Date: 2017-08-08
From: Eliza Brook shelter

To: Inn 32, North Woodstock
Miles today: 8.8

Dawn comes but I don't want to get up. Drops still fall from the trees and I'm not looking forward to stowing away my soaked tent. Finally I face the inevitable and pack up. I breakfast in the shelter. Nose Flute, a sixty-ish lawyer from West Virginia with a bushy mustache who speaks in a high pitched animated voice like he's hosting a children's science show, demonstrates how he got the name by playing Doors and Stones classics on the nose flute. Look it up, it's unique!Off I go to reach Franconia Notch, nine miles away. I need to go to North Woodstock/Lincoln to resupply and I will Nero (near zero) there and stay overnight to rest up for the remainder of the Whites and be in position to get to the shelters I want. But Kinsman Mountain is in the way, both peaks, and it is more challenging than Moosilauke despite being only 2000 foot elevation gain. The trail, if one can call it that, is a rooty, rocky, muddy mess. But the real challenge are the car-sized boulders and slabs that provide near constant scrambling, climbing, and tiptoeing down their wet faces. My trekking poles give way to hand-to-hand climbs and I clutch trees as I try to avoid slipping down the walls of rock. At the top of Kinsman I'm rewarded for my efforts with a uniform gray mist. Greybeard and Maxx, Silver Lining's group, and Oompah, a Dutchman, join me in contemplating the blank nothingness. Maxx comes over to beg as I chomp on my granola bar.There are plenty of other hikers out too. On the way down I meet a young German dayhiker couple who are conflicted about continuing (she hates the rain). Further on there are a dozen hikers of a certain age, part of a hiking group from southern Massachusetts. They love talking to thruhikers, and two ladies pour peanut M&Ms into my hands while another records my trail name for their records. I mention the Silver Striders hiking group from their area, who did trail magic at the foot of Mt Everett. They don't know what trail magic is. So I explain, and they are intrigued. Perhaps future thruhikers will see them again.My psychological halfway point this morning is the Lonesome Lake Hut, run by the AMC trail club along with another half dozen huts in the Whites. Tourists pay 150 bucks to stay in rustic accommodations and get delicious meals. Thru-hikers stop in after the meals to get free leftovers (the staff doesn't want to pack it out). But some other lucky hikers beat me to it today. Oh well, at least they have delicious cake and lemonade at attractive prices. The trail had become easier as it approached the hut. I sped up and became careless and turned my ankle again, more seriously than yesterday. But some Ibuprofen and walking seemed to fix it within the hour. Hopping from rock to rock is an amazing ankle strengthener. Before I took up trail running an ankle turn like that would have left me limping for days or weeks.The last three miles are relatively easy, though the trail tries to shake us off at one point, pretending to zig one way but really zagging the other across a boulder-strewn creek. I chat with Andre, a seventeen-year-old kid from South Carolina. He's hiking Connecticut to Katahdin on his own. Last year at the tender age of 16 he hiked from Georgia to Connecticut on his own, stopping only because he was homesick. He worked 7 days a week to finish the school year before March. He seems to be a candidate for youngest unsupported solo 2000-miler. He shrugs. It should be remarkable, but out here he's just like everybody else, struggling over boulders and mud.Finally we enter the Notch, go under Interstate 93 and walk a mile on a paved bike trail to the Flume Visitors Center where my motel, the Inn 32, will pick me up and take me to North Woodstock. While I wait I chat with Paul, a driver from Mt. Liberty motel there for Andre, who fell behind. He confirms it's the height of the season in Franconia Notch with tons of families and day hikers in the area. There's a group of boys here who just finished their hiking trip over Moosilauke and Kinsman. I tell one of them that I've hiked hundreds of miles and that stretch was the toughest I've seen, and he beams. I still can't find my ride, so Paul takes me to my motel, even though it's two miles further. The office is closed because they're out looking for me. Soon Carol the owner pulls up, and out tumble 5 of the hikers in Silver Lining's group whom I'd walked down with and who had been fruitlessly hitching the tourists for a ride from the visitor center. Most of them are reserved at still another place, the Notch hostel. These motel folk sure are good people.This is the first time on the hike I've had a free afternoon in town. I walk the mile and a half over to Lincoln. It's a twenty minute level pavement stroll without a pack, effortless by this point. I eat my first fast food meal on the trail, and see my first trail movie, "Dunkirk" (worth your time, though it didn't play out the suspense long enough). After resupplying at the Price Chopper it's time for dinner (can't go wrong with "authentic Mexican" in New Hampshire, right?), laundry, and of course a milkshake while waiting for the wool socks to dry. Lincoln and Woodstock are family-friendly and hiker-friendly little mountain towns that don't seem overly crowded even in high season. I wouldn't mind returning with a car someday. There are predictably a number of thruhikers at McDonalds, all northbounders I haven't met yet. A guy named Adele is there with his dog Ike. Outside Price Chopper I run into Malibu again, the girl who moved her tent out of the shelter for me four days ago, holding Taquito the chihuahua. She is a couple days behind but came into town from Kinsman Notch. We talk about how you know when you've hiked enough of the trail. Everybody I talk to is chastened by the Whites, but also brimming with excitement. It's everything we've been told and more. The southbounders seem sad to be leaving. But the best is yet to come for me. Tomorrow I hit Franconia ridge and Mt Lafayette.