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Day 145: The Day Before the Storm
I also had near-perfect hiking weather - just chilly enough that I wasn’t soaked with sweat on the climbs but not so cold that I needed to layer up. Or maybe the forest just made the day seem near perfect, with a wonderful mix of birch and pine that provided a range of color, fragrance, and lighting. The trail, not running with water for a change, consisted mostly of hard-packed dirt and roots, and was littered with yellow and brown leaves.
Day 144: What? Another Easy One?
The thrill of hiking in the woods is back. As I sped along a soft, well-graded trail at over two miles per hour, past moss-blanketed terrain, bear-scratched trees, and fragrant pines, with Gus at my side, surrounded by faint wisps of storybook mist, my soul was at peace. What a privilege to be thru hiking. A good trail covers a multitude of mud, rain, and cloudy sky sins.
Day 143: An Easy One
The trail still had its share of ladders, rotting plank walks, mud pits, and alpine bogs, and of course there were no switchbacks, but it was definitely more walkable than any trail segment since the beginning of the White Mountains.
Day 142: The Mahoosic Notch
The Mahoosic Notch is a 0.8-mile jumble of car-sized boulders that fill the bottom of a narrow steep ravine. The trail winds over, under, around, and through these boulders. The stream that flows down the ravine, slightly swollen by a night’s steady rain, disappeared far below the trail, though I could hear its babbling echoes from the deeps as I scrambled along. The ravine is so deep and isolated that it acts like a thermos, chilling the already-brisk wet air by at least 15F. It’s nature’s jungle gym.
Day 141: The AT’s Toughest Ten Miles
But when the trail gets really crazy, like it did today, I’d just stop and say, “You gotta be kidding me. That can’t be the trail.” It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen any of this stuff before, but I’d never seen all of it so tightly packed together.
Day 140: A Real Thru Hike – Part 1
Once I left the dirt road for the woods, I felt excited to be walking past the white blazes again. It felt right. My legs were a little shaky at the beginning of the 2,000-foot, two-mile climb, but after a few minutes I had a pace and felt great. I passed the hikers that had been dropped off by the Cadillac. The extra pack weight didn’t seem to make much difference.
Day 139: Off the Mountain
Then the discussion turned to the difficulty of hiking in the White Mountains. I got the sense that New Englanders have a strong Yankee pride in their tortuous trails. One person smirkingly referred to the easy graded mule and automobile trails in the western United States. They implied that hiking trails should be difficult and that if anyone wasn’t hardy enough to handle the climbs, they should stay home.
Day 138: A New Plan
This is the way to hike the Whites. Short days, hut stays, and afternoon naps.
Day 137: Beaten Down But Not Broken
There are three ways up and four ways down Mount Washington. You can hike, drive, or take the cog railway up the mountain. If you’re going down, can also just stand tall and wait to get blown off the peak. That worked for my pack cover. One of the 80-90 mph gusts ripped it off my pack and sent it sailing off into the valley below. I knew when I put it on that morning, I should have used a tether.
Day 136: Lake of the Clouds
Everybody has at least one day where they think about quitting. And about 75 percent of those who start a thru hike do more than think about quitting. Most wannabe thru hikers quit.