Date: 2011-08-05
From: Zealand Fall Hut

To: Stealth spot off of the Eisenhower Trail
Miles today: 16.9

(In which I stealth in the Whites again)I wake up when the cook comes down at 5:45, and quietly and drowsily pack up. Since the work-for-stay breakfast is not more than two hours, I am tempted to get a head start on hiking instead of sticking around. But having not eaten any of the hut dinner I am loath to leave before the one meal I might actually eat. Click! and Longtime do decide to leave early since Click! rolled her ankle yesterday and they want plenty of time to get to the next road crossing where they can hitch to town and get a sturdier brace. Breakfast turns out to be cold pancakes, which I would normally pass on, but decide to use as a base for some of my 16 oz of remaining syrup. We finish the work part of our work-for-stay by sweeping the floors of the bunk rooms and dining area and manage to leave the hut just before 9am.When I get to the first road crossing, an incongruously easy 8 miles compared to the rest of the Whites, Doc Boom, Trashcan and Marathon are already there taking a break. A car pulls up and the driver gets out and asks us if we know the girl who hurt her ankle and if she needs a ride. We reply that she was ahead of us and so must already have hitched into town. No sooner has the driver returned to his car then out from the woods walk none other than Click! and Longtime. We wave frantically at the driver, who luckily has not yet started pulling out. Click! and Longtime took a break at a campsite off trail where we unknowingly passed them and we are glad that we didn't quite manage to accidentally spoil their ride. Along with Click!, Buckeye Flash, who had been several days ahead of me, also hurt his ankle in the Whites, a sad confirmation that the treacherousness of the trails in the Whites is not merely theoretical.When I reach the Mizpah Hut, Doc Boom and crew are already there, along with Balance and Y-Knot, whom I have not seen since my wrong turn. Since the weather looks good, at least insofar as one can ever tell in the Whites, I don't even bother asking for work-for-stay, instead asking the hut crew member I see about stealth spots. Whereas the crew members at the last hut seemed to be college students whose attitudes were shaped by several summers worth of dealing with entitled tourists and weren't particularly interested in or sympathetic to thru-hikers, the crew member I talk to this time seems to be a hiker himself, if not a thru-hiker. He tells me about a stealth spot off of a side trail where he once saw a hiker emerge.I ask him about the distance from the trail, which he estimates to be about 30 feet. "So the 200 foot rule isn't really that strict?" I ask, to which he laughs. "Oh no, the Forest Service will have a tizzy if they catch you. They're not very friendly to thru-hikers around here. There's a section coming up where you won't see a blaze for over a mile because they paint over them. Preserving the wilderness area they say."The three miles to the side trail are through alpine areas, and while I see several nice potential camp spots with great views, I would feel bad about camping on the delicate flora, a restriction that seems more reasonable than the arbitrary trail distance. The trail north of the side trail is supposed to be rocky and exposed, and I hope that the crew member's information is accurate, not wanting to be stuck in an exposed alpine area when it gets dark.A couple tenths of a mile down the Eisenhower Trail I see a clear side trail leading to a small clearing in the woods, and I mentally thank the crew member for having such an accurate memory. The area is barely big enough for my tent and is slanting downwards, but it's better than anything else I've seen and I am glad to have found it. I pace off the distance to the trail out of idle curiosity, already knowing it's too close to be legal, and get a total of 45 shoe-lengths, equating to less than 45 feet.One advantage of this spot, I soon discover, is that it's the first area in more than 48 hours where I've been able to eek out a bar of cellular service on my Kindle, marking the longest gap in my journal posting to date. I haven't missed writing an entry yet, always finishing each day's before going to sleep, if often not before midnight, but when I don't have service they sit on my Kindle until I get service again and can post the backlog.Tomorrow, if the weather looks good I plan to go up and over Mt. Washington, the tallest mountain remaining on the trail and the home of some of the world's most extreme and dangerous weather.