The mountains

A lot happened. This post will just be about the hiking. Later I will write about Wisconsin and Rhode Island.

On last Wednesday, I drove up to Boston to catch a cheap bus to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I got there early and spent a few hours hanging out with my friend Salad Fingers in Cambridge. Here is salad fingers : http://www.fat-pie.com/salad2.htm. I caught the bus to Pinkham Notch(around 4 hours), read the book Ender's Game. I recommend it.


I got into Pinkham at 9:30 and wandered up to the visitor's center. I did not have much choice because the only structure at Pinkham notch is the visitor's center. Because you can not camp in the White Mountains(not sure why), the Appalachian mountain club expects hikers to pay 60$-90$ to stay in various huts and lodges in the park. I walked across the highway and put my tent up in the woods. There are two things that i find annoying in life. One is when people try to charge you to sleep outside. The other is when people put nuts in brownies that they bring to a social gathering. Some people don't like nutty brownies, but everyone who likes nutty brownies likes regular ones.

Anyway, I woke up and caught the shuttle at Pinkham notch and took it to Crawford Notch. Alex was waiting there. We began hiking the 48 miles towards Gorham, NH. The hiking was very steep with many seemingly vertical climbs and descents. There were also 30-40 mph winds on the ridges above the tree lines. The first night, we did a work-for-stay at a hut just shy of Mount Washington. This entailed sifting a bit of compost and cleaning a stove top in exchange for a hot meal and a wooden picnic table to sleep on.

The next morning, we left at 6:30 to hike the 2 remaining miles to the summit of Washington. Everything was above the treeline and we were hiking in 40 degree weather and 35 mph winds. It made me wish that I had brought pants. When we got to the top, it was foggy and the visitors center had not opened yet. We hung out for a bit and watched as the cog railway brought it's first group of passengers up to the top. thru-hiking tradition dictates that all thru-hikers moon the
cog-railway, but alex's book warned that violators could be arrested and have their names published in newspapers WORLDWIDE. This is actually what it said. So we moved on.

We continued hiking to Pinkham notch, which would be the halfway point of the 48 mile section. At this time, I was incredibly sore, but was able to keep up with Alex both in hiking speed and in conversation, mostly by grunting at appropriate time. he told me all about his previous 1800 miles of walking, about his snowy, cold nights in the southeast, and his crazy accomplices along the way. Much like hobos, thru-hikers usually get nicknames by which they are known throughout the trail. His was Rat Sandwich. This is because he ate rat that he caught. Some other good names/characters were Neck Beard, Five Bags, and Silver Potato. That night, we decided to hitchhike into Gorham, where we might be able to camp legitimately and get some McDonald's double cheeseburgers. If Alex could, he would eat eleven every day, so he always jumps on a chance to satisfy his perpetual mac attacks. We could have stayed in a 20$ hostel that night, but because neither of us were feeling particularly rich, we sut up our tents behind an elementary school. Nobody noticed that we were there and we left the next morning.

The next 2 days were hiked through really dense forest back toward Pinkham Notch. Everything was covered in thick green moss that seemed to glow in the low light of the dark forest. At one point, we heard a large bustle and saw a flash of the black fur of a good sized bear dart across the trail. Startling at first, but not really scary as it was very apparent that it was terrified of us. We camped stealthily in a clearing about half way between Gorham and Pinkham. The next day was the descent of wildcat mountain, which was the steepest descent that Alex had seen on the trail to that point. It involved crawling/sliding down near vertical faces. I was shocked at the difficulty because I had never pictured the trail as being something that could kill people. A fall there would certainly be bad news. I took a little one and bent my cooking pot in half.

We ended up tired in Pinkham and hitched back to gorham again in order to catch the morning bus back to Boston. This night, it was raining, so instead of staying in tents, we began looking for alternatives. The lady at Burger King wouldn't let us sleep in the ball pit, so we walked back toward the school. There, we found 15 buses parked in the parking lot. We were wet and tired, so we found an open one and hopped on for the night. Its summer, they wont be using them until August, right? The next morning, we awoke to some surprised cleaning ladies and an uppity principal who demanded that we remain where we were while the police were called. We didn't have anywhere to run in the small town of Gorham and had a bus to catch within the hour, so we did as we were told. Luckily the cop was sympathetic to our situation and let us go. We caught the bus back to Boston, stopped by Salad's house and then Alex came with me to Newport for a couple of days.

All in all, the White Mountians were the most beautiful as well as most difficult hiking that I have ever done. Alex agreed on both points. I really enjoyed getting out into nature and hiking with someone that knew what he was doing. My previous hike was with some friends from home, one of whom brought his stuff in a Macy's bag. Enjoy the pictures