Date: 2005-06-21
From: Zero on the Pemi

To: Lonesome Lake Hut
Miles today: 13.4

So this morning my shoes still hadn't shown up at the North Woodstock post office, and I decided to have them forwarded on to Gorham and to buy a new pair of footwear. I ended up buying a pair of Keen sandals - those crazy looking roman things with the big toe protectors. Bass Master has been hiking in them for quite some time, and I figured I'd give them a shot. Went to Lahouts in Lincoln and grabed a pair, and bought some denatured alcohol for Chuck who had a soda can stove made for him by scrubs yesterday. Sweet conversion!The hiking was pretty uneventful. We passed Robo on the first climb, and chugged along to the Eliza brook Shelter. Stopped for a break and Diesel, 'sippi, Dewd and Webb caught up to us - it was good to see them again, but they were cruisin' through the whites never to be seen again.Scrubs and I left first and took a nice dip upstream in Eliza brook at the base of a little waterfall, and continued on to the Kinsmans. The climb up South Kinsman turned out to be the first REAL climb on the trail. It was awesome. We strapped our poles to our backs and it was hand-over-hand from there. Sweet!Team Dumber and company caught up with us on the top while we were eating and we moseyed down to Lonesome Lake together. They departed to go meet their support team, and Scrubs and I secured some work for stay and began the eating process.Then the fun started. There is a tradition amongst the Huts in the whites of "raiding" one another. Each hut has a collection of bizzare things - like roadsigns or huge stuffed animals or something that the other huts are desireous of. Hut croos hike out in the middle of the night, hike up to another hut, sneak in and attempt to steal these prized objects. There are some intricate rules, but it all ends up with the croo from the raided hut waking up and them all socializing for a while - this is one of the few opportunities when they have to see other croos. In the past there was a huge old two-bladed airplane propeller which was the most sought-after prize. Now that has been replaced with a huge wooden oar for rowing a shell, which is currently at Madison Spring Hut.Anyway, Scrubs and I got to go raiding for our work-for-stay at Lonesome. It was awesome. We had enough people to split into two teams and invade two huts at the same time. Justin and I went to Galehead - a crazy crazy climb to do in the middle of the night - and Scrubs and a crew of 3 women went to Zealand. Sad to say, they were successful and we were not.Because right as we were taking our shoes off to sneak into the hut, we say headlamps coming down South Twin. It could only be one thing - Zealand was trying to raid Galehead! And indeed they were. But they were very bad at it and only got one roadsign and made a huge crash in the middle of the night, but the croo didn't catch them.At the end Justin and I joined them all in the kitchen to find the Zealand kids wearing only kitchen aprons, and their clothes in a pile outside the door. It was, we remembered, naked hiking day. We stood around socializing for a long while.The kicker was that PJ, JR and Chino were all sleeping in the dining room right next to us. I wish I had gone in and woken them up. Ah well. Since we failed, Justin was rewarded with a consolation prize, however, he got to pack down the full sized (and non-collapsable) wheelchair and bring it to Lonesome. We got back to the parking lot in Franconia Notch probably between 4 and 5 and slept for a long time and hiked up around 6 or 7. It was a really long night, but incredibly awesome - unintentionallly creating a 25 mile day.