Date: 2007-08-14
From: Mizpah Springs Hut, NH

To: Madison Spring Hut, NH
Miles today: 11.8
Weather: scattered clouds

Today is going to be a long one. We depart the Nauman Tentsite at the reasonable hour of 9 am. It takes us about 2 hours to reach the Lakes of the Clouds hut. There¢s no reason to hang out here, so we keep going. About an hour later we attain the summit of Mt. Washington, elevation 6288 feet. This is the highest point in New England and on the Appalachian Trail it is second only to Clingman¢s Dome in North Carolina, elevation 6643 feet.The summit of Mt. Washington is a fun place. Hundreds of visitors every day come up on the Cog Railway, an ancient contraption that has been hauling tourists for over one hundred years. Trainman and I took the train ride some years ago and it is absolutely worth the cost. It is an experience you cannot duplicate anywhere else.Tourists also drive their cars up on the toll road but it seems this is not a good choice. The fee per passenger is quite stiff, and it seems there is a good chance of wrecking the family auto on the grueling drive up and back.We head out on the Gulfside Trail (aka Appalachian Trail) and at day¢s end decide to stay in the tent site at Valley Way, near by the Madison Spring Hut. The hut is assuredly full to capacity, just as we found it in 2004. Better that we stay at the tent site. At least we¢ll have the company of REAL HIKERS.What is this? See explanation at August 10, 2007.Friday, September 10, 2004, Mizpah Spring Hut in the White Mountains, NHThe previous pelting rain subsides in the middle the night. We know this because the noise from the skylight directly over our heads has gone away. At daybreak the mist is heavy but the winds have subsided. The forecast is for slightly improved conditions by afternoon. We watch as most of today¢s guests leave right after breakfast and head back to their cars in the valley. A couple of hard-core types take off up the trail toward Lakes of the Clouds, the same direction that we plan to go. By 9:00 a.m. we and the Kirbys (a couple from Florida we met the previous day) are the only ones left in the hut. We have no choice but to go ¢ somewhere. We decide to try our luck and head north to Lakes of the Clouds. We voice our intentions to the Kirby¢s. Like most of the others, they have decided the rain is just too much to bear and will head back to their car. Would we like to use their reservation for the Lakes hut tonight? You bet! This will be nice ¢ we can pretend to be regular guests and we won¢t have to eat cold leftovers!With a bit of trepidation the four of us stumble out into the mist; the Kirbys head down the trail while the Meyers head up. The weather is, momentarily, quite nice. It¢s misty and 45 degrees; the rain has not yet returned. Visibility is about 300 feet. Our destination is the most popular hut in the entire system because of its location 1.4 miles from and 1300 feet below the summit of Mt. Washington. Everyone who intends to reach the summit stops at the Lakes hut the night before. We start out by hiking along a fairly easy trail through the trees for about an hour, then the rain starts. Within minutes it turns into a drenching downpour. We round a corner between some rocks and trees, come out into an exposed area, and wham! a 40 mile an hour gust nearly blows us over. We scramble half-crawling a hundred feet through the open area to the trees at the other side. We look at each other and ask, ¢Are we sure we want to do this?¢The protection of the trees doesn¢t last long and soon we¢re back out on another exposed ridge. Carrying large backpacks doesn¢t make traversing this trail any easier. We find the going very difficult. For some stretches we resort to walking on all fours like crabs; upright walking is plainly impossible. April falls down and cries because of the utter misery of the situation.A sign marking a trail junction looms ahead. The sign post is completely loose and has fallen out of its base of piled up rocks. We prop it up and rotate it around to see if we can find its proper orientation. We can not ¢ none of its arrows make sense. We retreat to the nearby shelter of a few low trees and pull out our guidebook. Maybe we¢ll find some clues here. We do not. The normally ever-present white painted trail markers are nowhere to be found. Perhaps no one had thought it important to repaint them. How likely was it to get lost on top of a mountain?We know that the A.T. has been designed to go right over the top of every mountain peak it encounters. But at this junction we are looking for the ¢bypass¢ which provides an easier, lower elevation path around the top of Mt. Eisenhower. Our dilemma is that we can¢t tell if the official A.T. goes over the top of Eisenhower, or if they break their own rule and have this part of the A.T. follow the bypass. If we make the wrong choice and go over the exposed top of Eisenhower, we will surely die. We figure that taking the