Date: 2017-07-03
From: Gorham

To: Carter Notch Hut
Miles today: 5.8
Weather: clear sky

After more than a month of encountering a procession of mostly dead-eyed and burnt-out nobos, I figured I should walk a mile in their shoes. Or even 21.1 of them.This doesn't mean I've gained a hankering to re-traverse Maine -- for all the fun of the Mahoosuc Notch, most of this trip is not an experience I have any particular desire to revisit -- but when it came to slackpacking this section of the White Mountains, it made sense to do it from south to north rather than to do it sobo.Part of the reason was I wasn't just slackpacking. I was luxury slackpacking by paying for a night at the AMC's Carter Notch hut and doing this section over two days. Instead of having to do 21.1 tough miles in one day, I did it in two.The presence of the hut much closer to the southern end than the middle meant that it made more sense to do an easy (or at least easier) 5.8 mile day into the hut and spend an afternoon enjoying its facilities and then make an early start the next day for the 15-mile trek back to Highway 2, where I'd emerged from the Mahoosucs a few days before.That and the ascent into the Wildcats from Pinkham Notch was reputed to be among the steepest on the entire trail. It made a lot more sense to do that first thing and going up than at the end of the day and in descent.This was, I'd explained to some of the others, the "be kind to my knees by being cruel to my budget" part of the hike. Paying for the hut meant I only had to carry a few snacks and the usual wet- and cold-weather gear rather than my tent, stove, food etc.After being dropped off at Crawford Notch, there was an initial confusion about exactly where the trail northbound went. Once I worked out that, the first mile was definitely not the steepest on the AT, instead taking an easy and flat path near Lost Pond, until the second mile took an uncompromising route directly up the side of a classically glaciated valley.But unlike the Mahoosucs, the terrain wasn't sketchy. Anywhere the granite veered towards dangerous steepness, there'd be wooden boards bolted into the rock to provide purchase or footholds would be drilled into the rock face. This was a level of civility I hadn't expected to find, given that the AMC was also responsible for the Mahoosucs section of the AT.There were a few others also heading up the slope, who were gracious enough to allow me to head through, and after an hour of remarkably pain-free ascent, I topped out on the fifth of the Wildcat peaks, the imaginatively-named Wildcat E.The approach to Wildcats D stood out for the presence of dozens of raucous children and a throng of people who were barely adequately dressed to go to the mall, rather than a mountaintop in the Whites. Emerging from the trees to find that the chairlift from Wildcats Ski Resort, just to the north of the ridgeline, ran through the summer as well as the winter explained that particular mysteryWildcats C, B and A quickly followed, mostly with modest ascents and descents between them until the end of the range neared, where the ridge was replaced by a dramatic notch between the Wildcats and the Carters. At the bottom of this was the AMC's Carter Notch hut, nestled amid a couple of small lakes.As with the ascent from Pinkham Notch, the quality of the trail was of a kind we could only dream of in the previous section of trail. Soon I was traversing beside the small lakes I'd seen from above and then walked up to the steps of the hut. Carter Notch was run entirely by omen, although a supervisor called Eric was visiting as part of his role in checking in on all the different AMC huts in the region. I soon had a rundown on how the hut worked, the timing of dinner and breakfast and the privileges of staying as opposed to visiting, which amounted to free lemonade rather than paying $1 a glass as the great unwashed had to do.The hut had a capacity of 40 but there were only 15 other paying guests, so we managed to fit around two tables for dinner. In keeping with what a nobo hiker had explained to me earlier, the patrons were all "rich white people" -- a couple bagging New Hampshire's 48 mountains higher than 4000ft, a mother with her archetypally disengaged teenaged daughter, a couple of families with young kids and a slightly odd solo guy from New Jersey. All were from nearby states and they were convivial company.I was already aware of the slightly strained relations between the AMC and the thru-hiking community. They were, after all, entirely different constituencies: one serving people happy to pay nearly $100/night and the others mostly living as cheaply as possible. One area in which the AMC sought to accommodate hikers was through a scheme known as "work for stay", where a few hikers had the chance to help out around the hut in return for being allowed to sleep on the floor and eating the leftover food at dinner and breakfast.A couple of nobos rocked in and asked for work for stay. With less than 50 per cent capacity, there were a couple of empty tables in the small dining room but during dinner the hut staff -- college-aged kids known as the "croo" -- made the hikers sit outside in the small and chilly vestibule instead. Unsurprisingly, this struck a discordant note with my egalitarian sensibilities and exacerbated the discomfort I usually feel when I find myself on the rich-and-privileged side of the spectrum.As dinner ended and the hikers returned from their isolation, I took the chance to go to bed. My morals might feel a little compromised by this stay in an AMC hut, but my knees are certainly enjoying it.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Given that I'm about to enter the Presidential range, the highest and most deadly part of the White Mountains, I'm not sure my choice of reading material -- Not Without Peril, a compendium of the nearly 200 deaths in the range -- was the smartest choice. But it reminds me of my vow to wait for good weather for this part of the trip.