Date: 2003-08-16
From: Crawford Notch

To: Mizpah Spring Hut
Miles today: 6.4

"I think this is going to be a magical next three days," said Chief. We have stopped for a pack-off break halfway up the windy Webster Cliff climb. The day is overcast, but the cloud ceiling is high. The views are hazy but decent.We are setting off to backpack the fabled Presidential Range of the White Mountains. We're psyched.Suz woke us early this morning, and cheerily poured hot coffee into our stunned selves. Breakfast came from the bagel shop run by former AT and PCT thru-hikers Hoops and M&M. There, we talked hiking while breakfasting, and selected our lunch sandwich to take up. These two hikers are selling their successful bagel business to go conquer the wild and woolly Continental Divide Trail, stretching from Mexico to the Canadian border.On the way to Crawford Notch, Suz points to the spot where Mount Washington is supposed to be. It is totally gone. Absent. It's as if an artist had painted it out and painted in clouds; yet the front ranges are perfectly distinct. It's a mysterious mountain, Washington, often shrouded in cloud. Benton McKaye originally envisioned it as a fitting end to his dream of an Appalachian Trail. It's a magnificent mountain, but it makes its own weather.We suppress a secret, delighted shiver.After a ride to Crawford Notch and hugs all around, Chief and I bade Suz good-bye for now and started into this exciting leg - 25 miles, much of it exposed or above treeline.At Webster Cliffs, 1,100 feet above the Trailhead, we stop and let the winds knock us around for a bit. They funnel through the wind tunnel of Crawford Notch, picking up speed and force like river water through a chute. We yell to each other over the roar of the wind.The air is chilly here. It's fascinating to look back across Crawford Notch at the mountains we trekked over two days ago.We can see the Willey house below. Art told us that the current snack bar was once the site of a home and a catastrophic avalanche. A long time ago, the residents, the Willeys, sensed an avalanche heading for their house, and fled outside, scattering. What they didn't know was that a rock above their home would split the avalanche, deflecting it to the sides. The entire family perished. Weather is tough up here.We traverse more windy cliffs up to Webster Peak. We aren't above treeline yet, but very much in the open. Some of the hiking is rock scrambling and climbing - tough work but nothing we haven't seen before. And it's interesting, focused work. I must say, though, that the cliffs would be a vastly more dangerous traverse with wet rocks and rain. We have traction today, and we are grateful for that.The wind also adds an interesting element. At times we are working our way up a 20-foot slab of rock, clinging by toes and fingernails, when a gust charges down at us and catches our packs broadside, We learn to time the gusts, to work with the wind. Taking a step at the wrong moment could cause a serious unbalance.We stop and lunch with a pair of spruce grouse, this year's chicks, nearly full grown, very tame. They don't run away, just peep their demands at us. They're about the size of banty hens, but plumper. I've heard that it's against the law to kill them, and I can see why. Wouldn't be sporting.When we pack up our lunch and turn the corner, there is Pa Grouse, with four teenage chicks. Pa has red above his eye. The Grouse family slowly walks up the Trail in front of us, stopping to snatch a berry or two off the blue bead lilies.We've done some tricky climbing this morning, so no one is more surprised than me when I fall - hard! - on the absolute flat. We are crossing dry, unslick bridges through what looks like natural cranberry bog when my ankle does a little buckle. I drop like a stone onto the puncheon.I land - bam! - squarely onto both knees, the shock rippling up my spine, then tip over on my side into the bog. I say some really bad words, really bad ones, words your mother never lets you use. After squeezing out an assurance to Chief that he need not summon the MediVac choppers, that I am fundamentally sound, I hug my knees to my chest and curse loudly, roundly, whole-heartedly. It helps with the pain, shock and stun of it. You ought to try it.We arrive at Mizpah Hut chased by a dark rain cloud, and ask the AMC hut caretaker Katie if she has any work for stay positions. The AMC allows the first two thruhikers after 2 pm or so to work off the very high ($68) cost of a hut stay. There's not much camping on the sides of the steep White Mts. and no free shelters as there are elsewhere, so thruhikers must turn to the huts for the night.Katie, the hut caretaker, looks us up and down and declares us too clean and sweet-smelling to be thruhikers. I take that as a compliment. We tell her the local Episcopal priest put us up last night. That is why we are clean, if not saved.She finally takes us in, and tells us we can bunk down in the library for the night. The library is a pleasant, book-filled loft. Suits me.We set tables for dinner, simple enough. We have to wait until the party below has eaten, and the hut crew, or "croo" has cleaned up, and it's near dark when us shaky hikers finally sit down. But the food is plentiful and good - leafy green salad, roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans that tasted fresh not canned, and an excellent molasses bread.An extended family unit has leased the entire hut, and they've brought a lot of wine, so the conversation grows louder and more raucous in this open hut. Children are running amok, in and out of the library. The croo is reluctant to enforce the 9:30 quiet rule because just one party has rented the hut (thru-hiker sleep doesn't count). It is very late before the noise settles down. Even earplugs barely reduced the din. The noise was setting me on edge. It would have been a whole lot quieter in my tent.The best part of my hut experience came in the wee hours of the morning, when I got up to go to the bathroom. The hut windows were wide open to the world, facing east. A half-full moon hung in the sky, and bright Mars shone hotly to the right of it. A haze swept across the moon, ringing it, blotting out all but the most persistent clouds.It was very still. Utterly peaceful.It was heavenly.