Date: 2003-10-23
To: Four Bagger
Miles today: 0.0

[The first part of this entry is lifted from an e-mail to my friend and hiking buddy, Ken, just after coming back from my last trip to the White Mtns. Ken will be posting my photos to this journal when I am on the Trail.] Just wanted to let you know I bagged four peaks this weekend: North and Middle Tripyramid on Saturday, North and South Hancock on Sunday. This completes my goal of climbing all off-AT NH 4000¢-ers before getting on the AT. The climbs both days involved going up some long, steep, slopes. On N Tripyramid, the final cone of maybe 700¢ was almost all solid rock (granite?) that was sloping down the mountain. The covering of light snow didn¢t help the climb any. The climb up N Hancock was more like up a rock slide. It wasn¢t entirely down-sloping faces like Tripyramid, and it wasn¢t as loose as Owl¢s Head, but was a challenge nevertheless. Middle Tripyramid was also a challenge, and standing at the head of the Sabbaday Brook Trail, in the col between the two peaks I thought I had never seen a steeper slope up to its top. The walk from North to South Hancock, however, was a piece of cake. Except for one small incident. Sunday was much cooler than Saturday; as a matter of fact I woke up and packed up my tent in a light snow. I dressed warmly, in a T-shirt, long-sleeved polypropylene, a thin fleece, and a rain jacket, along with light gloves. Before I started up the final slide approach to N Hancock I took off the rain jacket. Nevertheless, by the time I got to the top I was sweating, but kept moving. Not 150 yards from the top I felt my hands were chilly, and by the time I stopped to put my jacket back on I was feeling chilly all over. Even after I got the jacket back on, I continued to get colder, particularly since I had lost a piece of my Camelback, and slowly retraced my steps and stayed in place to fix it. After I finally got moving again, in a couple hundred yards I was comfortable again. I can see how a situation on the top of a mountain can deteriorate quickly though. I did have a thicker fleece with me, and could have put it on if the jacket hadn¢t sufficed, but I can see that the gloves I had were only borderline sufficient. I was also fortunate that the snow, which was lightly dusting for nearly the whole ascent from the trailhead, never came down hard enough to accumulate to a depth that obscured the ground, and even luckier it wasn¢t something like a freezing rain. The water on the 6 crossings of the N Fork of the Hancock R wasn¢t much lower than when you and I went early last year. None of them were gimme¢s. On the way up, I found a log dam about 50 yards upstream from the 4th crossing, the one we stopped at, and clambered over that. On the way back, after continuing to develop confidence in my crossing abilities, I was able to walk across on rocks that were just above or just below the surface (some loose), and managed to get across without getting my shoes wet even up over the toe. I¢d offer to show you my pictures, but even though I took my camera, I didn¢t take a single shot. On Tripyramid I was under full pack (about 34 #s). I tried wearing a fanny pack in front, but the buckle dug into my back and the fanny pack itself dug into my rib cage. So I ended up strapping it to the top of my pack, camera and all. When I got to the top, I didn¢t want to bother to take off the pack, so didn¢t even take the camera out the whole day. On Hancock, I went with just a Camelback and a fanny pack. I found that with my necessities (1st aid, gorp and TP) there was no way I could get the camera in as well. I still have your material on digital cameras, and will become serious about getting one as soon as my house gets sold. [The rest of this journal entry is lifted from material added when I forwarded the e-mail to Ken to the friend I mentioned in my last entry. As a software developer of one sort or another for a quarter century, I have developed the habit of re-using code whenever possible. I hope that no one is offended by my extending that practice to the writing of my journal.] Other than the incident I described to Ken, where I got overly cold, I really enjoyed being out in the cold weather. I do need to get more experience in tenting out in the cold, though. The temperature probably approached freezing overnight, and since I expected rain, I zipped the tent fly down to the ground, both front and back, in an attempt to preserve heat and to keep out the rain when it came. Big Mistake. When I got up in the morning everything inside the tent was soaked. That included the inside surface of the tent and the outside surface of the sleeping bag (the inside of the bag was fine, and still toasty). Since there had only been a light dusting of snow, not enough to accumulate any on the ground, the wetness must have been condensation. Since I broke camp before dawn, I packed the wet tent and damp sleeping bag back into my pack, and had to dry them after I came home. This will cause a problem on the Trail, since I will either have to wait until everything dries out before breaking camp, or will need to stop in the middle of the day to set things up to let them dry. I brought this up in Tuesday¢s chat on ATHiker2004, and was recommended to sleep with the fly open as much as possible, unless precipitation is actually blowing in. I will try that the next time I go into the Whites overnight, probably in November sometime. On this trip I tried hiking poles for the first time ever (thanks for your support on this), renting a pair of Lekis from EMS for the weekend. It took a while to get used to them, but after a mile or so I began to get comfortable. The first thing I noticed was that they gave me a lot more confidence in stream crossings. Maybe too much confidence. On my second crossing I stepped boldly on a rock that I normally would only have stepped on after carefully testing it, if at all. I went in to the shallow stream with both feet up to my ankles. After that I regained some of my former caution while crossing water. I also had only one blood-letting accident this weekend, compared to three last time out, mainly because of the poles. But the one accident I did have was also due to the poles. I was going down a steep slope on coarse scree (loose gravel on a slope at such an angle that any disturbance will send some of it down the hill). Normally I would be going down such a slope backwards, or at least sideways, with at least one limb firmly planted at all times. With the (over?) confidence of walking with poles, I attacked this slope facing forward. I did OK, almost getting to the bottom, but just when I was feeling good about getting through, both feet slipped on the loose surface, an before I knew it I was doing the splits (my Yoga teacher would have been proud of me), with one knee dragging along the ground. The resulting skinned knee was much milder than the skinned knee and skinned shin on my last trip. I expect I will get over the overconfidence (hubris?) that I have while walking with poles, so will be buying a pair to gain more experience. I also had a couple of minor personal firsts. I brushed my teeth for the first time in the woods, but am not sure of the proper way to dispose of the resulting spit. I dug a cat hole (as if I were having a bowel movement, which I still haven¢t done in the woods. [I have noticed on this website that the discussion of bodily functions is much more frank than it is in ordinary polite conversation. I intend to maintain that standard in my journal.]), and spat into that. Seemed to work OK. Also, I used my bottled gas stove for the first time. I was surprised to find out how unstable my setup was. The pot I was trying to boil some water in kept threatening to slide off the stove, even though I had it as level as I could get it. Maybe that was because the stainless steel surface was new and very smooth, and that situation will correct itself with use. I made lasagna in a bag, and was not at all happy with it. It tasted OK, but the bag it came in was quite bulky (threatening to fill up my small bag I will use for packing out trash). And even more unwelcome was that it left my spork covered with a thick layer of cheese that was difficult to remove, even when I washed it in the sink after returning home :-((.