Date: 2008-07-21
From: Galehead Hut NH

To: Crawford Notch NH
Miles today: 14.7
Weather: fog

Day 155 Monday July 21 ¢ Crawford Notch NH - Miles Today: 14.7 Total Miles: 1831.2Although we thought we were going to have a very rainy day today, we woke up on our dining room table benches at 5:00 a.m., peeked out the windows right above us and saw no rain! Instantaneously our brains told us to hightail it out of there before the rain started. We packed up as quietly as possible in the back of the hut by the rest rooms so as not to disturb the other hikers sleeping in the dining room. We were on the trail around 5:30. We did get to bed last night about 9:30, much, much later than our normal hiker routine - but at least not terribly late. The dining room benches were actually quite comfortable to sleep on. So although the huts are not our favorite routine, I think we survived. We're hoping to only do one more hut - Lakes of the Clouds. Our plan is to avoid the Carter Notch Hut by stealth camping just shy of it.   We had breakfast at 6:30 on top of Mt. Guyot and saw the coolest thing that we have ever seen and will probably never see again - a double white rainbow over the moon. It was so cool. We tried to take a picture of it. I'm not so sure how well we captured it and the bummer news is that we didn't think of taking a movie picture of it.   We'll definitely have to ask around as to what a white rainbow over the moon is all about and what causes it. So very cool!!On the way down the mountain we stopped in at the Zealand Falls Hut for our $1 all you can eat leftovers. Dang, did we ever luck out! We scored tollhouse cookie cake. They had made an extra batch of it for last night¢s dinner and didn't need it. I do believe we ate the entire batch! Sorry, hiking guys behind us ¢¦ we just love tollhouse cookie cake and could not contain ourselves! We also had some bread. In between bites, we had a nice chat with one of the croo. She's 21 and will be a senior in college. All of the croo members across the Whites were excited today because they were all gathering for a meeting/party to celebrate being back in the hut system for the year. Forty substitute croo members are being brought in for one day to run the huts while they celebrate. Pretty crazy. Pretty expensive ¢ now I know one reason why the fees to share a hut bunkroom are so exorbitant. Not to mention the granite counter we saw on one kitchen island ¢ the stone had to be flown in via a helicopter!But anyway, she continued to explain to us how the huts operate. They helicopter in all of the dry goods at the beginning of the season. Then 2 times a week the croo takes turns hiking off the mountain and carrying back fresh produce and meat that is needed for the next few days. Some of the loads weigh over 130 pounds. She said she has carried as much as 60 pounds herself and she was no more than 5'3" and about 125-130 pounds herself. Quite a remarkable feat. These young kids do a tremendous job running their hut and feeding the guests. All at minimum wage, we do believe. Today is a day that should go down in the record books. ZERO north-bounders passed us today! We must be truly awesome hikers, despite our advancing age. Oh, you want the real story? Well, we left the hut probably about l.5 hours before Shiloh because he was a paying guest and had to wait for breakfast to be served and we probably left about 3 hours before Cricket, High Life and Bad Idea because they had to do their work for stay chores. So with our l.5 hour head start on Shiloh and our 3 hour head start on the younger guys, we beat them down the mountain, even though we spent 45 minutes at the Zealand Hut eating our $2 fare of foods. We are just truly amazing hikers. Yeah, right.The trail from Zealand Falls Hut down to Crawford Notch was an unbelievably nice graded trail. For several miles, it was an old railroad bed. We made great time. We haven't walked that fast in quite a while. After the nice railroad bed, we had 2-3 miles of bogs. There were quite a few boardwalks in place but not enough. In places the boards were floating in the water because of the amount of rain we have had lately. Sometimes when we stepped on them, they would sink and we had to be careful not to be thrown off. So we had a few challenges, but no mishaps. According to Upload & Stitches¢ 2006 AT journal, during this section of the Whites, we only hiked a total elevation gain of 2050¢. The Whites were easy on us today.The best news today is that it did not rain on us while we hiked. There were lots of stormy gray clouds hanging over the mountain ridges as we walked through Crawford Notch but we arrived at the Crawford Notch Campground dry at 3:00 after securing a hitch within 10 minutes. Our Trail Angel was a German lady who has a daughter attending college in the states. She¢d come across the pond to visit her as well as tour the country a bit. She asked that we take her picture and send it to her.   