Friday, September 4 4:04 pm 13.7 mi
AT 1840.3 Zealand Falls → AT 1854.0 Mizpah Spring Hut
Weather: Sunny, beautiful – not too cold, not too hot
Trail Conditions: Big rockslide boulder field this morning, imposing view of the upcoming climb this afternoon in the parking lot, literal bouldering with sweeping, wide open views of the valley and the Whites surrounding. Can see Mt. Washington off in the distance!
My Condition: Reunited with my trail family last night, the weather is great, I’m feeling amazing! Can’t wait for Mt. Washington tomorrow!
Nothing beats that superhuman feeling of flying past hikers whilst climbing near vertical surfaces. Even the toughest of climbs feels manageable and within reach, it’s just a matter of tackling it a little bit at a time, sometimes incredibly fast when passing “muggles,” sometimes much slower and out-of-breathier. But they’re all doable! So good to see the trail family again last night. They worried as I pushed on across Franconia Ridge and were glad I made it ok! I’m glad that they got some great views and without the whole harrowing experience bit!
Post Trail Analysis
“Muggles,” non-magical ordinary folk in Harry Potter terminology, refers to day hikers and weekenders in hiker terms. I don’t use the term to be derogatory even in the slightest – you can identify them by their strong aroma of soap, deodorant, and laundry detergent (as I’m sure they can identify you as a thru hiker from A LONG WAYS AWAY), and you fly past them because they don’t have seemingly magical thru-hiker trail legs. To be fair, nobody but a thru hiker does! Seemingly without effort at this point, you mountain goat your way up trail that leaves most folks huffing and puffing. The Appalachian Mountain Club has a series of full-service backcountry hiker huts throughout the region. The huts are staffed by a crew that cooks meals, hauls in supplies, entertains, and serve as caretakers. Most years, you can pay A LOT of money to stay in these hiker huts, or you can hope to do a work-for-stay assignment. This year, the AMC huts were partially open. The bunkhouses were closed down. The kitchens were open on a limited basis. The bathhouses were open, as were the outdoor platforms which served as tenting sites. During this stretch of trail, you spend a significant amount of time above treeline and don’t have any options for legal stealth camping without going way off course. We opted to pay for an outdoor platform at the Mizpah hut, bummed about spending money for it but grateful that it set us up perfectly to make the Presidentials traverse and get down below treeline to a stealth site the next day. With a perfectly clear night expected, this would be the one and only night of the whole trail that I would cowboy camp – sleeping under the stars, right there on the wooden platform, without needing my tent!
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