Date: 2018-08-14
From: Madison Spring Hut

To: Joe Dodge Lodge/Pinkham Notch
Miles today: 7.8

The forecast was rain by late morning, but when we woke up, it was raining. Mother Nature was saying "You don't get out of the Whites without paying the Piper!". We did a little prepacking in anticipation of our morning wakeup serenade by the Croo at 6:30am. But 6:30am came and went with no serenade. ET checked and there was no Croo activity in the kitchen...and worst of all, no coffee available! It appeared the Croo had overslept. ET and I decided we would just pull something out of our food for breakfast, eat it in the dining room then hit the trail. One of the other guests was less accommodating. He opened the door to the crew living area and yelled "Hey, We're hungry out here! Immediately members of the Croo came pouring out of their living area. Amazingly, at 7:05, just as we finished packing up, the Croo announced that breakfast was ready. So we had a regular Hut breakfast..Wahoo! We put on our rain jackets, put the rain covers on our packs and hit the trail at 8am.The wind was blowing at about 15mph, the temperature was 54 degrees and it was raining steadily...a wonderful day for a hike. The trail immediately started steeply up a cascade of boulders on Mt. Madison. Because it was steep and the boulders were wet, we took it very slowly. As described in an earlier journal posting, everyone tends to leave the Hut nearly at the same time, after breakfast. So soon we were passed by many of the hikers we had met. Then we were alone on the mountain. Today's picture is of our cairn-by-cairn hike up the mountain.The problem was that the higher up we got, the stronger the wind and rain became. At one point the wind was blowing 30-40mph and the rain was going horizontal. We went over the top of Mt. Madison and began the rock scramble down the other side. We continued to plug along, but not taking breaks. Stopping and taking a break means chilling down and risking hyperthermia. After 5 hours we were finally below treeline and out of the wind, so we took our first break. We had traveled a paltry 2.5 miles! We were concerned about making dinner at Joe Dodge Lodge at Pinkham Notch. They only serve it between 5:30pm and 7:30pm. It was 1pm and we still had 5.3 miles to go.After our break, we traveled 0.5 more miles on a steep, rocky trail before it eased a little. During this time the rain stopped and we actually saw the sun. Mother Nature had given us a great sendoff from the Mt. Washington mountain complex.Even with a slightly better trail, we were still having trouble maintaining much more than 1.0 mph. So dinner was still questionable since we needed to take a few more breaks, given our strenuous morning. Towards the end of the day, we crossed the access road to Mt. Washington...yesterday the cog train tracks and today the road! Soon after that, the trail headed down Old Jackson Rd. It was an abandoned dirt road that was washed out in several places but where it wasn't, the grade was gentle and the surface fairly smooth. This allowed us to stride out and increase our mph. Old Jackson Rd saved our "bacon" because we made it to Joe Dodge Lodge at 5:45pm.We took showers (Mmmm), put on some dry clothes and headed to the dining room at 6:30pm. We clinked our water glasses and toasted that we had finally finished the 500 mile section of the AT that we started 2 years ago but couldn't finish because of Spider's knee issues. After eating everything in sight, we went back to our room and were finally able to get horizontal...Ahhh!This was probably our hardest day of hiking. Climbing South Kinsman was the hardest climbing we have ever done, but today's putting one foot in front of the other was the hardest, so far...10 hours of hiking, 2900 foot descent and only 2 breaks. We will sleep well tonight!Tomorrow we have a 2500 ascent...and, of course, there is a chance of rain again!To bed at 8:30pm.