Date: 2011-07-30
From: (114) Madison Spring Hut

To: (115) Ski Lodge on Wild Cat Mountain
Miles today: 10.6

I woke up several times last night from the guests falling down the stairs in the dark (Seriously, people were falling and thumping down the wood steps all night!). The hut is solar powered, so the lights are turned off at night to save the precious electricity that remains in the hut¢s batteries. As a result, little Timmy who is used to his night light back home ends up tumbling head over heels down a handful of steps and into the dining room, where he continues to bump blindly into tables, chairs, and walls on his way to find the bathroom. When I woke for good it was to the eerie howl of wind. A storm had raged all night, and the world outside the hut¢s windows was blank with a dense and fiercely blowing fog. Oh lovely day!After waiting for the paying guests to eat, followed by a skit performed by the crew where two rock climbers learned how to pick up trash (one fell into a crevice and only your tips could get her out), Grandpa, Tridub, Zero, the lazy section hiker and I had a breakfast of pancakes and oatmeal. We learned that the weather would clear up in the afternoon, and having nothing but time decided to wait things out in the hut, spending our morning talking and reading (Every hut has a book shelf aka hut library, complete with books that are identical to every library in every other hut. As a result, some thru hikers start a book at the first hut, hike on while remembering the page they were on, and then continue to find that same book and read it at each hut. Grasshopper was halfway through the one that he had chosen, and hoped to be finished it by the end of The Whites).Zero has turned out to be very odd. First, I found him standing in a hallway reading a book out loud, the hut guests all giving him odd looks as they passed him. Later he sat down with our group at a table in the dining hall and read out loud from his book (to himself). He was reading about star constellations and would occasionally pause to say something like, ¢You know, I have never been to the Southern Hemisphere.¢ (Me either Zero, me either¢¦) I have heard stories from other thru hikers about Zero as well. One was about him throwing his pack over a cliff, another him stealing from people, and the last that he had found some lost hikers and led them back to the safety of a hut where the hut Croo praised him and treated him like a hero. All I can say is that Zero is different (hence his isolation), but I do not believe that he is ¢Bad¢. While waiting for better weather, the retired jet pilot gave me even more of his food since he was heading home. I offered half of the food to Zero and was well received. Meanwhile the fat section hiker who hadn¢t made it farther than 6 miles on his first day had been mistaken by the guests as an actual thru hiker. He had taken a liking to this celebrity status in the hut and was answering all the guest¢s questions about the trail, like he was some sort of expert. I rolled my eyes at this ridiculousness and got back to reading my book, ¢Lord of the Flies¢. It is not as exciting as star constellations, but it has its moments.At 12pm I ripped out the 60 some pages of my book that I had finished reading (to save weight) and left the hut to begin hiking. It was still foggy and rainy, which made my climb up Mt Madison rather treacherous, but it was definitely better weather then it had been that morning, and would soon clear up completely as the fog rolled back like a curtain to unveil some spectacular views of The White Mountains. Hiking downward into Pinkham Notch (I passed the fat section hiker on the way down, even though he had started hours before me) I found the visitors center, as well as a scale for weighing packs. When weighing a pack, it is standard to only weigh gear and not food or water, as they fluctuate and can be anything. My pack¢s gear weight was less than 11lb, an impressive feat for any hiker, and something that certainly defines me and what I require to survive. I would not say that the kind of gear I carry allowed me to achieve this weight, so much as the amount of things that I have thrown out, not taken, or substituted. (For example: traded rain gear for a trash bag poncho, no clothes besides what I am wearing, no water purification or filter, cutting my tooth brush in half, removing the metal spiral of my notebook, using just the pen insert to write, no knife, no nail clippers, no bear bagging, no hat, no sunglasses, cutting off unnecessary straps and tags, cutting out pockets I don¢t use, ditching heavy water bottle for cheap Deer Park or Aquafina bottle, no compass, no maps, cut down guide books, no shaving gear, no soap or bathing gear, no germicide hand wash, no pain killer, no first aid kit unless you count duct tape, wrapping duct tape around my fuel bottle to save weight on an entire roll, taking the cardboard tube out of my roll of toilet paper, carrying wood matches instead of a heavy bic lighter, using zip locks and trash bags for waterproofing, ripping the sleeves off of my t-shirt, wearing running shorts without pockets, using a small tarp instead of a tent, having a minimum amount of stakes for my tarp and then using rocks and sticks to hold down the rest, having no frame or ventilation on my pack, running shoes instead of boots, thin and low cut socks, using a foam sleeping pad instead of an inflatable one, and much more over the course of several months that I can¢t even remember, but I think you get the idea.)Leaving the notch, I climbed (and I emphasize the ¢climbed¢) Wildcat Mountain. At the top I was blasted by a cold wind. There was a ski lift and platform, and a ski patrol lodge beside the trail. I was going to move on, but I saw that the window of the small lodge was unlatched, so I pushed it open and slid through. Inside there was a table and chairs, as well as two couches, and ski patrol supplies. The temperature outside was cold and the wind was unforgiving, so I decided that instead of tenting farther down the trail I would stay in the lodge out of the elements. Unfortunately I did not have any water, and after looking in my guidebook saw that the only close by water source was a spring halfway down Wildcat Mountain. And so, I grabbed my 2L water platypus and ran back the way I had come, endlessly descending Wildcat Mountain and all of its rocky climbs until I found the water source, a stagnant and yellow puddle (the spring had stopped flowing). I filled up, and then climbed back up the mountain. While hiking I met a section hiker named Fozzy, and I asked him if he could purify my water for me since it was so stagnant. He did, and so I invited him into the ski lodge to escape the wind for awhile (he was meeting some friends further down the trail). While enjoying the warmth of the lodge, I looked out of the window and saw Red Moose coming down the trail, so I stuck out my head and waved him in too. Then a little later I saw Grandpa, so I waived him in, and after that I saw Vegan, so we all waived him, and so on until we had a full lodge of my hiker buddies (We figured the ski patrol had left the window unlocked on purpose for hikers in bad weather). Everything was great and everyone was warm and happy, until Fozzy pointed out that we would have to climb back out of the window to pee. We all frowned as it was a very difficult climb, very cold, and we all knew we would have to go at least once. Grandpa was chugging his water down like a crazy man so I asked him what on earth he was thinking and that he would be climbing in and out of windows all night! ¢Nah¢ said Grandpa, ¢I got an empty jar of peanut butter, I ain¢t going through no damn window!¢ And of course, he didn¢t.