Date: 2005-09-15
From: Mizpah Spring Hut

To: Lakes of the Clouds Hut
Miles today: 4.8
Weather: fog

Room #7.At dinner last evening everybody was talking, as usual, about their hiking experiences. As you can imagine ¢distance lends enhancement to the view¢ and some of the tails were pretty scary. This, and the poor weather forecast for today, led Nick ¢ on his first mountain hike ¢ to ask if he could hike with me today. Although I have hiked with people before, it meant that we left one destination and arrived at another, but were not ¢hiking together¢ It was clear that Nick wanted someone to ¢hike together¢ with, to offer support and experience to his walk. I agreed with some misgivings, since I knew that I was taking some responsibility for his welfare during the hike.      A large group of extremely well behaved young school children arrived, and their two female supervisors slept in Room #7 also. A work for stay thru-hiker ¢ Two Step ¢ SOBO, was there also, and I told her of the kindness of her 2003 namesake at Cold Spring Shelter when she gave me her supply of pain killers to ease the pain of my fractured knees. I still treasure her, now empty, pillbox.   It rained during the night. Light at first, but became heavier towards morning. We awoke to a wet, grey, dull, misty morning, and a forecast of showers and a possible afternoon thunderstorm. Nick and I got underway before 8:00AM, in hopes of being off of the exposed Crawford Ridge before the onset of the afternoon storms. We started out in light rain, on a straightforward ascent up to Mount Clinton with Nick leading. Surprisingly we both did hike at more or less the same pace. He is a self-employed financial analyst, with two grown sons.   By the time we made it up to the summit of Mount Clinton, the weather conditions were getting steadily worse, and as we headed for Mount Eisenhower, we were in a hard, cold, pelting rain and thick fog with visibility down to 50 feet. More of a concern to me however, was the constant rumblings of thunder off to our left ¢ West ¢ and I began to worry about being caught on the exposed ridge during a late morning ¢ not afternoon ¢ thunderstorm.   After we passed the loop trail to the summit of Mount Eisenhower, things began to improve. The rain stopped and, better yet, the visibility got much better. We could even see Mount Washington before us, and the white drifts of clouds filling in the deep valleys all around us. A well-marked and maintained trail led us to Mount Franklin with excellent views, although in still dull and overcast conditions. The sight of the antennae on the top of Mount Washington stimulated me to call home ¢ all is well there. We also met with Kleifspringer SOBO on Mount Franklin, and we exchanged greetings and updates on our journeys. He is much better after his bout with GI symptoms in Glencliff.   As Nick and I continued on to Mount Monroe, the weather conditions worsened again, until we were once more in cold, hard, pelting rain and dense fog. I know how to keep myself warm in the rain, but I was realy worried about the fog. It was getting to be so dense that it was becoming difficult to make out the next stone cairn that marked the trail. If it got any worse, we were looking at the forbidding prospect of not being able to tell the direction of the trail, and being stuck in the middle of a uniform scree of rock waiting for the fog to clear. It was a welcome sight to finally see the hut at the end of a very wet, but exhilarating five hours of hiking.   Nick and I are once again in Room #7, and even now in midafternoon, the place is filling up with wet, cold and many hikers. The French Couple are here, trapped on their zero day in a misty wet hut. They told me that they climbed Mount Washington after they arrived yesterday, and did not think that it was so bad, compared to Franconia Ridge.   All in all, a very enjoyable day. Even though we had poor weather and mist, we were spared the full danger of a thunderstorm on an exposed ridge, and we even had a little bit of decent weather for some photo opportunities.   Hiking with Nick was a new experience for me. Walking with a fellow hiker in constant proximity doesn¢t realy allow the sort of deep self-contemplative thoughts that I usually enjoy. I also felt some degree of responsibility, since Nick had clearly asked me to keep an eye on him. He would have done just fine on his own, but it did make the time pass more quickly than usual, and I did not indulge in my usual morbid, self-condemnations of the consequences of a thunderstorm on an exposed ridge. ¢The Other¢ was not in evidence in my thoughts today.Thought for today ¢   It is good, and right, to help those in need.