lower route will only half kill us. We must determine conclusively which trail is the bypass. We have only one chance to get it right.Did I forget to mention that we have no map? April has hiked successfully over 1800 miles without a map. It¢s simply not been required, being just a few more ounces of excess weight. Now we were learning the hard way another of the ¢White Mountain Exceptions,¢ that is, a map is mandatory in these mountains. There are far too many places where the trail is not marked well or maybe not marked at all. Other times five trails will all converge at one spot, crisscross, and continue on their way. The layout resembles the spokes of a wagon wheel. We both wished we had a map right now.Moments after we put away our trail guide we spy a group of four women coming out of the mist towards us. They¢re French (assumed Canadians) and speak little English. I first respond to their question about trail conditions by pointing down hill and saying ¢MIZPAH - OK!¢ The Mizpah hut was both their destination and the hut we had left a few hours ago. Then I inquire about our trip uphill by asking ¢LAKE OF CLOUDS ¢ OK?? and point back up the trail they had just come down. All four shake their heads affirmatively and chorus in ¢OK, OK!! This episode in foreign relations being successfully concluded, both groups push on toward their goals. We would not get lost this time.The wind and rain is really surging hard now. It¢s not an exaggeration to say we are facing a situation normally portrayed by the 6 o¢clock newsman who braves the hurricane for his ¢Live Eye Storm Tracker¢ report. You¢ve all seen this on TV. The reporter and the cameraman are both nearly swept off their feet while the wind and rain screams in the background. That¢s really how bad it was.I recall the boat skipper in ¢The Perfect Storm¢ as he fearlessly forged onward against the roiling sea. He eventually turned his boat around, but still he perished. Would we have a similar fate?Today¢s hike from Mizpah to Lakes is about five miles long. We are half way there. The first mile was easy while the next 1 1/2 miles were exceptionally difficult. The final 2 1/2 miles are proving to be life threatening. The trail is now well above the tree line. There are no large rocks to provide even the slightest amount of shelter.Stone cairns placed about 75 feet apart mark the trail, but we can barely see from one to the next. Fortunately, this part of the trail is marked with small stones placed in a continuous row on each side of the trail. The real purpose for them is to keep the hiker on the path and away from the fragile Alpine vegetation. The rain is coming down so hard we cannot lift our heads to see more than five feet ahead. We find a secondary use for the rocks. They are the only visual guides we¢ve got to keep us on course.For the last two hours we¢ve been beaten by a cold, 40-degree, horizontally-falling rain. The windward side of our bodies is completely soaked (quality rain gear, no matter how good, cannot stand up to this assault) while the leeward side is nearly dry. I should be freezing cold but strangely, I am not. Is adrenaline causing me to ignore my misery? Or is this the first sign of hypothermia? I don¢t know and I DON¢T CARE (which is the second sign of hypothermia).Visibility remains at less than a hundred feet as we push on. We must be getting close to the hut, but we have no idea if we¢ve got a mile more to go or only one-tenth that. We haven¢t seen anyone since leaving the French ladies two hours ago. Then suddenly my one unimpaired sense picks up a clue ¢ I smell smoke! At first it seems like coal smoke that I guess is coming from the coal-powered steam locomotives used on the Cog Railway. Could the trains be running in this miserable weather? But wait, the tracks are probably two miles from our position, and it¢s unlikely that the smoke would drift that far in this storm. A few seconds later the mystery is solved. Out of the gloom appears the gray apparition of the Lakes hut. What a sight! We had smelled their propane cook stoves! We scramble over the last fifty feet of slippery rocks toward the entrance door. April absolutely cannot stand up against the wind so I carry and drag her to safety.We tumble in through the front door, hardly believing we have survived this ordeal. It¢s 3:30 in the afternoon. The main room is filled with hikers, perhaps thirty in number. No one looks up at the new arrivals; it¢s no big deal, everyone has survived the same miserable conditions to get here. Later we discover that at least half of the hikers staying in the hut tonight are day hikers, and they have traveled up through the relative safety of the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail. Their total travel time was 2 1/2 hours, of which only thirty minutes was spent above the tree line. By contrast, we spent 2 1/2 hours getting blasted by the storm. During dinner, who would have the greater tales to tell?None of the croo are available at the check-in desk; we see them all working at various tasks back in the kitchen. Finally someone shows up. April strolls up to the window and announces affirmatively, ¢Hi, we¢re the Kirbys, and WE HAVE RESERVATIONS.