Date: 2007-08-15
From: Madison Spring Hut, NH

To: Gorham, NH
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: fog

We awaken to mountains full of thunderstorms this morning. This does not bode well for a pleasant hiking day. The forecast is discouraging so we decide to leave the trail and take a zero day in Gorham. We¢ll get some shopping done and take care of some miscellaneous chores.There are an amazing number of trails established here on the north slope of the Presidentials. Looking only for the most direct path down we choose to stay on the Valley Way Trail since we¢ve already come down it one-half mile. We travel its remaining 3 mile length in less than 2 hours, during which time we lose about 3500 feet in elevation. Wow, this is a long way down!At the trail¢s end we find the Moose River and NH Route 2. A short 5-mile hitch brings us to Berlin, and then just 1 more mile to the east we arrive in Gorham. We check in at one of the many affordable motels in town. The proprietors promise to take us back to the trail head in the morning.Sunday, September 12, 2004, Madison Spring hut, in the Presidential Range, White Mountains, NHBy previous arrangements with the croo there is no work for us to do this morning. We forego waiting for our breakfast of leftovers and instead slurp down our standard cold cereal before the guests have finished their orange juice. We are out the door by 7:30, the first hikers of the day. Ahead of us is a difficult 700 foot climb to the summit of Mt. Madison, elevation 5370 feet. The sky is crystal clear. Fog is rolling like an ocean wave off the nearby summit of Mt. Adams. Our plan is to hike the eight mile distance down to Pinkham Notch where we will get a shuttle back to our van, now parked about fifteen miles south of us. We can¢t let too many miles separate us from the van, otherwise it will be really difficult to eventually retrieve it.This morning¢s temperature of 40 degrees is the coldest we¢ve experienced, but we are prepared. We start out with our normal cold weather clothing but by the time we reach the summit, the wind is gusting, and we¢re wearing every bit of protection that we have. The trail here is pretty rough consisting exclusively of refrigerator-sized boulders. The maintainers have thoughtfully erected tall stone cairns to mark the trail, but much of the time the cairns are indistinguishable from the trail itself. The A.T. through here is called the ¢Osgood Trail,¢ not the Appalachian Trail. Lucky for us we¢ve read our guidebook so we won¢t be tricked by this one.We have the whole trail to ourselves until about two hours into the hike when some fast guys finally overtake us. Only one other group passes us all day. I guess most of the hikers could not overcome our one-hour head start. Seven and one-half miles of this eight-mile trail are downhill. The trail is difficult the entire way, lots of rocks of varying sizes, very few smooth spots. We reach Pinkham Notch around noon. This is the largest and best-equipped visitor center in the Whites. They have a lodge, a restaurant, rangers for guidance, showers for cleaning, just about anything a hiker needs. While waiting for the shuttle we grab a couple of wraps from the restaurant. Real food tastes real good!The shuttle bus back to Crawford Notch leaves at 1:30 p.m. As the crow flies it¢s only ten miles, but as the road winds, its twenty-five miles. We had left the van in the same place as before. Amazingly, again, the van has not been stolen. (Or does this say something about the true value of our nine-year-old minivan?) We travel the short distance down the highway to our favorite shower-and-Laundromat-equipped campground. Your deluxe KOA has got nothing on this place.Monday, September 13, 2004, Wildcat Mountain, NHWe exit the campground at 9:00 a.m. and drive the twenty-five miles back to Pinkham Notch Visitor Center. We leave the van in their huge parking lot. It appears from the number of cars that hundreds of hikers are using this location as their base of operations. Across the highway we find the trail to Wildcat Mountain. Our guidebook suggests this might be the most extreme climb in the entire White Mountains. The book will be right.For the first quarter mile the trail is level, skirting a glacial lake, and providing a nice look back at the famous Tuckerman Ravine. To our dismay the trail drops down about fifty feet following a stream. We hate when this happens! We¢re supposed to be going up! Shortly our wishes are fulfilled and the trail does turn up ¢ straight up!Someone lacking imagination decided to name the four Wildcat Peaks ¢A¢ through ¢D.¢ The trail runs for five miles to the top of Wildcat Peak ¢A,¢ the furthest one away, where the elevation is a moderate 4380 feet. Unfortunately we are starting at a mere 2050 feet. Subtracting we find the vertical climb is 2320 feet, just a bit shy of a half mile. The trail is the steepest we have ever seen, certainly more suitable for mountain goats than hikers carrying thirty-pound packs. The first three miles up to Peak ¢D¢ are killer, requiring 3 1/2 hours for completion. Whenever we can¢t maintain a rate of at least one mile per hour, that¢s bad! But the view westward to Mt. Washington and the valley below are rewarding and the sun is shining, so our pain is slightly alleviated. Two miles further we come to the top of the chair lift which is operating for tourists who wish to pay for the view. It¢s freezing cold at the top with a strong wind down from the north. Some ill-prepared tourists are getting off the lift wearing shorts and tee shirts. They last about 60 seconds and hop right back onto a down chair. April and I need