Date: 2003-07-26
From: Hikers Welcome Hostel

To: Moosilauki Mountain
Miles today: 10.0

We had made arrangements with everyone that we would be ready to go at 5 minutes after 7 to get dropped off at King Pins Notch. I would be slack packing the 10 miles back south towards the Welcome Hikers Hostel. The reason it was 5 after 7 was because the post office opened at 7:00 and Mouse Bait had to get her mail drop out of it. She just basically ran over in the morning and got her box and dumped it off. We all got in the car and headed out. My knees were actually feeling pretty good. They were a little sore but compared to how they¢d been the last week or 10 days or so they felt better. I hadn¢t realized how much damage I¢d been doing to the knees mainly because they¢d been so full of fluid and so tight and numb that usually after the first hour or hour and a half of walking I no longer felt them which is actually pretty scary. I mean I was walking like crazy, running down hills and doing a tremendous amount of damage the whole time. They just basically went numb. Anyway, he dropped us off at King Pins Notch. I had taken one of his little day packs and put the basics in it which I would need because I was going through the Whites and there was a lot of exposed area. You had to protect yourself from hypothermia. The weather conditions can change drastically. You can have freezing rain or snow in July. You can have just all kinds of things. Lightening storms. The basic need was at least rain gear which would act as protection from all that stuff. I also took a roast beef hoagie that I had bought the night before specifically for today. I threw in my New Balance sneakers in the pack as well. I had bought a $30.00 pair of boots. They were Hi-Tech boots that Pack Rat had at the hostel. I grease them all up and decided I was going to give them a shot for $30.00. I brought 2 liters of water and a couple other little things. Oh, and my fanny pack. I was weighing out at a total of 12 pounds which is ridiculously light for me. It was like nothing considering my pack runs between 25 and 30 pounds fully loaded down. The advantage of slack packing is that you don¢t carry as much weight. It¢s an easier hike. We started at King Pins Notch and started hiking south. This hike is a 3000 foot ascent on the north side and a 4000 foot descent. The elevation profile looked pretty intimidating. It goes straight up and straight down. In reality it was much easier than that. The north face, which I was climbing first because I was going SOBO, was real steep and was actually real difficult and much more dangerous than going NOBO. But going SOBO you were going uphill. It was actually a very pleasant walk. A lot of steep uphill climbs with rocks and some very long and smooth rock faces that they had actually just bolted 4x4 into the wall and you just walked up the 4x4¢s with such a light pack it was actually a pleasure to walk it. Your body is already used to huffing and puffing uphill and this is just amazing to be going uphill and I thought I was taking it easy but apparently I was taking it pretty fast because by the time I got back to the hostel I had managed to do 10 miles in 4 hours. Considering the steepness of the terrain in both directions it was really good. Anyway, the climb up was really pleasant all the way up while we were walking along the cascades. I started off before B-rocks and Mouse Bait and never saw them again until I got back to the hostel. They came in about 2 12 or 3 hours behind me. Apparently taking more time than I did. Moosilauke was very beautiful. Very scenic.   A lot of fun hiking going uphill then you got to some relatively flat areas across the top and then hiked through scrub brush. Because of the severity of weather conditions up at the top there weren¢t really a lot of tall trees. At one point where you hiked up there weren¢t any trees at all. It was a really exposed ridge walk with a bunch of rocks and then at the very peak there were tons of rocks. People had actually made walls with them that you could sit behind to protect yourself from the wind. I guess it¢s always windy up there. When I got up there the wind was kickin. It was considerably cooler than it was when I started. I had to put my rain garb on and sit down behind the rocks and eat my hoagie along with a couple of other people that were already there including a section hiker that I had passed up on the way up. It was very cool. There were several people that I had passed who were also day hiking going up Moosilauke. I guess this is the difference in the conditioning of a thru hiker and being in good shape and going out hiking because I passed everybody up like they were standing still even though I felt like I was taking my time. Taking it easy. I sat there for about a half hour and ate my hoagie. There was a guide there from the Green Mountain Club, I believe it was. He was there to give information about Moosilauke and the White Mountains. I talked with him for a bit and talked with a couple of people who were hiking NOBO and then I proceeded to go on across the top and back down the south side of Moosilauke. Not a bad walk going down at all. A lot more pleasant and a lot less steep than I expected from the topographical map. Still very wet and damp and a lot of rocks and roots. There were a couple of times when I slipped. One time I slipped and actually twisted my knee a little bit and that hurt but not anything severely damaging like the fall I had taken the day before. I was actually feeling really good about the hike. Got back to the hostel about 12:30 and the legs felt great. Ffeg and Rat Pack were outside doing yard work so I jumped in with a pitchfork and helped them pick up some leaves and various other stuff that was laying around while everyone else was gone and other hikers started piling in. As the day progressed though the knees started feeling tight and hurting once again. I guess maybe because, once again, it¢s just the act of hiking that had numbed them but at the same time hurting them. By about 6:00 at night I could barely walk. Definitely sharp pains. Sharper than I had had in the past. I was starting to think about what I was going to do. I had already sat out 3 days at this place. I had sat out basically 3 days in Hanover. I lost 6 days already and I knew that I was running out of money and I knew that I was running out of time because I had to be home by September 1st and here it was the end of July. It was starting to look like I was going to have to get well really fast and hike the rest and finish my section in Virginia with Eddy in a 30 day span or I just wasn¢t going to be able to do it. Once again I sat up fairly late and watched the boys play cards and went to bed that night. I did not sleep hardly at all. As the night dragged on the knees hurt more and more. It was just unbearable. I kept rolling back and forth trying to get comfortable. I was in a lot of pain. Also, I was thinking a lot about what I was going to do. That morning I had made the decision that if I was going to sit around and get well it was going to take more than a few days. It¢s going to take probably more than a week to get into hiking shape and I could not afford to do that.   I definitely, mentally, could not sit at the hostel for a week and watch everyone that I knew walk by and keep on going. It would just be impossible to finish on time. I just made the logical decision, not an emotional one, that the best thing to do would be to go ahead and stop the Trail and call it quits for this year and go home.