Leaving Hanover marked the beginning of a turning point in my Appalachian Trail experience. The first hundred miles of 2002 served as a sort of warmup, and things simply began to fall into place in New Hampshire.
Primarily, I knew that I would make it to Mount Katahdin. Somehow I just knew that I would finish. All the pressure I’d felt in 2001 to complete the trail was lifted. I was free to enjoy the days, the thru-hiking lifestyle, and the good company. The hikers that had walked from Georgia that year fell into a similar mindset, and they accepted me as one of their own.
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 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15
Day 10
Friday, August 23, 2002
Hanover, NH to Ledyard Spring
Today’s Miles: 2
Trip Miles: 97.1
At the Panarchy House in Hanover I’d met a thru-hiker named Hollywood. He was about thirty at the time, my senior by roughly ten years – tall and lanky, and between his outgoing personality and his North Carolina accent, he couldn’t help but remind me of Matthew McConaughey. Over the coming weeks I’d be endlessly entertained by his catchphrases. A steep climb was “a straight-up rocket to God!” Anything and everything might prompt a bellowed “Jesus Tits!” He’d become one of the central figures of my walk to Maine.
I only hiked a short distance out of Hanover that first afternoon before something stopped me. A couple of miles out of town, a golden meadow opened up beside the trail with a single picturesque tree standing in the middle of it. Something about the place called to me, and I set up camp right there under the tree. Of all the freedoms of the trail, the one I loved most was being able to sleep wherever I wanted – and it was never more evident than that evening. I think it reminded me of the rock wall with the tree at the end of Shawshank Redemption.
I fixed myself a hot meal and sat out in the open air, admiring the clouds, thankful for the campsite. Three northbound hikers I hadn’t met before passed through the field during my reverie – a young man named SoFar who’d started that year in northern Virginia, and two companions. I think one was his sister (trail name Salamander?) and a friend of hers. I was high on life and invited them to share the camp, but they pressed on into the woods. Alone in a perfect field in New England, it became one of the more memorable nights of the entire trip.
Day 11
Saturday, August 24, 2002
Ledyard Spring to Moose Mountain Shelter
Today’s Miles: 8.8
Trip Miles: 105.9
The next morning, packing up, I discovered that Buckeye had sneaked “The Rock” into my backpack back at the fraternity house. Some 2002 thru-hiker had created it as a joke: an ordinary rock with a tiny register attached. The rule was simple. If you found The Rock in your pack, you were destined to carry it north until you could sneak it into somebody else’s pack – and the goal was that, hiker by unwitting hiker, it would eventually be carried all the way to the summit of Katahdin.
There was a certain irony in this, given that I’d been carrying my own stone from Springer Mountain since Georgia – a stone I actually intended to carry to Katahdin on purpose. Now I had two.
Day 12
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Moose Mountain Shelter to Smarts Mountain Shelter
Today’s Miles: 12.6
Trip Miles: 118.5
Over the next few days I hiked on and off with a young guy named John A. Kalb. I think he was a section hiker from Hanover, New Hampshire. He never adopted a trail name. I’d wager only about one in fifty long-distance hikers on the AT goes without a pseudonym, so it stuck in my memory.
We had the Smarts Mountain Shelter entirely to ourselves that night. The hike up the mountain was a long slow grind. It was topped with a fire tower, and I climbed up it to enjoy a splendid sunset.
Day 13
Monday, August 26, 2002
Smarts Mountain Shelter to Ore Hill Shelter
Today’s Miles: 12.6
Trip Miles: 125.9
The trail between Hanover and Glencliff was punctuated by a series of strenuous climbs. It felt more like a continuation of the trail from Vermont, rather than the fabled White Mountains of New Hampshire. The Whites were still ahead of me, biding their time.
Day 14
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Ore Hill Shelter to the Hikers Welcome Hostel
Today’s Miles: 7.4
Trip Miles: 138.5
If arriving in New Hampshire marked a transition in my hike, the Hikers Welcome Hostel amplified it. I got there early in the day, just in time to catch Hollywood, SoFar, and Buckeye as they were preparing to head out. They’d spent the night and had already put away a mass quantity of excellent coffee. I helped myself to a great deal of it too, and soon everybody was giddy with the silly joy that only a gang of happy hikers on a long trail can seem to find.
