Date: 2011-08-04
From: Stealth spot off of the Garfield Trail

To: Zealand Falls Hut
Miles today: 9.7

(In which I stay at my first hut)I sleep until the glorious hour of 10am and wake up rested and supremely glad that I was not woken 4 hours earlier by a hut crew. I hang out in the campsite and eat breakfast lazily, walking back to the Garfield Trail shortly before noon. The AT, I discover, is 20 minutes away, only 5 minutes further than I had ventured the evening before.In contrast to the easy, gently graded Garfield Trail, the AT goes down the same mountain with a grade that ranges from tediously steep to ridiculously treacherous, at one point traveling straight down a series of waterfalls. I wonder who built these trails in the Whites, and what they were thinking.I'm climbing up a steep hill when I hear a voice ask me, "How do you like those shoes?" I already had a long conversation yesterday about my New Balance MT100s and the advantages of trail runners, so I reply simply, "I like them." When the man asking the question admits that he works for New Balance I take more interest, and talk about my experiences with three pairs of 790s and my current 100s. He's showing me a prototype of the upcoming Minimus Zeros when his wife catches up. "Are we really doing this again?" she asks, and I quickly chime in that I'm actually really quite interested, though I doubt that it's for my sake that she expresses her exasperation. The man gives me his business card before he leaves, mentioning that his team sometimes sends prototypes to hikers and runners to get feedback, and I make a mental note to drop him an email as soon as I can.I reach the Zealand Falls Hut while the paying guests are eating dinner, and a group of five nobos -- Click!, Longtime, Doc Boom, Trashcan and Marathon -- are all hanging out waiting to eat with the crew and do work-for-stay. While we wait Longtime offers us his theory that people with red beards are more likely to hike the AT than the rest of the population. I offer a rebuttal that the near universal sporting of beards by (male) hikers simply makes one aware of all the non-redheads, like myself, who have red beards that would usually not be seen off in the "real world".Without ever asking for it, I am lumped in with the other nobos doing work-for-stay, and the crew ushers us all in for food after everyone else is finished. I examine the food that the others eagerly scarf down, pans of chili and a spice cake with raisins, but being an unreasonably picky eater, I go back outside to eat my own food instead.A pair of southbounding sisters from Kentucky, Bambi and Thumper, stop by while the others are eating, hoping to do work for stay. The crew turns them away, saying that there are too many hikers already, and I am tempted to let one of them use my spot, but doubt that the crew would let both of them stay even if I did. A crew member directs them to a camping spot well within the no-camping zone surrounding the hut, shrugging his shoulders at the stated regulations, and I make a note of this for future occasions, having already decided that after trying the hut experience I would usually prefer to stealth as long as the weather looks reasonable.After dinner we all wash dishes, clean shelves, and re-tinfoil oven trays. I start helping late, having been outside and not knowing that the others were starting, and assist the others who had already picked jobs when they need a hand. The work is not difficult but takes more than an hour, and an hour of work before my journal is written translates directly into an hour less of sleep, an unpleasant thought when paired with the scheduled 6am wake up call.For those who take full advantage of the hut food and who are used to going to bed and getting up early, which is most hikers on all three counts, I can see how the work-for-stay is an attractive deal. But for me it seems like a fair bit of hassle for the privilege of sleeping on a floor when I would much rather be out by myself in my tent. Having said that, tomorrow's hike may take me toward the upper elevations near Mt. Washington, so I may find myself on a hut floor again soon.