Date: 2014-07-10
From: Hiker Friendly Hostel

To: Eliza Brook Shelter
Miles today: 16.8
Weather: light rain

Guess what...it rained...again. All evening off and on at least until I fell asleep around 9:30. Got a good nights rest though which is good because today is a doozie. First of the White Mountains, Mt Moosilauke (pronounce the e I'm told). Reportedly the second longest and steepest climb on the entire AT (after Katahdin). And on a newly wet trail. I'm actually excited and a little nervous for this. Glad to finally be in the Whites and ready to test myself. Woke up to a very drippy morning but you could tell it'd be a perfect day. Not a cloud and very cool out. I knew I'd generate a ton of heat right away so no jacket. Had breakfast, paid up, and walked the quarter mile to the trailhead with Inflammable. First excitement of the day - the creek we have to cross has swollen and there's no easy way except to ford. Inflammable is in his last pair of dry socks and not too happy but wades in and his second step is up to his knee. I take my shoes and socks off and pick my way across. I'm NOT dealing with this wet feet bull crap again. Easy wade on soft round rocks. There's now about a two-mile easy hike and little road walk until you walk into the forest and up, up, up. Deep breath. So it begins. As usual it's not bad at first. Gradual slope up to break you in. Soon enough though it gets real. No straight up mess or rock scrambles but actually a nice, consistent, well graded but steep continuous climb for almost four miles. That's two hours. Normally I resist thinking "I'm almost there" as I'm never almost there. There's always a higher there there. Caught up to Inflammable and we both said "I think were almost there". And for once we were! Through the trees you could see blue sky and the tops of other mountains below us. <Below us!> Finally we're in the real mountains again but wow that climb was nothing. What's the fuss about? There's still a climb but it's so high up the trees have gotten stumpy and you can see for miles so know how far to go. Up top we could see Mission enjoying the view so we raced up happy that this wasn't nearly as bad as the map looked like. Took a few pics and threw on my raincoat. It was very windy and a little cold. Then we started back down the other side. Any illusions we had to this being super easy disappeared quick. Holy moley was the downhill steep! It was just rocks and boulders and giant hops down to the next level where a jarring pain would shoot through your knees. Then holding on to trees to lower yourself down. All along was the most beautiful cascade flying down a bare rock face to your left. A wrong step would mean tumbling down a few thousand feet. Sometimes you hiked down the bare rock right next to the cascade. Usually there they'd have wooden planks bolted to the rocks as steps. It was pretty cool. Pretty endless. And pretty much a time and energy suck! Lunch at the base was welcome. All in all I loved it! But crap, I forgot that's only the morning. We still have about ten miles to go and right across the road it goes right back up hill almost as steep as it was downhill. Climb climb climb. This was actually the tough part of the day. It's much more difficult to switch it up every few steps like this section does than to just do a controlled hike uphill or down for a while. One thing New Hampshire is is rugged. No wusses here. It's also unbelievably picture worthy so well worth it. Made our way through spruce and birch forest, narrow cliff edge, mossy trails, moose droppings, and the occasional mud patch to a really nice campsite near a rushing brook.Made horrible time today though. Where two miles an hour is my normal minimum it took us ten hours to do sixteen miles. I'd better keep this in mind for the rest of the Whites. Tomorrow I was trying for twelve miles up another crazy steep climb at the end of the day but the hostel host convinced us to resupply in Lincoln (which involves a hitch) after only nine miles and suggested we stay at an Angels place so we just may which would give me two big meals before the rest of the onslaught.