Installment #3
A Stinky Puppy, Tame Birds and Plans for Kilimanjaro.
The next morning we woke to the smell of cooking breakfast, making us feel that the $80 per night to stay in the hut might have been a good idea. We ate a quick breakfast of granola bars and carrot cake (left over - from the night before) and headed down the trail. Our objective was to get as far as we could before we had to turn around. I figured that leaving at 8:00AM we had until 6:30PM (sunset) and thus we would have to turn around at about 1:00 or 1:30 PM.
The trail was gentle at first but rose quickly as we came up to Mt Pierce. We passed the couple from the camp that had the two Malamute dogs. The male had a saddle pack loaded with about 20 pounds and the female had a nasty flatulence problem so it was either race to keep ahead of them or let them get farther ahead. As Michelle and I like to take our time we let the stinky puppy get far far ahead. The summit of Mt Pierce was relatively easy to get to and at the top I purposely searched out the Geological society benchmark to take a picture of it. I eventually found it but the mark had been so abused it was almost impossible to make out the elevation. It was nice to be above the tree line as we could now take off our caps for a while. Michelle was talking to the folks that run the AMC Hut and apparently the area has a tick and Limes disease problem, so we had to keep our hats on anytime we were in the woods. Also the breeze made the humidity somewhat more bearable.
As we passed to the next part of the ridge of mountains we caught a glimpse of the next summit Mount Eisenhower. When we hiked down to the saddle between the mountains clouds started to fill the Notch below us. Before the entire valley filled with clouds we had a great view of the Mount washington hotel in Bretton Woods, then within seconds the clouds covered the valley and began to spill over onto the Eastern slopes of the range. We literally walked thrrough the clouds as they spilled between the summits and onto the other slope of Eisenhower. The peaks of the mountains were visible through the clouds and the clouds looked like lakes of snow. As fast as the clouds came they tumbled over the Mountains and disappeared in the warm weather on the other side. There was one brief scramble as we approached the summit for about three metres we were on our hands and knees climbing a crevice like slope. When we got to the summit there was a crowd of hikers lazing in the sun. We met a couple of hikers coming the other direction that were locals but avid hikers. They talked about the best hikes in the area and we talked about hiking in general. One hike they described was one they took in the 90's to mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.. It seems that unlike everything that is said about it the hike is not that difficult but requires some acclimatisation due to thin atmosphere from the height of the climb, and doing it slow is a requirement by the guides. They gave us a good contact address to hire guides and such.. They also had a beautiful husky which licked our camera as Michelle tried to take a picture. Interesting picture ! After a brief stay at the summit and a few rolls of film later, we headed down the other side. The trail branched in several directions and we decided to take the trail around the other side of Mount Eisenhower on the way back. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake. There was no wind and the sun beat down on us as if it was mid summer. We hiked as quick as we could to get back to the saddle trail that headed back the way we came. When we came around the mountain the wid had picked up and we had some excellent views of the valley that we had missed due to the clouds on the way up. We hiked until we came to the summit of Peirce an stopped briefly for a snack, which we shared with a crowd of Grey Jays, which the Americans call Canadian Jays. Admittedly it is nice to have such a gregarious creature with the Canadian moniker but I have never heard them call this before. They swooped an landed near us one even took some crumbs directly from Michelle’s hand. As we headed back down the trail leaving our feathered friends to eat the remaining crumbs we left behind the sun started to get lower and the entire look of the trail changed. I was concerned that we might have taken the Crawford path trail instead of the trail to Mizpah hut but things became more familiar the farther we hiked. The trip down was far faster than we thought. With the exception of one slip we made it back in record time. Michelle seems to have developed a sizable bruise and I suspect it was from the trip down. When we go it back we were tired but not totally exhausted. I guess I was feeling my age as I voted to hang around the Hut and not try to tackle the Webster Cliff trail as Michelle suggested but given the length of time it took for the sun to set I suspect we could have easily made a quick trip to the cliff face and back before sun set but it was nice to relax and let my muscles heal before we headed back down the next morning. We ate a very disappointing dinner of dehydrated fettuccine and Black bean and corn chowder. The fettuccini was awful but the bean chowder wasn’t bad. That said when you are sleeping in a tent bean chowder is not a good idea. Enough said I hope. We stayed up late talking to some of the hikers and exchanging some Scouty stories and then called it a night. Luckily my sleeping bag had dried during the day and it was a much warmer nights sleep.
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