The Painfully Beautiful White Mountains

Everyone can stop freaking out now, I’m still alive. I know it has been a while since I’ve updated, but I’ve been busy with this whole hiking thing and haven’t had the ability/motivation to write anything lately. It’s tough to do anything other than eat and sleep when we get to camp in the evening.

We are currently sitting in a lodge at Crawford Notch, which is just south The Presidentials. At this point we’ve already hiked half of the White Mountains. This is where I’m supposed to say “I can’t believe we’ve already hiked half of the Whites”, but I can believe it. The last 55 miles have put my body to the test, and I’m feeling it. I have pains in body parts that I didn’t even know existed.

I thought that I was hiking before this, but hitting New Hampshire made me realize I was merely taking a walk in the woods. This state is the true definition of hiking. The weird thing is ascending the White Mountains is actually easy. Everyone gets really worked up about having to climb 3000 feet over 2.5 miles, but descending is the truly shitty part. We average 2 mph going up, but drop to nearly 1 mph coming down. The descent is also what punishes my body most. Each step down hill jars my knees and ankles with such force that I’m limping like a lame horse by the time we hit camp. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a knee replacement by the time I’m 35.

I’m not gonna lie, we took a zero the day before to make sure we had nice weather on the ridge

But just because it has been painful doesn’t mean we’re not having fun. The Whites have provided some of the most beautiful views I’ve seen in my life.

We have also been lucky enough to get great weather almost everyday of the Whites. The one exception was climbing up Kinsman mountain, where we got smacked with a thunderstorm as soon as we got above tree line. There is a north and south peak on the mountain, so we were stuck inbetween the both of them waiting out the storm. If you read my post about thunderstorms then you can imagine how I felt about the situation.

we thought the thunder was coming from the storm behind us. We were very wrong.

All in all things are going great. Tomorrow Spider, Spielberg, Chilipepper and I will summit Mt. Washington, rain or shine, but for now we’re going to be lazy as shit and take a zero, which I am perfectly happy with.

Me being as lazy as possible on my zero