Total trail mileage: 1780.6
Starting location: Fire Warden Cabin
Ending location: NH 25
Weather: Thunderstorm all last night. 58 degrees in the morning.
64-74 degrees during the day. Cloudy and foggy in the morning. Then
mostly cloudy. Then partly cloudy in the afternoon.
I am at
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=43.988957,+-71.898298
I woke up with my alarm really early. It was all cloudy with no
chance of a sunrise view, so I went back to sleep for a couple hours.
Finally I got going by 8:30.
I made good time today. I went down Smarts Mountain and up and over
Mt. Cube without too much effort. Fortunately the clouds cleared off
enough by the time I got up Mt. Cube for a really nice view. I then
proceeded down, up and over a couple bumps, and got to the road
crossing for Glencliff.
I missed the Post Office time (I knew I had no chance of making it
with the late start), so I will need to pick up my package in the
morning. I am staying at the Hikers Welcome Hostel along with quite a
number of hikers. I am excited to have clean clothes again (the last
time I did laundry was over a week ago).
I caught up to two section hikers that I had met yesterday. Yesterday
they were leaving the Fire Warden Cabin as I arrived. Well, they got
caught in the storm yesterday as they were decending Smarts Mountain.
They said all of a sudden the sky turned black and it had started
hailing. A tree fell down right in front of them. I saw a number of
blowdowns today and was wondering how many were from the storm
yesterday.
Tomorrow is a big climb. It is close to 4000 feet of elevation gain,
but supposedly that isn't the hard part. Coming back down again will
be a challenge. It is very steep and slippery. A number of people
said to make sure you have enough daylight and energy to get down. If
not, stay at the shelter near the top. Someone also said to not
attempt to summit if there is a storm as there is a long stretch of
exposed rock. So, I have no idea where I will be tomorrow. I think
that will probably be true for all of the Whites. Yep, I can already
tell things are getting tougher and more unpredictable.
No comments:
Post a Comment