Date: 2023-09-08
From: Lake of the Clouds Hut

To: Carter Notch Hut
Miles today: 7.3

Woke up early and elected to try and get up Mt Washington as soon as possible before the weather turned as thunderstorms and strong winds were forecasted - it was just borderline wind speed before it would be considered dangerous and I was debating whether to go today or not. I could see the radio towers on top and it looked like a villain's lair crowning the peak with the weather swirling as 3 fronts met and clashed overhead.The climb up was surprisingly fast and not that more difficult compared to the other parts of the Whites so far. Near the top I was leaning 45 degrees into the wind and laughing maniacally as it felt like being on a roller coaster. At last I was up and over - I took the obligatory photo and tried to go into the visitor center to pee, warm up, and get more food but alas my early bird nature bit me in the ass - it wasn't going to open for at least 45 more minutes which Rabbit was not happy about.At last we got in and did our various functions, and checked in with the weather kiosk to see if they said it looked OK to hike onwards to Madison Hut, but the guy staffing it was quite definitive that it would be too windy for him to be comfortable recommending us climbing down Madison which was reputed to be the worst downhill all trail according to the FarOut fearmongers. A fun alternative to getting down would be taking the Cog train, but it was randomly extremely expensive so we took the van down into the Pinkham Notch visitor center where it was sunny and still compared to the tumultuous weather on the peak. I ran into a large knot of friends there including Firefly who was going to skip the Wildcats and go further ahead as he was racing the end of his visa (all of the international hikers here on visa were racing their visa expirations at this point) + the Choir.This speaks to how much the Whites were breaking me, but when asked if I wanted to go into town with the others I replied I wanted to just head into the Wildcats and be done with this section and when Rabbit pointed out the visitor centers had showers downstairs that I could take for a quarter I replied that I didn't want to do that, I just wanted to head out. Me, the one who would never pass up a single shower or chance for a better meal? Rabbit's reaction was "oh no you've been broken" but he gamely headed out with me. Fun fact is that the climb into the Wildcats is the steepest mile of trail, and there is a chairlift operated by a ski resort in the summer that a lot of hikers decided to take up instead of climbing up as to spare our cheese-grated joints and actually enjoy the view for once instead of suffering, but we had JUST missed it by days. So we set up to climb the ski route as I rationalized it would be better graded than the trail (if this is the case... I shudder to think of it because I had to sit down every 20 minutes from being so out of breath), and then kept plowing on down to Carter Notch hut in hopes for work for stay.This hut is the most remote, and you can tell the croo has gone a little... funky from the isolation - like a friendly Lord of the Flies. They gave us the task of cleaning bunk beds with butter knives (after having to look for the soap spray bottle for five minutes, which was in the shed...) and promised to find us in an hour. Two hours later a croo member sprinted in wet from the rain apologetic saying dinner was ready (they had clearly forgotten about us), and we ate leftover tomato soup and slept on the steamy humid dining hall floor along with some other hikers who rolled in seeking shelter from the rains. Upon reflection we totally could have slept in one of the dorms as the place was completely empty and the croo so uncaring but this insight came later.