Date: 2005-06-26
From: Mitzpah Spring Hut

To: Lakes of the Clouds Hut
Miles today: 4.8
Weather: haze

Got up early to find that my work-for-stay had already been done! My rescue of the guy from yester evidently counted - and counted a lot. The WFR who treated the guy on the trail yesterday wrote a note, sealed it, and had me deliver it to the hutmaster at Lakes of the Clouds, or destination for the day - a whopping 4.8 miles up the AT. :-)Scrubs and I took a nice leasurly stroll up Mt. Pierce, which looked nothing like it had in February when I was last there, and up Mt. Eisenhower.The thing about the trail in the Presidentials is that it doesn't go over many of the peaks. It missed the top of Eisenhower, Monroe, Clay, Jefferson, and Adams. The logic behind this, I think, is good logic. Because there are all these wackos out there who must go past ever white blaze the trail is routed on the easier, less exposed and older Crawford path. If the weather is nasty they don't want these so-called purists to be dumb and put themselves in greater danger.I like Eisenhower. There's even a nice metal sign up the top of that rounded mountain which has "We Like Ike" scratched into it. Very cool. It was another beautiful day. There were some scattered clouds, and Washington was sort of in-and-out. On the way down Eisenhower Scrubs took a fantastic slow motion head over heals tumble and landed in the krumholtz next to the trail. It was about the funniest thing I've ever seen - he wasn't hurt.Over Franklin and Monroe and to Lakes of the Clouds Hut - the largest of the AMC huts. We had a great lunch of Bree and Pancakes and other assorted goodies and played another round of the Appalachian Trail boardgame. The note which I passed on to the Hutmaster evidently said that I was awesome and that we should be treated well due to my help in the previous days rescue. H-yeah. We got rid of our sleeping bags and other unnecessary things in our packs and headed out for some more awesome adventure.We headed a long way down the Boot Spur, which is this flat table land sticking out to the southeast from Washington, and which forms one side of Tuckerman's Ravine. After skipping down the Boot Spur we headed back towards Washington, around the headwall of Tucks, and along the Alpine Garden Trail. We took a left up the Huntington Ravine trail, up over Ball Craig and up to the bustling summit of Mt. Washington.So, Washington. I'm sure you've heard all about it. It's noisy, it's sinky, and there are fat people eating fast food. Kind of like Gatlinburg. Oh, no, nevermind - nothing's that bad. But yes, there's a road up the mountain with a parking lot, and a coal powered cog railway which blows it's whistle and belches smoke which can be seen from 60 miles away in Maine. And there's a post office and huge TV and radio towers and a gift shop and all those wonderful modern things. By wonderful I mean totally bullshit. But there are also telephones and we made good use of them before heading back down to Lakes.It was a party kind of at Lakes - there were a whole crew of long distance hikers who were there and sleeping in "the Dungeon" - plus a cute dog and some cute kids. And all the hutmasters were there having a 3 day pow-wow, so we got to see Justin and Liza again, and she had brought my Databook from Greenleaf which I had left there. Thanks Liza! We had a great time hanging out with all of them and watching a spectacular sun set.Kat and Ali, two people who work at the Pinkham Notch AMC center and I climbed up Monroe long after the sun had set to watch the stars and see some lightning storms to the south. Absolutely beautiful. A perfect day.