Date: 2004-09-14
From: Beaver Brook Shelter

To: Eliza Brook Shelter
Miles today: 9.1
Weather: clear sky

Our first full day in the real Whites. And everyone was right. My winter sleeping bag is waiting for me in North Woodstock, another nine miles away, and we thought we could do seventeen today. It didn't look too bad on the map. But nine miles took us, or me, I should say, nine hours. These rocks are brutal, and it's pretty humbling to have my pace cut in half. I can't say I wasn't warned. We woke up earlier this morning than we have in ages--section hikers woke up at the crack of dawn. We even saw the sunrise over the mountains from our sleeping bags. So we thought seventeen doable, or, at the very least, fifteen to the first hut. But as we were leaving, before eight, an Israeli section hiker, southbound, who had hiked the Whites in ten days, warned us that we were already late for a fifteen mile day in the Whites. He said he had spent all week listening to thru-hikers dismayed by their pace in the Whites. Maybe I took his warnings too much to heart. County pooh-poohed them, but I know that rock climbing is the hardest thing for me to do out here. I can't tell if it's just that I don't believe that I'm good enough at it, or can do it, or if I'm legitimately bad at it and just need to accept my weakness. How much is this a mental game?The worst part is how much I'm slowing County down. This terrain is where he thrives. He could go three times as fast as I can. My knee that I injured the other night is also bothering me for the first time on the trail. Very frustrating. Of all places, the one place where half our time is spent jumping down rocks. Downhill is brutal. The trails are well-built, with rock and wood steps, but I can still barely go a mile an hour, proving that Israeli guy right. I expected coming down Moosilauke to be tough, and it was, but not nearly as tough as I thought, and not as tough as some other sections of trail, at least in my opinion. It took me an hour and a half to do a mile and a half, which I expected. What I didn't expect is where we came through Kinsman Notch, and started climbing again, to keep going a mile an hour. I feel like I go much faster climbing than descending, especially over rocks, so when we got to two miles, and discovered it had taken two hours, I was very discouraged.To make matters worse, I fell yet again, in not a particularly difficult section, and bloodied my good knee, falling off the trail and having to claw my way up through the dirt back on the trail. That made me go even slower, even though we were coming into a ridge-walk. But even the ridge-walks in the Whites are brutal--you're still clawing your way up and down rocks, my least favorite thing. So we decided, about halfway through our day, that we were only going to make it to the next shelter, a free one. I refuse to pay sixteen dollars for the privilege of pitching a tent, so we're going to try to avoid the pay shelters at all costs. They stretch all the way to Gorham, so it's going to be awhile. Even though the nine miles took us eight and a half hours, we got to the shelter early because we had started so early. We cooked and went to sleep before it was even dark, an unusual event for us, and a rather depressing end to the day.