Moosilauke

“We follow the lines going South” – Phish “Vultures”

Today I got a ride to Kinsman Notch and slacked Mount Moosilauke. Last night I was mostly with people in their early twenties, Disco is only eighteen, and today I was with five thru hikers in that parking lot and I was the only one under fifty. There are people from all walks of life on the trail. The first couple miles on the North face of Moosilauke are intense. Wet slabs of granite with wooden steps and rebar hand rungs in strategic places. Beaver Brook is cascading down the mountain beside the trail for most of the run. It is the third steepest mile of the AT, after a stretch in the Wildcats I’ll hit probably next week and Katahdin. I am glad I decided to do it Southbound because coming down that would have been crazy. It did feel weird going South for a minute, but that wore off quickly and it was just another day on the trail. I did have to stop and remind myself not to follow the North signs a couple times though.

After the hard stretch I took a little break at Beaver Brook Shelter and drank some of the cold water I’d been walking beside for the last hour. Then I kept climbing another 3 miles to the summit, which weren’t easy but were nothing compared to what I’d just done. I saw Q-tip on the way, I guess he’s been half a day ahead of me since Hanover. I told him to take his time on that section and appreciate the waterfall, which is hard to do when you’re trying not to fall off a freaking mountain. Also past Healer and Dreaming, plus Merlot and Game Time slacking the other way, but that was about it for Nobos.

This was the first day I got into an alpine zone, on the trail and in my life. It was very interesting to watch the pine and fir trees get smaller and smaller until they were a foot tall and then gone. Unfortunately I had climbed into a cloud so I didn’t get a view once above the tree line but it was still impactful as a new environment, maybe more so in the gray fog. It looked similar to the balds down south, but it did feel different. It was cold and surprisingly crowded up top, so I only stayed around fifteen minutes hoping in vain for the clouds to open up.

Coming down at first was another chess game of figuring out where to place my feet and thinking a couple moves ahead, but it quickly became easier. With a light pack and the opportunity to take a shower and do laundry at the bottom I practically flew the last few miles. I wasn’t back at the hostel long before it started pouring. It didn’t last long but it was enough to surely make that rough stretch extra treacherous and odds are I would have been on it right around that point had I stayed out last night and hiked North. Instead I was eating pizza and ice cream while watching a movie. It’s the little things.

Tomorrow I’m slacking 16 over Mt Wolf and the Kinsman Mountains down to Franconia Notch to continue my ease into the Whites. With all the helpful talk from Legion and Sweets, the caretakers here, I’m feeling a little anxious about navigating the AMC huts and the Whites in general, but it’s just more of the same really, only more so, if that makes sense. There is a direct relation with how much I plan things out and how much I worry, so I’m going to go back to the strategy that has served me well this far: just figure out how much food I need and take the rest as it comes.