Date: 2004-08-02
From: Lakes of the Clouds Hut

To: Osgood Tentsite
Miles today: 10.0
Weather: scattered clouds

There seems to be days on the trail when the stars align and things just seem to click. Today, thru-hikers who climbed over Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range lucked out with the great weather. By the time Bean and I made it to the top of Mt. Washington after an easy 1.5 miles from the hut, the clouds had yielded to blue skies! Standing before us was a beautiful panoramic view of our hike thus far as well as the terrain to come. I spent over two hours atop the peak enjoying the view and sun. Eventually M, Rising Sun, Slick, Figit, Dinner Short, and a couple others showed up. After watching them munch on food from the snack shack, I caved in and bought pizza. The smoke billowing into the sky and noise from the Cog Railroad, in combination with large numbers of tourists, the scene was a bit of an overload on the senses. After the spell of rain and cloud we had though, I was enjoying the sun too much to care. Getting our fill of sun and noise, we all departed the highest peak in the northeast and headed towards the rest of the Presidential Range.In keeping with a long thru-hiker tradition, Bean, M, and I waited to give the tourist-filled train a surprise. Crossing over the tracks and heading down trail about 30 yards, we waited to give the tourists their money's worth. On Rising Sun's signal, we dropped our drawers letting the our white behinds shed some extra light on their day! We had even recruited a couple day hikers so that the tourists got five full moons! Apparently, thru-hikers have been doing this for years and the railroad engineers are usually ready to respond. As the first train passed though, I saw that both engineers were sitting with their backs to us, oblivious to the sight behind them. They must have heard a commotino in the train because one of the engineers did a classic double take, ran to the coal storage bin, and procceeded to hurl pieces of core at our bare behinds. Already expecting this response, we had positioned ourselves away far enough to reduce the accuracy of their shots. I kept my eye on the lumps of airborne coal, avoiding one that wizzed by my head. As I glanced voer my shoulder, I noticed that everty tourist had their camera trained on the action. A conductor on the first train even mooned us back. The second train was just as entertaining and the we were grateful that the engineer of that train had a worse aim. Mooning the cog railroad is a dangerous undertaking, but we thru-hikers must keep the tradition alive. Plus we continued down the trail knowing that we made all those tourist's experience that much more memorable! The rest of the walk to Madison Hut was fairly easy and we made casual conversation. The trail avoided taking us over Clay, Jefferson, and Adams, traversing the peaks instead. Why do we hikers climb pointless mountains with no views so often on this trip and when we finally get mountains with a view, thetrail avoids them? Perhaps it is the AMC's effort to limit the number of people going to the summits and limiting environmental impact as well. We all arrived at Madison Hut where we enjoyed the last hut where we would get cheap AYCE food. Slick and his friend decided to take the work-for-stay at this last hut while the rest of us pushed on to Osgood campsite and Pinkham Notch.The last few miles consisted of a small climb up to Madison (which we did get to summit), and then an unpleasant rocky downhill. The terrain was steep, uneven, and unstable, making the joints in our lower extremities ache. It turned out to be 2800' decent in 2 1/2 miles that seemed to punish us for the nice ridge walk we had been enjoying since Lakes of the Clouds Hut. The decent did have beautiful vies though. Its a bit strange to be back under treeline after a couple days on rocky ridges, but the ground is softer down here!After dinner, M and Rising Sun came over to show Beans' and my campsite to share pohots of our public indecency and dance with danger. We all had a good laugh as M zoomed in on each person in the picture. This included the engineer, whose arm was extended like a baseball pitcher with a small dot of coal that was just barely visible hurling in the direction of our naked behinds!