Date: 2004-07-15
From: North Woodstock, NH

To: Garfield Pond
Miles today: 9.2

We're pretty slow getting out of town today. There's breakfast to eat, Squish and Rockhound have maildrops to pick up and sort, and anyway, it's raining. All in all, it's about 11 am by the time we finally get out on the trail with ten miles to go. The rain has lightened up to a mist, but as we climb up from the Notch we quickly enter the clouds, and it gets foggy. The climb is tough, but Rockhound, in the lead, is setting a fairly quick pace, so we make good time up the mountain even though we're in pain doing so.The climb is fairly constant, and soon we're up on Franconia Ridge, which is widely considered to be possibly the most scenic section of the entire Appalachian Trail. Unfortunately for us, the ridge is shrouded in clouds today, but I hold some hope that on the higher mountains of the ridge we may actually get over the top of the clouds, which in my opinion would be pretty awesome-- to be standing on a mountain top, overlooking an ocean of clouds.So, disappointed yet hopeful, we set off across the ridge. About a mile along it, we cross above the treeline, and even though there are no views, the scenery on the ridge itself is still amazing. In some area, it's like walking through a moonscape, and we pass some beautiful rock formations that seem to materialize out of the clouds as we approach. The vegetation up here is scarce, but nonetheless present-- lichen lines the rocks, and trees that will never grow to be more than two or three feet tall still appear in patches. The ridge is very narrow, less than fifty feet, so the trail frequently runs very close to steep drop-offs, which is particularly creepy in the fog.We reach the tallest peak on the ridge, Mt. Lafayette, at 5250 feet, which is the highest we've been since Mt. Rogers in Virginia about 1300 miles ago. But, alas, we don't break through the cloud top.Then, as we descend, the clouds do part, briefly. A wedge of blue sky appears above us, and in front of me I see a wall of cloud hundreds of feet high moving away. It's one of the most amazing things I've seen out here, and we stop walking to bask in the Sun and blue sky that are already beginning to move away from us.An interesting thing happens, though-- as the hole in the clouds moves in front of us, we begin to be able to see some of the ridges and mountainsides that lay in that direction through the clouds, we can make out some distant ridges that, at first, look like rock formations maybe a hundred feet down the path. But nope-- the line that I thought was the top of a boulder is actually a ridgeline a few miles away! It's pretty amazing-- so even though Franconia was fogged in for us, we still got to see some spectacular sights. I still want to return one day, though, and hike the ridge in good weather-- some day I will, I promise myself.The trail, and the ridge, is descending now, and soon we're below treeline again. The trail is rocky and difficult, and around 5 pm we decide to call it quits at a nice stealth campsite just off the trail at Garfield Pond. There's a tough climb and descent ahead of us, and even though there's an official campsite only a mile away, we decide it would be better to end the day now. My knee is hurting, anyway-- I thumped it good on a rock about half a mile back, and it's protesting. Thus ends another good but tough day in the Whites.