¢A new experience awaits us ¢ it¢s not necessary to ask about Work for Stay. Instead, we will assume the guise of proper day hikers, fraternizing with those who have reservations, those who have snappy L.L. Bean clothing, and those who have nothing but new and clean gear. No more (well, at least for a day) will we be associated with the grubby world of the through hiker, where you look like a refugee and your equipment is weather-beaten into uselessness. Tonight at dinner we will sit with the real people! The croo will wait on us! No more leftovers!Although the clothing we are wearing is soaked, we are fortunate (because of April¢s Trail Smarts) to have dry clothing buried deep in our backpacks. Our boots are just slightly wet thanks to April¢s handmade gaiters. We observe that not all the hikers are so fortunate. Some apparently have no dry clothing to put on, and they think they can wear the wet garments until the air dries them. This seems inadvisable with the temperature inside the hut a chilly 55 degrees and humidity about 90%. High school locker room after gym class is definitely more comfortable.We have an hour to kill before dinner is served. We briefly exchange pleasantries with many of the day hikers, but April gravitates toward two old heads that obviously have been around. They are Leo and Robert, both from Hanover, NH. We notice immediately that their mannerisms are lifted directly from the movie ¢Grumpy Old Men.¢ Both must have been stand-ins for Lemmon and Matthau at some point in their pasts.Leo and Robert are both retired and in their sixties. They spend nearly every waking moment outdoors. They don¢t hide from the New Hampshire winter, they relish it. These guys are the most vibrant characters we¢ve ever met. Their ¢straight man / funny man¢ repartee really gets us going. They never seem to rest, nor do they tire of telling stories. If only we could acquire some of their vibrancy for living to keep us going through our golden years. Our chance meeting with them is just a single instance of why the trail experience is so memorable, and why some many hikers go back year after year. It¢s not the woods, it¢s the people.Saturday, September 11, 2004, the ascent of Mt. WashingtonDuring the night the wind continues to howl. We feel the hut routinely shake and groan. The structure is well anchored otherwise it would have blown down the mountainside years ago. Around 3 a.m. the wind stops and the sky clears. The stars come out. They shine brightly all the way down to the horizon. Being light sleepers we are among the first out of the bunks, hitting the floor around 5:45. I find one fellow in the eating area immersed in a book. It looks like he¢s been awake for a long time, maybe all night.It¢s 6:30 and we have to wait until 8:00 for breakfast to be served. There¢s no coffee in sight. Surely the croo understands that coffee before breakfast, not with breakfast, is the best way to start the day. I hear the croo telling other early risers that there¢s not much hot water, you¢ll have to be patient. Nevertheless, about five minutes later a single pot of coffee is placed on the counter that separates the kitchen from the dining area. I and other like-minded caffeine fiends immediately pounce on the steaming liquid. I get a cup, that¢s all that¢s important. In five minutes it¢s gone. I notice that there is one more cup remaining in the pot. Without guilt I take it, too.Every morning during breakfast the croo reads the official weather report to the assembled hikers. Today it goes like this. ¢Yesterday you vividly recall the visibility at the hut was 100 feet. Well, this morning it¢s somewhat better. You should be able to see 100 miles, all the way to the ocean if you look east. Hurricane Frances is history. You will all have an awesome hike to the summit today!¢ The hikers let loose with a roar of approval.At 8:30 we are ready to depart Lakes of the Clouds. Yesterday¢s still-wet clothing is carefully placed in plastic bags and buried in the bottom of our packs. We put our boots back on just as damp as when they came off yesterday. At least our socks are dry. We bid farewell to Leo and Robert. They are also headed to the summit, but being hyper-hikers, they will get there in half the time it takes us. The sky is crystal clear, the temperature is 50 degrees, and there is no wind.The trail to the summit is a mere 1.4 miles during which we climb 1300 feet in elevation. It takes us about an hour. The view from the top, as promised, is breathtaking, and yes, we do see the ocean. We have the whole mountaintop to ourselves as neither the train riders nor car drivers have yet arrived. A picnic table in the sun becomes an expeditious drying rack for our wet