Date: 2011-08-03
From: Ponytail Dave's House, Day 2

To: Stealth spot off of the Garfield Trail
Miles today: 10.1

(In which I get lost)I wake up with my alarm clock, fifteen minutes before Ponytail Dave is scheduled to drive me back to the trail. I had meant to give myself plenty of extra time to eat breakfast and get ready, but in my sleep deprived state at 12:30 the night before, apparently calculated from the time I would arrive at the trail, not when we would leave. I hop out of bed and throw my things together, and am ready to go with time to spare. Ponytail Dave drives me back to the trail head and I wave a fond goodbye and head back toward the Whites.The trail for the day starts out with a grueling climb, and after three exhausting hours with no views I begin to have my doubts about how this could possibly be anybody's favorite section of trail, as I've heard twice now. But then, finally, the trail climbs above tree line. I reach the tree line just in time to see a giant wall of mist roll in, and the sky that had been blue all morning becomes a blank white. I groan inwardly, recalling stories of hikers who never once got a view through the Whites. But by the time I reach the first summit there are clear patches through the fog, and as I sit eating and resting, the sky mostly clears.From there the trail becomes a spectacular ridgewalk across the open and gently graded ridgeline, allowing traversal from summit to summit without the usual thousand foot drop and climb. It's enough to make the earlier trudge feel like a worthwhile investment, and it makes me wish that all of the tough climbs paid such dividends.The trail eventually descends back into the trees, and takes quite a while to reemerge on Garfield, where only the very summit offers a view. While I'm resting there Amanda and Jessie catch up and stop for a break as well. I haven't seen them all day, and we're all trying to reach the same hut, hoping for work-for-stay. One of the negative consequences of the limited number of work-for-stay slots is that it pits thru-hikers against each other, bringing a returned sense of urgency for arriving first.Though we don't talk about it, Jessie and Amanda let me leave first, and I keep a quick initial pace to try not to put them in the awkward position of having to decide whether to pass or not. I pass a turn-off for a trail to a pay campsite and am pleasantly surprised to discover that the trail down Garfield is vastly gentler and easier than the trail up it was. I make fantastic time, moving fast by normal standards and three or four times faster than I had been for the rest of the day. At this rate I figure I'll make the three miles to the hut in no time, but when an hour has passed and there is no sign of it, something begins to feel wrong. This trail grade is too good to be true, I worry, and then a more horrifying thought occurs: When did I last see a white blaze? Was it before the turnoff to the campsite? The Whites are notoriously bad about blazing, but I should have seen one in the last hour.I check the guidebook and with a sinking feeling discover that I was indeed supposed to take the trail past the campsite. An hour going the wrong way, fast, downhill. All of the energy drains out of me at this realization, and the accumulated sleep deficits of the last two nights catch up to me. Demoralized, I trudge slowly back up the hill.All I really want to do is lay down and sleep, so I begin to look for spots to put up my tent, figuring I can get back to the AT tomorrow and that the odds of getting hassled about an illegal stealth spot are smaller here on a side trail. I see one nice clearing a hundred or so feet off the trail and walk down to it. On the ground is a bright orange VIOLATION band, having apparently been attached to somebody's tent. I check in the book and find out that the minimum distance to camp from the trail is a full 200 feet, and figure that the VIOLATION band is a sign and keep looking.Nothing looks promising further down the hill from the spot, so I head back to the trail. I hike back up the mountain a little more, then head off the trail again to investigate another possible spot. I bushwhack a ways downhill, wanting to be well over 200 feet away, but no spot looks remotely plausible, so I climb back up to the trail.And don't find it.The forest went downhill on one side of the trail and uphill on the other, so it seems impossible that I could head back uphill and not cross it. But not cross it I do, even after climbing up far higher than it seemed I descended. So I'm lost in the woods, no longer just on the wrong trail, but lost from any trail, in the middle of the White Mountains.I take stock of the situation. The good things are that I have plenty of food and water, a tent and sleeping bag and a couple hours of daylight. The bad things are that I don't have a compass or useful map (my scanned map on my Kindle is not detailed enough to be helpful), and do not know whether I need to head up or down the mountain to find the trail.I pick down, having already climbed so high, and ten minutes later find myself back on a -- the? -- trail. But in which direction? I am disoriented, and though I had though that the trail went up on my left, now it is less obvious which side is up.I pick the direction I think is correct, wishing that my Kindle map showed the destination of the other end of the trail instead of cropping it off. The trail starts heading down, which doesn't seem right, and I stop, trying to decide whether or not to turn around. And suddenly I see a day hiker walking toward me, the first other person on the trail I've seen since I got on it. I've never been so glad to see a day hiker before, and I inform him that I am lost and ask if he might know where I am. He laughs. "I'm probably not the best person to ask. I've been trying to use this GPS but all it says is 'poor statelite reception'. But I think that we're on the Garfield Trail headed toward the parking lot three or four miles down." I thank him heartily for the help and turn back around up the trail in the other direction.I am even more tired than before, but extremely wary of leaving the trail to look for a stealth spot. Twice when I pass potential spots I pick landmarks near the trail and carefully keep these within view as I investigate. But nothing seems even close to workable, so I head back slowly up the trail. After a while I see a large pile of brush clearly heaped to block something. I climb over the brush and then over a section of old trail with blowdowns dragged on top of it, until finally it becomes a walkable trail, no doubt an old disused one. It passes through a section of overgrown pine trees, but when I squeeze my way through these I see a small little clearing off to the side. The old trail itself travels a bit further and then peters out, so I investigate the clearing.It has clearly not been used for tenting any time recently, if ever, and it takes me fifteen minutes of moving old moss covered logs and branches to clear the ground and assess its suitability. It is mostly free of rocks, but is not very level. Still it is the best option I've seen, and the spot itself is not only legal -- far more than 200 feet from any current trail -- but is also highly unlikely to be discovered by anybody, which means that I can sleep in as late as I like. The thought of sleeping in seals the deal, and I set up camp.Another potential advantage of sleeping here is that I might be able to watch the sunset from the top of Mt. Garfield, not far from where the trail diverged. I grab my camera and head back to the trail, but when I don't reach the summit in fifteen minutes of walking -- how far down the trail am I, I wonder -- I turn around rather than have to worry about finding my stealth spot again in the dark.Back in my tent I notice how eerily quiet it is, and realize that this is farther from a trail than I've ever camped. It feels good to have my own private spot in the Whites, and to not be beholden to the strict rules and schedules of a work-for-stay hut or caretaker-patrolled pay site. I even consider zeroing here, attracted to the implausibility of attempting a 30-hour challenge at a stealth spot in the Whites, but worry that someone might start searching for me if I vanished from the trail for a whole day after telling Amanda and Jessie that I planned to go to the hut.And now I can rest, and sleep in for as long as I want. It is a wonderful thought.