to rest, so we crouch down out of the wind behind a boarded-up-for-the-summer building. The sun is warm, maybe even hot. We are so tired after eating lunch that we almost doze off. Can¢t do that! There¢s only one more mile to go to the next hut.We arrive at Carter Hut around 4 p.m. The place is completely empty! We understand that this is a ¢self service¢ hut although we¢re not sure what that means. We sit around for ten minutes wondering if the croo will show up. Then we hear voices outside, first muffled, then louder. Someone¢s coming up the trail. We peer out through the smudgy window and observe a large group of teenagers snaking our way, single file. Looks like we won¢t be alone! Our disposition does a 180-degree reversal: we had anticipated having the whole place to ourselves, but soon we realize that 31 teenagers and 9 adult advisors will be our hut-mates tonight.Luck comes in two varieties, good and bad. The Carter Hut adventure provides some of both.Only a single croo maintains this hut. The self-service feature means that the guests must prepare their own meals. However, there still is work to do around here, so the croo agrees to give April and I Work for Stay. Again April gets the easy assignment, more dish washing. My assignment is, if I think I¢m up to it, chopping wood. I say sure; if I can hike the Presidential Range and survive a hurricane, I guess I can handle a little axe work.The axe (actually a splitting maul, the first time I¢ve used this tool) feels good in my hands. Reminds me of years ago in Connecticut when I used to split a lot of wood for our fireplace. The croo asks me to work on the large pile of logs next to the hut. All are precut to around 12 inches, perfect for splitting. I want to impress the croo by creating a big pile of cut wood in the thirty minutes I will be working. Therefore I select only the choicest of logs, the ones that are straight, the ones with no knots, the ones guaranteed to split with a single hit. The rejects I toss to the back of the pile where no one will discover them until spring. No sense wasting my time on those.This hut was built in 1914 and is extremely small, so small that the sleeping accommodations are located in a separate, newer building one-hundred feet up the hillside. Everyone is crowded into the hut. Soon the kids are banished and are instructed to arrange their sleeping areas in the bunk house. At 7:30 p.m. they will return for dinner. Four young adult advisors remain in the kitchen to start food preparation. It quickly becomes obvious that they can use April¢s help. No one¢s quite sure about some of the most basic techniques, such as cooking noodles. But after an hour¢s work they have somehow managed to get lasagna, salad, garlic bread and brownies successfully prepared. The kids start to trickle down around 7:15. For security the adults lock the doors from the inside. The kids stay outside until all the food has been placed on the tables. April and I have nowhere to hide, so we sit quietly in a corner and watch the mayhem as the kids come in and fight for seats. (We had already eaten, utilizing the last hour¢s quiet time to make our own hot water - freeze dried concoctions.) Graciously, the advisors offer us leftover lasagna after everyone has finished. Actually, what wasn¢t eaten would have to be carried down off the mountain in the morning. Everyone comes out a winner.The kids occupy every bed in the unheated bunk house. Our only option for sleeping is, again, to set up on the eating tables. Oh shucks! You mean we¢ll have to stay down here in the hut, all alone, keeping warm by the kitchen¢s heat? What an inconvenience! (Needless to say, we have a very peaceful night¢s rest.)Tuesday, September 14, 2004, traversing the ¢Carters,¢ New HampshireApril and I are out the door at 7:30, just as the kids are starting to queue up for breakfast. Today we will travel seven miles to the next campsite. We really wish we could make the entire fifteen miles to Gorham, but knowing how rugged the terrain is and how our expectations for high mileage days are always thwarted, we decide on another relatively short day. For the next nine hours we go through a continual series of 800 foot ups and downs. We¢re in the ¢Carters.¢ Must have been someone famous. There¢s the Carter Hut and Carter Notch (where we stayed last night), then Carter Dome, South Carter Mountain, Middle Carter Mountain and North Carter Mountain, all individual peaks. For good measure there are various Carter Trails all over the place. Probably if I scrutinized the topo map I¢d also find a Carter Lake and Carter Gulch. Surely a Carter Road will take you out of here and back to civilization if that¢s your choice.We reach Imp shelter and campsite around 4 p.m. One other hiker has already set up his gear in the shelter. We decide to check out the tent platforms, finding that five of them are available. Where the terrain is steep or rocky tent platforms are usually constructed, otherwise tenting would be impossible. We set up our tent (we¢ve carried it for the last 38 miles and this is the first time we¢ve used it) on the planks. The tent is secured with ropes; driving spikes into the wood is a big no-no. Our elevation is only 3250 feet so the over-night low temperature promises to be moderate.After another world-class supper of freeze-dried chicken and noodles (last night we had noodles and chicken; tonight we eat the chicken first just so it will seem different) we walk down the short pathway to the shelter. Six people have arrived: three day hikers and three thru hikers. April finally has a chance to converse with some of her own kind. The thru hikers, Ranger