Friday, September 5, 2014

Clueless in New Hampshire--Sep 5, 2014

Only in the White Mountains going up Mt. Lafayette do they call this mess a trail.
Left Galehead hut and climbed Mt Garfield. A pleasant little spike not! And then made the slog up Lafayette. The weather report is for rain so when I got to the top of Lafayette I considered keeping going right along the AT to the road - where I'll be going tomorrow. But I took the one mile down detour to Greenleaf hut. That means tomorrow in the rain I'm going to have to go back up before I can continue south on the AT. There's a fellow from NY doing the same hut to hut that I am on the AT. There's also a young couple and another father son team all doing the same thing. We just made a PACt to hike throught the bad weather together. We all want to make the 2:55 shuttle at the liberty springs trail head. We should be ok. I must have seen a hundred hikers today and about 40 NOBOs . This place is crawling with people. One nobo I spoke to was "mailman" . He and "slowgo" stopped and chatted for a long time. They were a little weary of the trail/ mailman said his friends were going to bring his mail carrier satchel for him to make his ascent on Katahdin with. I was reading a book at one of the huts about lichens. There was a side paragraph about Edward Tuckerman. A Harvard instructor and expert on lichens. He even named a couple. There was even going to be a society for those lichen lovers called Tuckermania. No lie --it's in a book. Yes THAT Tuckerman.! So it was hard to make this one mile detour DOWN just to turn around tomorrow morning and go back up. I got to rinse out my socks shirt and shorts so I may be wet tomorrow but I'll be (sort of ) clean. Once again I am amazed at the lack of any sort of blazes but they sure make good road signs at all the trail intersections, and there are a lot of intersections. There's going to be about 30 people at this hut tonight. It's one of the more accessible huts and 30 isn't near full. There are so many people hiking that just don't have a clue!
79° Sunny
37–277 Colby Rd, Whitefield, NH, United States




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