Later I caught a shuttle into the small, interesting town of Warren to resupply. The post office had only a tractor and a motorcycle parked out front. Downtown there stood, inexplicably, an actual missile.
That night at the hostel brought a rendezvous of northbounders and southbounders around a roaring bonfire. Someone put on an album by John Prine, who I’d never heard of – a few of the hikers seemed to know every word to every song, dancing and singing along to the more upbeat ones. Somebody told me to check out Prime Prine for starters, and I did, after the trail.
Then, late in the evening, came a moment I’ll never forget. A middle-aged southbound hiker brought a guitar to the campfire. A number of songs were played, but the one that stayed with me forever was “Where Do the Children Play” by Cat Stevens. I didn’t even know it was a Cat Stevens song at the time – this guy’s voice just sounded exactly like him. The lyrics landed square in the middle of everything the thru-hiking life was about, and to this day I associate that song, and Cat Stevens generally, with the Appalachian Trail.
Day 15
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Hikers Welcome Hostel to Beaver Brook Shelter
Today’s Miles: 7.9
Trip Miles: 146.4
The Hikers Welcome Hostel was (And still is!!!) run by a former thru-hiker named Packrat. He’d recently finished the Pacific Crest Trail, and his photo album from it lived in the main room as a favorite conversation piece.
Part of what makes the hostel special is simply where it sits – right before the trail soars above treeline for the first time, up Mount Moosilauke. Beyond that point, in the heart of the White Mountains, the usual trail shelters give way to a series of “huts” run by the local trail club, the Appalachian Mountain Club – the AMC.
Most thru-hikers weren’t especially fond of the AMC. Some liked to call it the “Appalachian Money Club.” In 2002, a night at a hut ran about $65 with breakfast and dinner, or over $30 just for a flat, hard bunk under a roof (a quick 2026 search says $90 to $175 per night). Many thru-hikers were notoriously, uh, “thrifty,” and by New Hampshire we were long accustomed to sleeping in the woods for free, without reservations and certainly without fees. The huts were essentially lodges for paying guests, each staffed by a crew of college-age employees traditionally called the “croo.”
To their credit, the AMC ran a “work-for-stay” program: a thru-hiker could stay free in exchange for working for the evening. There were catches. The croo would sometimes have the hikers do the lion’s share of the labor, especially around meal service – and sitting in the presence of all that food for hours, with leftovers often slim to none, could be a special kind of torture. And only two work-for-stay slots existed per hut, so you had to arrive early or miss out entirely. I suppose a lot of the experience depended on the individual croo members.
All of this made illegal “stealth camping” a popular art form in the Whites – with real risk, since rangers and ridgerunners patrolled the area and kept a particular eye out for thru-hikers bedding down where they shouldn’t. In late August, this hostel was the crossroads where southbounders passed their hard-won knowledge – and their favorite stealth sites – to those of us heading north. It was a place to regroup and get situated before entering the Whites.
I drank a lot of coffee again that morning, which set the tone for the day. Ahead was a 3,500-foot climb up Mount Moosilauke – in many ways the first “real” mountain on the Appalachian Trail. Three things about that long, steady ascent have stayed with me.
The first was the sky – a deep clear blue, with a crisp, perfectly light chill in the air. Early autumn had arrived in the mountains of New Hampshire.
The second was the smell. It was alpine – pine and Christmas – but there was more to it than that, mixed with pungent mountain soil and my own nostalgic body odor, a scent I’d come to associate with happiness and freedom on the trail.
And third was going above treeline for the first time, seeing the trees gradually sink below my eye level and finally diminish into shrubs and then only rock. The best terrain on the entire Appalachian Trail was finally here.
I mentioned that Packrat had done the AT and PCT at this time. Four years later, in 2006, he’d go on to hike the CDT and complete what’s called the “Triple Crown” of U.S. long distance trails. I know this because during that same year, in 2006, I was on a bicycle tour across the United States when I randomly bumped into Packrat at a campground in Colorado! Trail magic.
I camped that night at Beaver Brook Shelter, on the far side of the mountain, where the brook tumbles down the slope in a long series of cascades. Ahead lay the heart of the Whites – Franconia Ridge, the AMC huts, and Mount Washington. The best of the trail was just beginning.