Jan and the Blues Brothers, say not to worry, you will make it to Maine. There are about forty thru hikers south of us right now, all heading north. You¢ll be able to join up with them, they say. In unison the Blues Brothers run off a long list of hikers¢ names. April recognizes many of them. But while we appreciate the information, we start to doubt their assessment of how quickly April can get to Maine. It turns out that these guys have JUST TODAY hiked seventeen miles in from the west. That same stretch took 2 1/3 days for April and I to complete. We could keep up that kind of fast pace, but only if we awoke some morning miraculously transformed into twenty-five year olds.The day hikers at this shelter are enjoying themselves. They¢ve brought with them a 30-count case of beer, carrying it the five miles from where they parked their car. Why they¢d go to the trouble to lug Budweiser is beyond me. Good beer doesn¢t weigh any more than the insipid variety. The thru guys manage to finagle a few beers for themselves. One of the day hikers has no tent so he intends to sleep in a hammock strung between the trees. We all place bets on how long he will last before he crawls back into the shelter for some warmth. The popular choices are 10 p.m., midnight and 2 a.m. No one thinks it¢s possible to endure beyond that time.Wednesday, September 15, 2004, last day in the White MountainsThe weather is hazy this morning. We can hardly discern the shape of Mt. Washington to the west. We have just one more ¢up¢ today (Mt. Moriah at 4000 feet elevation) and then it¢s downhill all the way to civilization. The going is pretty easy. Most of the treacherous rocks and gnarly roots have subsided. We find the last two miles of trail is on an old carriage road. We cruise sprightly into the parking lot at the trail head. From here we have to hitchhike into Gorham, about three miles away.A few days ago we also did a little hitchhiking. It worked out very well with us getting a ride after about ten minutes of waiting. Today we are not so lucky. We don¢t think we look too shabby out there on the edge of the road, thumbs held high. But a steady stream of tourists files by and nary a one stops. I swear they are scowling at us and mouthing behind their windshields ¢Get a job you bums!¢ Numerous log trucks roar past on their way to the paper mills but we never expect any of them will stop. Hundreds of locals also pass us by, many with pickups that we would gladly sit in the back of. They don¢t stop either. After thirty minutes standing in the unexpectedly hot sun we get lucky. A guy with a pickup swerves onto the shoulder and motions for us to get in, not in the back, but up front in the cab.As I reach for the handle I notice the ¢New Hampshire State Park¢ decal on the door. The driver confesses that he¢s not supposed to do this (the boss has yelled at him a few times), but he feels it¢s his moral obligation to assist hikers (who indirectly provide him with employment). We thank him profusely for the ride. He drops us at the Post Office so April can pick up a package she had mailed to herself. Then it¢s off to the local car rental place. We have carefully calculated that the least costly way to do another van retrieval is with a rental car. Using commercial for-hire shuttles is just getting too expensive.For a reasonable price we find a rental car that we can put to good use for the next twenty-four hours. First we drive the twelve miles back to Pinkham Notch to retrieve the van. Then with both vehicles we drive sixty miles north along the A.T. to the tiny town of East Andover, Maine, where we visit ¢The Cabin,¢ a hostel run by the Townes, nice people who are ever ready to assist hikers. We had been advised to come here to discuss the logistics of April¢s completing the hike to Katahdin. We need to work out some details in advance. Although I will be leaving the trail in another four days, April will hike back to this place seven days from now if she maintains her schedule.Six hikers have already checked in for the night. April¢s jealous that they are a week ahead of her. The owners insist that we stay for supper and conversation. We reluctantly agree, knowing that we have so much to do and it¢s still an hour¢s drive back to the motel in Gorham. While waiting for supper we inquire about advanced hiking techniques such as shuttles, flip flops and slack packs. April figures her best chance is to arrange as many slack pack days as possible. With reduced weight to carry she can travel much faster and with less fatigue. After discussing numerous ¢What if¢ scenarios, we conclude that this just might work, but that it will be difficult to orchestrate who does what and who meets who, where and when.To our astonishment we find that tonight¢s guest chef is none other than the world-renowned Baltimore Jack. This guy seems to be everywhere! We¢re not certain he remembers April although this is the forth time the two of them have met this season. Jack single-handedly prepares a full course Italian meal for all eleven of us. The meal is a real gut buster. Between mouthfuls Jack offers his own advice, and he also thinks April can make it. But we are not one hundred percent sure.Driving both vehicles we depart ¢The Cabin¢ around 9 p.m. Our plan is to take the van twenty miles south to Grafton Notch State Park where we will leave it, picking it up when we hike north three days from now. Somehow we manage to find the proper parking lot in the darkness. We notice there are a few other cars parked here; apparently others use this lot as a hiking base, too. We arrive back at our 38-dollar-off-season motel in Gorham around 11:00.