helped psychologically. We could see rows of blue mountains towards our right and clear brown peaks ahead of us. Erik wanted to take a power bar break about an hour into the hike, but I didn¢t want to stop, yet. He remembered that he would have to put a bar in his shirt pocket to eat on the go, as I didn¢t like to stop as often as he did.        It was a little after 10 and we had put enough distance between us and the hikers behind us that I agreed to take a break. We snacked on power bars and trail mix, and Erik tried out my hiking poles to see how they felt. Once on our way again, I had a hard time getting water out of my drink hose and realized that my two liter water bottle was almost empty. Erik said, ¢I don¢t think it¢s a good idea to drink 2 liters of water before noon!¢          We took another quick break and after rounding the bend, saw Lakes of the Clouds hut, where we had reservations for the night. It was only a matter of yards away! (For some reason, whenever we tried to say the name of this hut, some odd combination of the words would fall out of each of our mouths: Lakes of the Cluts, Huts of the Lake, Lakes of the Huts, Clouds of the Lakes¢¦ I don¢t know why we had such a hard time with the name!) We arrived before 11:15 and took a look at all of the rooms to see which one we would like to stay in before realizing that we were already assigned to room 6. I couldn¢t help thinking that the layout of the hut was different than the last time we were there! It was very strange, and a bit disturbing. But we checked in with Steve and he provided some relief by confirming that it indeed had been renovated a few years ago. We went to our room to select our bunks. Two ladies were already unpacking their things and did not bother to say hello. I almost took a very enclosed bunk, as I like my privacy, but Erik convinced me it would be nicer to be closer to the window, and that the bunk I was thinking of taking would be claustrophobic.          We then headed back to the dining room and each got a bowl of leftover matzo soup (cream of mushroom with eggs) and a piece of bread for $4 apiece (It used to be $2!) Of course, we had to have seconds. Then we got an instant cup of coffee with powered cream, which tasted horrible, and shared a chocolate brownie that wasn¢t so chocolate-y. I was feeling a bit tired and wanted to take a nap. Erik thought it would be too noisy in the hut and preferred to go outside for some rest, so we went out and sat by one of the lakes. It was absolutely gorgeous! Erik dozed until some kids came along the path making a lot of noise. We went back to the hut and sat on a bench outside. Two hikers were there with their dog Lucy, who was licking one of the hut¢s bowls clean. She had her pack on with dog food in it. A Japanese contingent had gathered on our other side and wanted to know our plans for the afternoon. Erik told them we would probably climb Mt. Monroe. ¢Oh, but that takes 10 minutes! What are you going to do for the rest of the afternoon?¢ He implored us to climb to the summit of Mt. Washington, which we planned to do the next morning, as it was on the way to Madison.      Since the weather was perfectly clear and hearing that the storm would come in tonight and depart around 2pm the next day, we decided it was probably a good idea to head up then. We only took a few extra items with us for warmth. As we got closer to the summit, the clouds came rolling in. A kid was trying to catch one in his empty water bottle. He said he was catching a hurricane. By the time we reached the top, it was cold and wet, and the visibility was practically zero. We made a beeline for the summit house and saw 2 hikers getting their picture taken at the sign in a complete cloud. Normally, we get a bowl of chili, but we had just eaten. Erik seemed to be in a bad mood, which was unusual for him. I suggested going down to the bottom floor to see the museum as we had not seen it before. I didn¢t know that it cost $3 each to get in! We looked around the store and a twig pencil caught Erik¢s eye. Finally, we decided to part with our money and check out the museum exhibits. Who walks in after us, but Laverne and family! I looked at a couple of specimens of the alpine flowers, and then at the pages of the summit wind recording of 231 mph taken in 1931. I started to get a bit suspicious about this recording, as it apparently has only occurred once, and only one guy ever saw the reading. There were also exhibits on previous summit fires and the printing press that used to run on the mountain. Erik went to look at the screens of satellite imagery. We could see the storm clouds over Virginia. I wanted to look at the mammals found on the summit, but the display was not very impressive. Then I asked Erik if he wanted to see the largest mammal found on the summit. He was interested, so I brought him over to the full-length mirror! Ha, ha!         We headed back upstairs and decided to get a bowl of chili and 2 hot chocolates. Erik asked what time it was. It was almost 3. He was getting anxious about getting back. It was still completely foggy and windy and he thought it would take 2 hours to get back (it took us 1 hour to get up there). He said he didn¢t want to miss dinner. While he was in the bathroom, I decided to take a picture of our meal since we had no views of anything else. A woman walked by, looked at my bowl, and said ¢Weirdo!¢ After I went to the bathroom, I could tell I was dehydrated and assumed Erik must be too, which explained his irritability.        As we headed back to the hut, the clouds began to disperse! Oh, well. We had seen plenty of views from Mt. Washington before and we got some beautiful views of the landscape as we made our way down. We made it back in plenty of time for dinner, so we decided to take the opportunity to finally climb Mt. Monroe. It started raining lightly by the time we got to the top. We returned to our bunkroom and spread out our sleeping bags and prepared our things for nighttime. Then, we gathered around for a lecture on a cloud catching experiment. By dinner, the rain was falling hard. I looked out the window to see two hikers covered from head to toe in their rain gear, with water bottles in hand. I didn¢t understand what they were doing out there, but later realized that they were thru-hikers who were staying in the Dungeon. They had to leave the basement and walk around to the front of the hut to obtain water. Meanwhile, we were sitting amongst a rowdy crowd of Montreal-ians, who were clearly enjoying their wine. Our dinner consisted of black bean soup, turkey, roasted corn, potatoes, and sweet ginger cake for desert. It was okay, but not one of their bests. I enjoyed the introductions of the croo members much more. They came out in a football line-up and each told us something surprising about themselves. Steve said that he wanted to make a lot of money, which shocked me, until he explained that it was because he wanted to walk from Georgia to Maine in March! Another guy said that he was studying Russian with the goal of marrying Maria Sharapova. The cook had been a math major in college and really liked roasting turkey. Next on the entertainment menu was a lecture on the alpine environment. I was surprised to hear the enthusiastic response afterward, as I did not learn anything new.        Up through that point, I had completely forgotten about the opportunity to look through the trail registries! It took some time to find the most recent ones, as they were spread throughout several tables, with many people reading them. All lights were to be turned off at 9pm, so I didn¢t have much of a chance to read before heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth and climb inside my bunk. Erik and I happened to be the last ones into the bunkroom. Everyone was already tucked in and the lights were off! I tried climbing up the ladder to get into my middle bunk, but I could not figure out how to get in! I tried several different ways, but couldn¢t manage! A guy was already in the bunk below me and I didn¢t want to step on or disturb him. Finally, Erik ended up giving my butt a boost and I wiggled my way into my bunk, all the while trying desperately to suppress my laughter! The situation was not helped by the fact that I could not get my headlamp to turn off! I was holding it in my hand, covering the light as best I could, but I could not get it to turn off, no matter how hard I pressed the buttons! The struggle, combined with the thought of Erik pushing my butt into the bunk, made it hard to stop the impulse to laugh. It was surprisingly quiet in our room! The last time we slept in one of these bunks (which we were sure would be our last), a man snored so loudly that we didn¢t get one wink of sleep. This time, Erik seemed to be making the most noise, as he shifted about, trying to get comfortable. I felt so bad for the guy below me, as anytime I shifted, my sleeping bag would produce a whooshing noise. During the night, I heard the wind howl outside, but the bunkroom remained nice and warm.