Date: 2013-08-22
From: 3 miles Off Trail & Summit of Mt Washington

To: Gorham, NH/ Pinkham Notch
Miles today: 13.8
Weather: light rain

We anticipated our difficult climb back to the trail most of the evening. Sad to add mileage that doesn't count. It was a bear of a climb too. When we got to the trail all the hikers kept telling us about the BIG storms headed our way. Everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere. We passed Cosy, a Floridian that also flip flopped. She is about my age and hiking alone. She told us her barometer was going crazy. We pressed on quickly to Madison Hut. We were hoping to get some soup and talked about it the whole way there. Guess what the soup flavor was...hint the girls weren't tempted and were quite long faced...Pork and Rice served with challah! No lie! We did get the leftover breakfast of cold quiche and corn bread. I was an incredibly picky kid so I know my patient and often exasperated parents love hearing about me shoving down all this food I would have cried over as a kid. And I eat it with relish! One of the crew was at the Zealand hut. He recognizes us and brought us a stack of slightly burned chocolate chip cookies. We loved pounding those yummy cookies down our gullets. Also every stop the girls big brown eyes and hungry looks have helped them Yogi more food. One hiker gave them his gorp and dried pears. By the time that was gone another man at a hut gave them a Hershey's chocolate bar and then at Madison hut a mom was hiking with 2 kids and when she heard our story she gave us all their extra snacks. I had them watch a Yogi Bear cartoon so they'd really get the joke. They laughed and loved it. The crew at the hut told us to hurry to beat the rain. We set out and proceeded to climb yet another hard and arduous path. Sort of a path as it was mostly big rocks and boulders. Since we were above the treeline the wind nearly blew us off the rocks. The packs act like sails and blow us off path. There is no shade so we got a bit burned, embarrassing since we are Floridians and we should know better! We worked very hard to get to a campground about 3 miles from the hut. We were beat bit decided we had a package from my bookclub in Pinkham notch and with the storm coming it was worth the additional 4.7 miles. By the end the girls and I were almost weepy with exhaustion. We got to Pinkham and happily the pkg was there. We immediately ate the large portion of brownies from the box. Yum! We were overjoyed. All the other hikers got a kick out of the girls excitement. Scarily we found ourselves without a place to go. As we were panicking a man approached us and offered us a ride to Gorham. He had his two little girls with him and I think he felt sorry for us. Another wonderful trail angels! We had no phone service so I couldn't get through to Toby or to a hotel. From my brief second in which I said,"Help!" Toby went into action. Because he was teaching he called his brother who immediately found us the perfect place in Gorham (cheap and big and on Main St). We were so relieved and happy to have showers. It's been over a week since we've seen a shower. Our heads get so itchy! We smells very natural. We ordered pizza, salad and mozzarella sticks ten went to bed, happy to be dry.