UPDATE: We emailed her the pic!!As we pulled into the parking lot for Crawford Notch General Store & Campground, we saw Rethinker sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch. We did not expect to see him again. It turns out that Rethinker and Hometown zeroed here as they wanted to wait out nicer weather to get up and over Washington. He told us that Apostle and Sightsee left this morning. We didn¢t really think that Crawford Notch Campground was a popular stopping over point, but apparently it is, at least during this week. Also here is a new hiker - Floyd. He did part of the trail last year and is finishing some more of it this year. What is really odd though, is that Floyd says he met the Unknown Hiker at the Graymoor Spiritual Center, which is where we met the Unknown Hiker, however, Floyd was not there with us that night. Perhaps the Unknown Hiker ended up staying another day at Graymoor? Floyd recalled the date being May 30th. We¢ll have to look up when we were at Graymoor. UPDATE: We were there May 29th, so the Unknown Hiker did take a zero day there. Mystery solved.We checked into our campsite, got our tent set up and headed off to shower. Since our shoes, insoles and socks were already totally soaked, we decided to take our insoles and socks into the shower with us and at least try to get them clean. Of course, we know that for the next few days, it's going to be pointless. As a matter of fact, it might be pointless for the remainder of the trip, as Maine is supposed to be pretty boggy as well. Oh well, at least it¢s fun to start out our first day of hiking with clean socks, even if they are wet.Brakeman has decided to retire his lightweight Smart Wool socks that I think he started wearing in Virginia! They've had holes in the heels for quite some time, but now with wet socks and soggy soft skin, they have created open skin wounds on his heels. He's going to switch tomorrow into the socks that Grasshopper yogied from the Ashville couple while at a Pennsylvania road crossing, over 600 miles ago.   She has been wearing lighter weight ones recently.After our showers, we headed back to the camp store to look at their inventory of food and while we were there the skies just completely opened up. So we sat on the porch in the comfy rocking chairs and talked with Rethinker for about an hour while it rained cats and dogs. We learned from Rethinker that Sightsee is a retired pharmacist and Hometown is a nurse. He mentioned how thankful he is to have a partner for these challenging Whites and that he would not want to be doing any of this solo. On top of that, he said, what better partner could one ask for, but a partner who is a nurse? It's really neat to see people buddy up and partner for these difficult terrains and get through them together. Sitting there on the porch this evening talking to Rethinker, we had to do a double take a few times as his profile looked just like Eddie, Grasshoppers brother. It felt like we were sitting on the porch at the lake talking to the bro. Occasionally during the lulls in conversation with Rethinker, Grasshopper would lean over to Brakeman and say that she hoped the tent wasn't getting flooded. Well, eventually the rain stopped and we headed back to our lovely campsite #24, and not only was our tent somewhat flooded, but about 65-75% of the entire site was under water. The puddle was probably 3" deep in places. Mud was splashed up the walls of our tent. We were not happy campers at all. We dragged our tent which was loaded with our unpacked backpacks out of the puddle and to higher ground and then walked back to the camp store and did the best we could to remedy the situation. As we walked back to the store, we looked at the other sites and determined that our site was the worst graded one of them all. Bummer luck. Grasshopper gave them quite an earful as there was no way that site could ever withstand a rain shower. We requested an upgrade to the yurt right beside our site, for no additional charge. Would you believe they would not do so!   We were upgraded to the yurt for an additional $15. They are new owners and have quite a bit to learn still about customer satisfaction. Back to the yurt we went to begin the cleanup process. They at least gave us some bath towels to help clean up the mess. The yurt is quite neat. It¢s about 16' diameter with a 15-20¢ high ceiling with a round skylight at the peak. The canvas windows can open, though they are closed right now. We have a double bed and a set of bunk beds. The sandy grit and gravel on the tent has been wiped down and the tent is draped over the bunk bed drying. The raingear is hanging in the lattice of the inside framework. Our food bag is hung from the support beam going up to the skylight and we are finally relaxing on the double bed mattress. So very comfy. So very cool. So very unfortunate that we had to go through this much hassle to begin our relaxation time! Not exactly a relaxing evening but since it's rained a few more times, we¢re enjoying being inside a covered yurt. Right now we can see a blue sky with just a few wisps of white clouds through our skylight. What we're really hoping for is good dry weather for hiking. The forecast for the next few days is chances of rain each day. There are no dry days in the forecast.   Hopefully it will be more like today with the afternoon and evening variety and we can get up and over these mountains and to our shelter location before they hit. Due to the forecast, we are pushing on.   There is no dry weather in sight to wait for. It's 8:15 and we are dead tired from all the flood commotion this evening and the fact that we've been up past hiker's midnight lately. As we lie here in bed, we can hear the creek gurgling right outside our yurt. The run off drainage underneath the bridged doorway to our yurt is now dry once again. Tomorrow it sounds like all of us are headed to Lakes of the Clouds Hut, which means another exhausting day. I imagine by the time we roll into Gorham, hopefully in 4.5 days, we're going to be totally exhausted and ready for our zero day. Goodnight from our luxurious yurt in Crawford Notch. I¢d highly recommend the yurt to everyone, but be sure to skip tenting on a flooded site first!