For about a hundred miles through New Hampshire, the Appalachian Trail stays high and exposed, crossing bare alpine ridges. Craggy windswept mountains take the place of the bucolic greenery of the mid-Atlantic states, where you can hear lawnmowers and dogs barking in the valleys below.
I’d subconsciously been looking forward to the Franconia Ridge all along. A photo of it was on the cover of the Wingfoot guidebook I carried all through 2001, and was featured prominently on his website that I frequented in dreaming of the Trail. So walking the ridge in real life brought a great sense of arrival.
I stopped keeping up on my original daily journal in Hanover, New Hampshire. Everything in this post was written from memory, years later.
In this post:
Day 16
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Beaver Brook Shelter to North Woodstock, NH
Today’s Miles: 17.9
Trip Miles: 164.3
Most of this day was through rain and mists. I did a grueling eighteen miles, and managed to catch up with Hollywood and Buckeye.
The descent from one of the Kinsman peaks was especially tiresome, down wet boulders and roots. As I eased my way down the mountainside like a broken old man, I was passed by a young boy – probably only about ten years old – who literally jumped down the rocks, boulder to boulder, and was out of sight just as soon as he’d appeared. I imagine he was staying at the first hut in the Whites – Lonesome Lake.
I decided to dive into the town of North Woodstock for the night with Hollywood and Buckeye, six miles down the road from Franconia Notch. And it was here that we scored one of the better hitchhiking experiences of my life.
A cool young lady in a station wagon picked us up. When she discovered that we’d never seen New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain, she insisted on taking us to it – turning around and driving several miles back in the direction she’d just come from, purely to show us the rock feature. She pulled into a gravel highway pullout, and there it was: the classic, iconic profile that symbolized the state of New Hampshire.
I was grateful for the detour at the time, but I’m far more grateful for it now. Because less than a year later, a landslide erased the Old Man from the mountain forever.
Day 17
Friday, August 30, 2002
North Woodstock, NH to Garfield Pond
Today’s Miles: 10.3
Trip Miles: 174.6
We were fortunate that the morning of August 30th dawned clear and blue, and luckier still that it stayed that way all day long. This was the day we hiked the Franconia Ridge.
Consistently above treeline over the course of several miles, the Franconia Range is considered one of the most scenic stretches of the entire Appalachian Trail. Two of the more prominent peaks along the ridge are Mount Lincoln (5,089′) and Mount Lafayette (5,249′). A photo of this very area rightfully adorned the cover of The Thru-Hiker’s Handbook, the guidebook I carried all the way from Georgia to Maine.
The day was clear and beautiful, and I cannot emphasize enough how much of a gift this was. A peak like Mount Lafayette can be a miserable, dangerous place in bad conditions – but we had none of that. There were some day hikers up there, though not so many as to be annoying. I can only imagine how crowded it gets now.
We took our time crossing the ridge, including a long, luxurious break on top of Mount Lafayette, the highest point of the day. I sat back and watched the clouds cruise over our heads. They moved so quickly, and seemed so near, that it felt like we could almost reach up and touch them. It was like seeing the clouds out the window of an airplane, I suppose, but I didn’t know that at the time because I’d never been on an airplane yet.
I remember looking down toward Greenleaf Hut and thinking that its setting looked spectacular. Many of the hikers we chatted with on Mount Lafayette were staying there. It was almost 3 miles (one-way) off the AT so we skipped it – not much reason to go down there.
Several of us spent the night at Garfield Pond, which may or may not have been an illegal “stealth” campsite.
Day 18
Saturday, August 31, 2002
Garfield Pond to Zealand Falls Hut
Today’s Miles: 9.7
Trip Miles: 184.3
It rained overnight at Garfield Pond, and I was feeling tired the day after all the excitement on Franconia Ridge. I reached the Zealand Falls Hut early in the afternoon. The weather didn’t look promising, and I had a work-for-stay opportunity there, so I called it a day.
I spent the night with a middle-aged couple whose trail names I’ve forgotten. They’d paid to be guests, so I was the only working hiker in the house. It was the first and last time I’d do work-for-stay at one of the huts. I was starving, and there was little to nothing for me in the way of leftovers. I also remember doing a lot of dishes – I think I had some extra duties because a handful of the croo were out for the evening, off stealing some sort of mascot from an adjacent hut with traditional adolescent mischief. They made a big speech about their prize to the guests the next morning.
I was forced to stay awake much later than my usual hour, since I’d been delegated to sleep in one of the common areas, where people sat up a little late. And then I had to be one of the first ones awake and packed in the morning to get out of the way in the morning, and hang around for the duration of a tantalizing breakfast (again, not much for leftovers) all to do the chores afterward – including more dishes, sweeping, and mopping.
Clearly I love going on backpacking adventures. But if I had to name the single biggest drawback of the lifestyle, it would be the sense of feeling like a lower-class citizen. Let’s face it – a thru-hiker is essentially a homeless person with a credit card. Sometimes I’d get tired of always being dirty and somehow unworthy of keeping company with all the “clean people.” Standing at the side of the road with your thumb in the air requires a certain humility, too. And while it’s fun and empowering not to know where you’re going to sleep each night, after a while the uncertainty of it all can wear on you.
That was the one and only night I paid the “Appalachian Money Club” in labor rather than dollars. In retrospect I think it was just the character of the croo and their preoccupation with the mascot shenanigans that led to my less-than-ideal experience. Or maybe karma for staying at Garfield Pond the previous night, even though everyone else was doing it too.
The Whites weren’t over yet.