Date: 2005-06-24
From: Guyot Campsite

To: North Conway
Miles today: 11.9

Today was a great day for side trails all around! We woke up early in the morning to the stomping of boyscouts around the shelter, ate bfast and went to talk with Huff - the caretaker - to do our work-for-stay. We ended up hauling compost from the privy up to the ridge line to a deforested place where they were going to plant some trees. Good work, but it was a climb, and carrying buckets is a lot more awkward than a backpack. We each carried 6 5gal. buckets up to the top. But, after our early morning workout Huff invited us to sit for a while and offered us bagels and freshly boiled eggs and had a huge cup of hot chai waiting for each of us. THANKS HUFF!After our leasurly second breakfast we headed back up to the ridge, stashed our packs and headed south towards the Bond Cliffs. This was a side trail that I had been wanting to do for ages. Bond Cliffs are formed by a beautiful above-treeline wall which faces west and ovelooks the west side of the Pemi wilderness and Franconia Ridge. Very nice! Scrubs and I sat on the edge of the cliff for quite sometime talking about trail hiking philosophies and debating the insanity of Baltimore Jack.Our conclusions were that we basically look down upon people who are hiking the Appalachian trail simply beacuse it is the Appalachian trail. This is a philosophy of "I can't wait to accomplish this because then I'll be cool" or "I kicked Bill Bryson's butt" or "you didn't REALLY hike the trail. where is your collection of paint samples from every white blaze?". Really the philosophy should be about wanting to take a very long walk/hike and enjoy the wilderness and the company and the expereince: ie about the journey not the destination. This is where Baltimore Jack comes in. He's insane because for him hiking the trail means treading over every inch of it - including underneath blowdowns that most people would walk around. Insane. Are you out here to hike? or are you out here to accomplish this abstract thing called the "Appalachian Trail"?Anyway, it was a georgous morning, and Washington was still in the clear. From Bond cliffs the only civilization you can see are the towers on Washington and the top of the Loon Mtn ski resort. Pretty cool, and beautiful.We met some more southbounders on our way to the Zealand Falls Hut, where they had already run out of soup, and so we were forced to eat some of our three days of food. That's OK, because we hadn't eaten much of it 'till then. We made it all the way from Kinsman Notch to Gorham basically carrying the same 3 days worth of food the whole time. We did cook two dinners and ate some lunches, but there was still a lot left.Anyway, Early Bird caught up to us, or we to her, again at Zealand and it became known that she and her husband have a condo in North Conway. I looked at my list of trail-area contra-dances and found that there was one in N. Conway on the 4th friday of the month. That was today! So she and I went into town while Scrubs did even more side-trial miles over Willey and some other Mtn. in a loop back to the Hut. I went into town only to discover than indeed it was the 5th friday of the month, and we had all totally miscalculated the calendar. Oh well, next time.Peace,