clothing. With intense sun everything is dry in about forty-five minutes.On previous trips to the summit I¢ve never been able to get good photos of the cog train. Today it¢s going to be different. The first train is not due to arrive until 10:00. That means I have sufficient time to scout out the perfect photo location. Reminds me of years ago when I was active in train photography. Back then I¢d find the ideal photo location out along the tracks and wait patiently for a train to appear. Now I was going to relive that same kind of experience but this time, instead of waiting for hours, I would have to wait only thirty minutes.The train crawls up the hill so slowly and it makes such a commotion that everyone is alerted far in advance to its approach to the terminal. All the tourists stand at the overlook near the visitor center. This causes them to shoot into the sun. That¢s no way to get a good photo! I crawl under a small trestle and position myself on the other side of the tracks where I take advantage of full broadside sun. With the locomotive coming into view I frame the white billowy steam against the deep blue sky. I can tell this will be a great picture as I position my finger on the shutter button. Wait, wait, just a little further¢¦ got it! I feel tingly with accomplishment. I finally got the picture that has eluded me for so long.For some reason the Appalachian Trail is called the ¢Crawford Path¢ in the area around Mt. Washington. I guess they just like to confuse the first time hikers. By either name we find the way down off the summit and work northward, first passing by the Great Gulf Wilderness (a very large and deep valley close to the summit) and then progressively on to Mt. Clay (el. 5530), Mt Jefferson (el. 5700) and Mt. Adams (el. 5775). Viewing the trail ahead from a half-mile distance, it looks deceptively easy. We are so far above the tree line that nothing thinks about growing here. But the rocks that seemed inconsequential from afar have now expanded to their true sizes, and the going is, actually, far from easy. April moves along carefully, ever fearful of another bent-ankle episode.Around 3 p.m. with one more mile to go, we happen upon a nice stretch of trail. The maintainers apparently figured that travel though this section (perhaps one-half mile long) would be treacherous because of millions of large, pointy rocks. So they uprooted the rocks and laid them all flat like gigantic cobblestones in a street. Now we are able to move along smartly, easily achieving a speed three times faster than what we had done earlier in the day. This flat rock highway runs almost up to the door of the hut, where we arrive about 4 p.m.At the Madison Springs Hut we inquire about another Work for Stay. We are again in luck, no one else has asked. April¢s chore is to wash dishes; mine is to remove burnt residue from the bottom of a pan. The washing is simple, but there¢s not a snowball¢s chance in hell that my pan will ever come clean. Nevertheless, I scour, abrade, scratch, scrape, chisel and gouge the pan in an exasperating attempt to expose bare metal. The going is impossibly tough. The pan has about 100 square inches to be cleaned. The pan has probably been baked 500 times since it was last cleaned. My tool, providentially, is a paint scraper. It takes me twenty minutes to clean only 10 square inches. At this rate I won¢t finish by midnight. Finally I develop a technique that works. Instead of chiseling with the scraper, I set the blade perpendicular to the surface, pulling the blade back toward me. This produces minimally positive results. I work at it for another 20 minutes. The clock runs out and I give the pan back to the croo with apologies. Only half of the bottom is finished. The pan goes back on the rack, perhaps to be attacked again tomorrow by another unfortunate worker.We don¢t like this hut. The accommodations are very restrictive for its sixty person capacity. A building that has been here for many decades, it consists only of three areas: a bunk room (fifteen bunk structures with beds stacked four high), a kitchen and an eating area. There is no foyer, no hallway, no landing, no place whatsoever to go and put just a little space between yourself and your fellow guests. When it¢s time for dinner, April and I, as usual, have to wait for the paying guests to eat first. We find a place in the back of the eating area where we can half-sit, half-stand. When dinner is served we are like shadows of the people eating at the table in front of us. I clearly see every spoonful of food that¢s being eaten as I hover close behind, unable to get any further away.This night the hut is full and there are no spare bunks. We place our mattresses and bags on the eating tables and that¢s where we sleep. Again, we have the better accommodations. It¢s quieter here than in the bunk room and there is just a little heat left in the adjacent kitchen. At first light we are up and in line for coffee.