Date: 2018-07-27
To: Moosilauke
Miles today: 0.0

Fri/Sat Day 133/134, 7/27,28 So after the 3 weeks in Alaska with a week combined to travel we are ready to go back to the trail. But they're predicting major rain and thunderstorms all week. Never a good plan to be on a mountain top in New Hampshire in a thunderstorm with lightning. So we postpone our return to the trail until Friday, July 27th. We Uber to the 30th Street Station and get on a Megabus. 30th Street Station is really quite an impressive building that I had never been in before. The Megabus stop is out on the Drexel campus. It's next to the Bolt bus stop, which is an hour late, so there a lot of people out waiting for the bus. Our bus is late by 20 minutes. It arrives. We managed to get in a seat only to learn that there are certain seats that are reserved and I'm in one of them. We end up in the very back of the bus on the last seat. If you have ridden in many buses you know it's not the place to sit. It was very uncomfortable and the windows had some kind of Megabus advertisement over them so they were all a blur. When we get to Secaucus Station some people get off. People in the back of the bus are looking to move up. One fellow signals me up ahead that he's going to double up with somebody and leave a double seat open. I jump up and grab that seat. This is a way better seat with a clear window and you're not bouncing, rocking and being so uncomfortable. This is a double decker bus, so you have quite a nice view from the top deck, which is where we are. 7 hours later we arrive at the Boston bus station. We have a 2 hour wait there. I end up in the wrong bus line but we figure it out. We get on the right bus. We have a 4 hour bus ride up to Lincoln, New Hampshire where we left off. We are moving at a very relaxed pace because we're not really expecting to do anything except get to Kinsman Notch. We stop in a bagel restaurant, have a good lunch, packing out a meal as well for dinner tonight and head out to Kinsman Notch, which is the northern base of Mount Moosilauke. Today hitch hiking is pretty slow. Lots of tourists going by, and tourists don't pick up hitchhikers in general. It takes locals who support the hiking community. It takes close to an hour to get out to Kinsman Notch. The fella who picks us up has hiked some of the AT with his son, who hiked all of the AT. It's one pm and we go on the trail to look for a stealth site cuz we're really not planning to start hiking after spending 12 hours in a bus; uncomfortable, cramped up 12 hours. There's an immediate water source so we get water. We decide to hike up to the Beaver Brook shelter only a mile and a half in. It's the most difficult, steepest part of the climb up over Mount Moosilauke. So we separate our food. We hike into the woods and hang our bear bags. We will come back tomorrow find our bear bags and then carry all that heavy food, which is four days of food. We only take in one dinner and one breakfast. We start hiking up Mount Moosilauke. Now we're going southbound. It's a very, very steep up southbound direction. I would rather hike up very steep then descend in a very steep situation. For me it's safer to climb hand over hand up. I do a lot better. Mount Moosilauke is a stunning climb. There's a sign at the beginning of it. It says "this trail is extremely difficult. If you're not experienced it's best not to take this trail. Take special care in the Cascades to avoid tragic results". I have hiked 1800 miles and I've never seen a sign like that on the Appalachian Trail. There's a rushing torrent of cascading water that the trail follows up. It's been raining heavy for a week. Everything is wet. Wet slippery rocks and roots is not what I want to be going downhill on. So I'm very happy to be working our way up a very steep grade. It is sunny and a perfect day to be crossing Mt. Moosilauke. It's spectacularly beautiful as we hike up along this river. We see lots of day hikers and northbound through hikers. We make it up there to the Beaver Brook shelter by like 3:30. So we get water and decide well let's just push on to the next shelter on the other side of the summit. We've done the steepest part of the climb already. About a half a mile from the summit it gets suddenly very cold. Then a very cold rain starts. This is hiking in the Whites of New Hampshire. Technically we're not even in the Whites yet, but this is New Hampshire hiking so it's now raining pretty hard. Of course when we get to the top there's no view at all because it's driving cold rain. Typically there are spectacular views from Moosilauke because it's above tree line. We just keep moving on and work our way down. The top of Moosilauke is above tree line at 4800 ft. It is covered with sharp rocks like Pennsylvania. As we work our away down the other side I end up falling 3 times. I slip a half a dozen times. The difference between a fall and a slip is that on a fall my torso ends up on the ground. I slip six times. One time I slipped into a tree and the broken branch jabbed into my arm and broke off. It was a small branch. I had Ibex pull it out for me. She could get a better angle on it. Only on one of my falls did it hurt. I've learned to fall gracefully, or at least to head for a soft landing. Often it's when you least expect it and it's not a technically difficult spot. Usually a fall in a technically difficult spot results in serious injury. My feet went out from under me and I landed hard on my hip and my elbow and that jammed up into my shoulder. That didn't feel good. We're trying to make it to the next shelter before dark and it's taking us longer than we think it should. I guess after you fall 3 times you slow down. This was difficult, pay-attention hiking. It was getting darker and we wanted to make the shelter before dark. Hiking on wet slippery rocks and roots in the dark is not fun. We finally get to the shelter around 9:15. It took us 7 hours to hike 9 miles. We are used to covering ground much faster. We set up the tent and go up to the shelter to eat before we go to sleep. We set an alarm so that we can be back on the trail by 6:30, cuz we estimate that we are a one hour hike from Hikers Welcome Hostel. We know there's a shuttle leaving at 8am to take us back to Kinsman Notch. We're hoping to find PT there so we can start hiking with him as well.