Date: 2013-09-03
From: Gordon Pond

To: Franconia Notch
Miles today: 13.0
Weather: scattered clouds

As Fat Man Walking and I were finishing packing up in the morning, we saw Fritz and Anni walking up the trail. They, along with Chopper, were slack-packing the 16 miles from Kinsman Notch to Franconia Notch. The four of us hiked together in the morning, enjoying the sunshine, til we stopped to eat lunch at the recently re-built Eliza Brook Shelter, which unfortunately someone had already decided to mar with graffiti. Makes me so mad! After lunch we followed the beautiful cascades of the brook as we began the long climb up Kinsman Mountain. Sadly, our sunshine gave way to clouds and so did my mood when the trail grew more and more muddy. It was so muddy, in fact, that puddles filled the entire length and width of the trail for long stretches (and no, there weren't any rocks that we could use to hop across either). I hate it when I have wet feet in cold weather. It's a perfect storm of discomfort. "New Mudshire" started to sound about right. Then, since New Mudshire apparently didn't think I was quite miserable enough, the trail decided to go straight up the mountain. And by straight up I mean about as vertical as you can go without calling it rock-climbing (actually I think it really could be classified as rock-climbing in places), for a thousand feet. In many places the trail went up huge granite slabs with very little traction. It was like switchbacks weren't even a figment in the mind's eye of the trail-builders. Fat Man Walking had an altimeter feature on his watch so whenever we had a big mountain to climb he would mention the elevation. While it was nice to know our progress, after a while I grew tired of knowing that we still had hundreds or thousands of feet yet to climb, so I told him to stop. Finally, when Fat Man Walking and I got to the top of South Kinsman, we quickly snapped some photos, though I'm not sure why, as it was so misty and gray you couldn't see anything. The wind was blowing so we got off that thing as fast as we could...but we still had to go up North Kinsman. The way down was long, slow, and steep, but at least the trail builders anchored some wooden steps in places to make it easier, and the sun came out again which was nice. Kinsman was the hardest mountain so far and we both thought it made Moosilauke seem tame in comparison. "Why didn't Legion warn us about Kinsman, too?" we wondered. After passing one of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) huts, we started to wonder where Chopper was. We hadn't seen him all day and were beginning to worry a bit. So we were surprised and relieved when we saw Chopper ahead of us. It turned out he had actually passed us while we were eating lunch at the shelter, and he was just as frustrated as we were about the terrain and our slow progress. As darkness approached the three of us lost the trail (twice) and, because a bridge went out, had the added thrill of having to cross a very swift river, which required a pretty scary leap across some boulders...but we all made it. Whew! We put on our headlamps for the last half mile and when we got to the road it was 8pm. I had planned on camping, but there was no way I was going to do that now, so when Chopper invited us to crash in his hotel room (on the floor) I immediately agreed. A hot shower, laundry, and a meal I didn't have to cook sounded amazing. A shuttle took us to the hotel so we could drop our packs off, and then we went out for pizza. It was 11pm by the time we got to bed and I was exhausted. As I reflected on the day I did some math in my head. We started hiking at 9:30am and finished at 8pm. That's barely a 1 mph pace, my slowest day yet. What a reality check for the White Mountains! But it also dawned on me that we reached the 1,800 mile mark today!!