Date: 2011-09-09
From: Joe Dodge Lodge

To: Madison Spring Hut
Miles today: 7.8
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 172 - After dinner last night I went back to my bunk room and got ready for bed. I had already taken a shower and I was still the only one in the room. That all changed at 8:55pm, when a completely worn out man walked through the door. He and his sister and niece had just gotten in from hiking from Mt. Madison and it had taken them eleven hours to go 7 miles. Without changing clothes or showering, he laid down on his bunk to rest for a minute. I apologized for the smell of all my stuff but he really had little to say. I was reading in my bunk and after a few minutes he got up and left. I thought he was going to take a shower but he never returned. At 10:00pm, I was ready to go to sleep but I did not want to turn the light out on him, so I laid there with another pillow over my head for a while. At 10:45pm, I said this was ridiculous and got up and turned the light out so I could go to sleep. Ten minutes later he comes through the door, uses his head lamp and gets into bed. I am pretty sure he did this without taking a shower. I guess he and his family must have gone into Gorham to eat. Of course, 15 minutes later he starts snoring. Oh well, I could not sleep anyway. I had drunk a cup of hot chocolate and eaten a rich, raspberry brownie at dinner and something was keeping me awake. Then at 5:00am his alarm goes off and he gets up and takes a shower. To his credit, he did take everything out into the hallway to pack and he was gone by 5:30am. Unable to go back to sleep, I got up at 6:05am and repacked my pack. Breakfast was served at 6:30am consisting of eggs, potatoes, bacon and cereal. I did confirm again, with the AMC staff, that Vermont is closed with no anticipated date of reopening the trail. I was on the trail at 7:30am on my way up to Mt. Madison. This section of the White Mountains is called The Presidential Range (or Presidentials), there are multiple peaks, many named for our Presidents. Madison (5,366 feet), Mt Adams (5,125 feet), Mt Jefferson (5,400 feet), Mt Washington (6,288 feet), Mt. Monroe (5,075 feet), Mt Franklin (5,003 feet) and Mt. Eisenhower (4,475 feet). The trail does not cross every summit but does go over Mt. Madison and Mt. Washington. There are numerous side trails to take you to the summit if you want to. There are 48 mountains in New Hampshire at an elevation of 4,000 feet or greater. Bruce had told me earlier that the big deal is to summit each of these mountains in one year, both in the summer and in the winter. There are miles and miles of hiking trails throughout the White Mountains and one will see 30-40 hikers a day on these trails. The AT uses many of these same trails, so one has to be careful to know what the local name is because that is the name on the signs, it may or may not reference the AT. I reached Mt. Madison at 3:00pm, after climbing up 7.4 miles. Once you are above tree line, the AT will traverse over 12 miles before dipping back into the boreal forest. There were 10 or so students from Dartmouth at the summit too. I asked them if they wanted to make some money by driving me to North Adams, MA and they replied that they were not allowed to have cars. They also pointed out to me, a moose, down near Madison Spring hut. Finally, after 281.5 miles through Maine I finally get to see a moose in New Hampshire. I got to the hut at 3:45pm, dropped my pack and immediately made my way over the hundred yards to Star Lake to see the female moose. I found out later that the AMC staff in the hut had named her Lola and she had been there for a few weeks. They said it was uncommon for a moose to be that high of elevation, above the tree line. The staff was hoping that a bull moose would find his way up there too. I returned to the hut and found the hut master and asked Phil if I could work for stay. He said yes, which was good since there was zero option for me to camp. This was the second to last night that they were going to be open so they had a "closing list" of things that had to be done. I happened to be the first thru hiker to show up asking for WFS and I got the premier job that no one on the AMC staff wanted to do. They did not tell me what I was going to do; they just took me out back, back behind the water treatment area to the compost area. All decomposable table scraps are placed in compost bins. There were four bins, two of which were in the process of having contents decompose. My instructions were to disperse the contents of these bins into the trees. Every fly in New Hampshire or maybe in the entire New England area was at this site. It was unbelievable. Fortunately and unfortunately, the wind was very brisk so they did not attack me. However, as I took shovel full of compost to distribute it into the woods it would come flying back into me. They said it might take several hours to do this task but I was done in 45 minutes and I did them a fine job. I lifted the bins off the piles so I could get to this stuff without having to reach down into the bin with the shovel. And by the way, a shovel worked much better than a pitch fork, it took me about two throws to figure that out. I finished my job and other hikers were now starting to show up and all they had to do was set the table or wash dishes. By the end of the evening there were 14 thru hikers at the hut and maybe 60-70 guests. They normally only allow 3-4 thru hikers to stay, that was one of the reasons I reported in as early as I did. However, they allowed all the hikers to stay but this resulted in little food being available and very cramp space on the floor. The brisk winds of the day increased over the night. In fact, Mt Washington, which was only seven miles away recorded wind speed of 69.6 mph and a wind chill of 25*F that evening. I hiked 7.8 miles today and dispersed a hundred pounds of compost, quite a combination. My total is now at 1,447.9 miles with 733.1 miles remaining.