Date: 2011-08-02
From: Ponytail Dave's House

To: Ponytail Dave's House, Day 2
Miles today: 16.4

(In which I enter the Whites and am not stung by bees or struck dead by lightning)And then I entered the Whites.The White Mountain National Forest has been my most anxiously feared section of the entire trail, not so much for its extreme terrain as its reputation for being a difficult place for thru-hikers to stay. Unlike nearly every other stretch of the AT, the Whites are maintained by an organization (the AMC) that by all accounts is not thru-hiker focused or friendly. Everywhere else has shelters and campsites where thru-hikers can stay for free; the Whites have a "hut" system where bunks run $150 (yes, that price has three digits in it) a night and need to be reserved weeks or months in advance.Campsites and shelters cost $8 a night, and camping off the trail is restricted to the point of effective impossibility (at least for those sticking to the rules; most former thru-hikers I've talked to have by necessity stealth camped in the Whites). Thru-hikers are then at the mercy of the hut crews who on their discretion can allow a select number of thru-hikers to "work-for-stay", letting them sleep on the floor in exchange for helping with dinner and cleaning up. Thru-hikers are often known to be turned away though, and I hear stories of a thru-hiker turned away from Madison Hut at dusk last year who, forced to hike at night, fell and broke his ankle. Even Bob Peoples, whom I never heard speak negatively about anything else, got visibly upset when he spoke of the greed, arrogance and anti-hiker practices of the AMC.All of which has overshadowed the anticipation of the mountains themselves, which are by most accounts the toughest, and by many of these same accounts the most beautiful mountains on the whole trail.* * *I get an early 6:30am start to give me some chance of finishing the 16 miles early enough not to make Ponytail Dave wait after he shows up after work at 5pm. The terrain starts out steep but manageable, and after the first few miles I begin to think that I might even arrive early. Stopping for a break at the first shelter I see Jessie and Amanda, a brother and sister hiking pair who were a day ahead before taking a 2 mile nero yesterday. They are the first nobos I've seen in days, other than a few slacking southbound, and it's good to finally be out of my nobo vacuum. We hear distant rumbles and Jessie wonders if it's thunder. Since the sky is clear and blue and the forecast doesn't call for rain this hardly seems likely, and Amanda wonders if we can hear the distant steam locomotive that runs up Mt. Washington.Jessie and Amanda are traveling faster than me, slacking the same stretch I'm hiking for the day, and so I let them leave the shelter before me and pause a minute to put on my headphones and give them a head start. No sooner are my headphones on than it begins to rain and I have to take them off again before I even leave the shelter overhang. It occurs to me that I could stay in the shelter and wait out he rain, but since I'm trying not to be late and don't know how long the rain will last, I decide to brave it.The rain quickly turns from light to torrential, and is then accompanied by thunder and lightning. I consider stopping, but the spot I'm on seems no safer than the trail ahead, so I continue on, already drenched. I hear noises over the din of the weather, and come to a dozen or so preteen girls with two female counselors in their twenties. The girls are hysterical, their sobs audible even over the pounding rain, and the counselors have a look of detached resignation. I ask the counselor nearest me how it's going ("not well" would be the safe bet), and she smiles and sighs. "First we were attacked and stung by bees. Then, when we were about to attempt their first traverse, this."Synchronized thunder and lightning explode nearby, first from one direction and then another, and several of the girls who had held it together until now begin wailing with the rest. I let the counselor herd her charges toward the general idea of safety, and as they pass I notice that the two young girls at the back of the group seem completely immune to the chaos surrounding them. One of them smiles cheerfully at me and asks me how long I've been hiking. When I say four months she replies, "Wow, that's crazy!" but there is a note of admiration in her voice. As she walks past I hear her say excitedly to her friend, "Ooh look, hail!" and pellets of ice bounce off of her rain jacket and the rest of the girls continue their bawling down the trail.And then suddenly the rain stops, and a minute later the sun is shining again. The steep rocky trail is now slick with the rain however, and trying to walk up wet, near vertical rocks with wet, muddy sneakers is slow going at best. The difficulty of the Whites seems to stem not so much from the elevation gains of the mountains (which are, in fact, quite tall), but of the steepness and rockiness of the trail that makes every foot and hand placement a delicate, risky proposition. This is another stretch of trail where the local trail slope, rather than the global trail profile, would be more revealing of the actual difficulty.As I approach the south peak of Kinsman, the summit of the big climb, it begins to rain again, and I begin to move as fast as I can across the near treeless summit before the lightning returns. A side trail of only a few feet leads to a view, but I'm not even tempted for a moment, wanting only to get off of the exposed ridge as fast as I possibly can. Only once I have retreated beneath the trees again do I begin to breath a sign of relief. Though the rain stops and the sun comes out again, I remain constantly wary of the weather, not trusting it for a minute no matter what the sky looks like.It rains off and on several more times, and I arrive at the parking lot wet but just on time, mere minutes before Ponytail Dave drives up. We swing by the grocery store so that I can resupply, and then head back home for dinner. After dinner I take advantage of a rare chance to use a fast computer and upload a few more photos to jsstylos.com. The process takes a couple hours longer than expected, but is eventually successful when I figure out that the micro USB cable I've been trying to use since Tennessee is broken, providing power but no data connection.By the time I finish the upload and my journal entry I am thoroughly exhausted, but glad to be off of the mountains and safe indoors for the night.