August 6
Miles: 8
Location: Goram, NH (via Pinkam Notch)
Weather: I’m tempted to say “The worst hiking weather imaginable” but I’m an Alaskan with a pretty good imagination, so let’s just go with really cold (mid-30’s), really windy (40 mph at least), pretty wet (sideways drizzle), and very limited visibility (maybe only 50 ft for much of it)
Complaint of the Day: The weather suuuuucked. Scary bad.
I have a bit of a confession to make. After the first couple of days in the White Mountains, a small, tiny and messed up part of myself was almost disappointed with how perfect the weather had been. I had heard so many cool stories about how ridiculously bad the weather could be up here. Hikers dealing with hurricane force winds, torrential rain, sleet, hail, hypothemia, eyelashes freezing together… All the people who told stories like that seemed like such awesome badasses. I felt like I was missing an important part of my thru hiker experience by having such great weather. Like all my stories would be lacking something. I don’t have that feeling anymore.
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“Sometimes you just gotta take what the mountain allows you to”– fellow hiker Woodpile in a strangely philosophical moment for him
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I woke up this morning on the dining room floor of the hut listening to the sound of the wind howl outside. It didn’t sound great. But at least it wasn’t raining! We all packed up our gear and waited for the weather forecast to come over the radio before committing to anything decision. As we assumed, the forcast called for low temperatures and high winds, limited visibility and a little rain up near the peaks where we were, but much warmer and calmer down lower in elevation. That seemed reasonable. We only had two miles to go across the high exposed ridgeline before dropping down a steep hill into the safety of the treeline. The cold wind would not be fun, but we could handle it. I put on my warmest clothes and headed out the door with a small group of other hikers: Planner, Brown Sugar, and Shiver. I had hoped that we would be able to stick together across the tough part, but Planner and Brown Sugar took the lead and were soon hiking quite a bit faster than Shiver or I could. They were in a hurry to meet their other friends and left us behind. Shiver was struggling to hike over the rocks and she told me I could hike on ahead of her as well, but I told her we were sticking together. There were three big reasons for this: first, I was hardly able to hike any faster than she was; second, Shiver is a young and inexperienced hiker I would have felt bad leaving her alone by herself; and third, I would not have felt safe hiking out in those conditions by myself. I was happy to have her with me, even if she barely knew what she was doing at times.
The terrain ended up being worse than I thought. The ridge we had to climb up on to was much steeper and rockier than anticipated. But more importantly, the weather was much worse than I thought. It was really cold, pretty wet, and REALLY windy. Crazy windy. There were many times when I had to stop trying to find a way to move forward just so I could brace myself enough to avoid being blown backwards or sideways.
Shiver and I hiked, climbed, and crawled our way forward, inching our way over the peak of Mt Madison towards the safety of the treeline. After about an hour of this Shiver said she needed a break to get some warmer clothes on. We found a large-ish boulder to hide behind as Shiver dug thru her bag. It was then I realized just how cold she was. She was truly earning her trail name. She was shaking pretty hard. And that isn’t surprising considering that she had left the hut wearing only a tank top and a rain jacket. She had somehow worried that she would sweat too much if she wore any more clothes. Also, she did not have any rain pants with her. As she sat down and struggled just to get her fleece jacket on, I realized that she was becoming hypothermic. At that point my wilderness medicine training kicked in and Shiver became my patient as much as my hiking partner. I had her eat something (I actually shoved the granola bar in her mouth when she tried to say she didn’t need it.) We needed to keep moving both to get closer to the safety of the trees, but also just to produce some more body heat to keep her from getting any colder.
Thankfully about that time another hiker, Sweetheart, showed up. Sweetheart can be a bit arrogant at times– but he is very experienced in hiking in Alpine mountains and he could see we needed help. He took the lead and gave Shiver some advice for how to manuever more efficiently over the rocks. With his help we were able to gain a little speed, but we were still moving very slowly. It ended up taking us over two hours to cross the two miles from the hut to the tree line where we finally found some solace from the wind. We scrambled down the hill for a few more minutes before Shiver needed a break. She sat down and just shook for a while, partially from the cold but more from the relief of finally being past the worst if it. After eating more snacks we continued down the trail. It was still almost 6 miles back to the road. It was still slow going, but it wasn’t scary any more. Shiver was fine, if not exhausted. We were all exhausted by the time we got to the road.
I originally held out hope that I would be able to push on past the road and finally do some real miles today, but that simply wasn’t happening. I made a phone call and ended up getting a bunk at a local hostel. And I think I may even take the day off tomorrow.
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With all the other exciment today, I almost forgot to mention another really cool thing that happened today: I saw a pine marten! I actually saw two pine marten! My first pine martens ever! They were adorable! I believe I have seen every member if the North American weasel family now.
Living Life on The AT 