Date: 2008-07-11
From: NH 112, Kinsman Notch

To: Franconia Notch
Miles today: 17.3
Weather: overcast clouds

Holy guacamole! 17.3 miles today.A long, hard, arduous 17.3 miles...We have come to the conclusion that it's not being tired and worn out from the climbs and decents that cause the generally low mileage, it's the terrain. The trails here are not built for going fast (or for humans), so even at a breakneck speed, we go 1.7 miles per hour. Slow walking means low mileage each day. Combined with the goofy campsite/hut spacing... you can't go far each day. Well, unless you are a llama, a monkey or a mountain goat... or champ.Today started with getting out of camp about 6:50. A late start, but it took me longer than normal to get my stuff together, since thud and i had swapped tents for the night. His tent was pretty good, but i need more head room for sitting up. Anyway, the day started with a steep climb up smart mtn. That wasn't too bad because they had lots of stairs built in for us. We navigated that successfully, and went up and over wolf mountain too. Not too bad... just slow going. Saw lots of moose tracks and moose poop, but no moose.We made it to the eliza brook shelter just before noon, so we ate lunch there. thud, trust me and snake eyes caught up to us there. We have a new team member too - mike, who has been hiking with us for the last few days. We met him 2 days ago at the firewardens cabin shelter. Cool guy. We are going to give him the trail name "powdered bleach", due to a washing machine incident here at the hotel... maybe we will shorten it to "bleach". I dunno... let's see how this pans out.Anyway, we left the shelter, and had to climb kinsman mountain... and climb we did. I ended up putting away my poles, because it was easier to go up the hill like spiderman. The poles were getting in my way. We got some good views from up there. I tried to get pics, but i don't think they will do the views justice. Once we got up, a fog rolled in, and it started to mist. Good for cooling us off, but really bad, because it made all the rocks slick. That really slowed us down. knuckles is timid on the way down already, and this made it worse. She doesn't want to fall, which i can't blame her for - it hurts -, so she minces her way down the mountain. So our pace dropped to maybe a mile an hour. We got to the lonesome lake hut about 6. There were only 2 work-for-stay spots left, so we continued on. We got down to the notch about 7 or 7:30, called a hiker shuttle, and got a ride into Lincoln. We called the hostel here, but he was stuffed, and apparently he has hikers camped all over his yard. So we got one of the last few rooms here at the comfort inn. whew! close. We are crashing into all the southbounders, so things are getting crowded out here.So we got showers, and we are doing laundry, and i got my grad school stuff done on the interweb, so i am all good. I also got to eat mcDonalds again - a double quarter pounder mmmmmm, and a salad. good stuff.thud was so happy sleeping in the hammock, that he bought one for himself at the outfitter here in town. He is very excited about it.tomorrow we climb mt. lincoln, mt. lafayette and mt. garfield. Should be fun.time for sleep....