Mountains Under Foot

Hello to all the wonderful MUF Addicts out there!

I have found Internet (in Stratton, Maine) for the first time since Rutland, VT and have gone through the therapeutic motions of checking my email and world news. After absorbing all the good feelings involved with being reconnected with the world, I figured I would give everyone a much needed update on our journey. In a nutshell, Vermont was absolutely beautiful…when it wasn’t raining all the time and the White Mountains of New Hampshire blew my mind beyond belief. After snapping my right pole again going up Mt. Moosilauke I thought things were starting to go south again. But when I got to the summit of that mountain I literally had no words to describe the awe and wonderment of the 360 degree views around me. What was so insane was that this feeling didn’t go away as we hiked for 4-5 days through the Whites and the views kept getting more and more dramatic and the weather remained perfect. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t last and on August 21st (Crocstar’s birthday) things shifted from sunny and hot to cold, wind, rain, and lightning storm! We woke up that morning at 5am, donned our party hats that Croc had packed in for 50 miles, and hit the trail hoping for good weather to summit Mt. Washington and at lower elevations it looked like we might have been in luck, but as we climbed thousands of feet up it got worse, and worse, and worse. At the Lakes of the Clouds Hut we were excited to run into UCOC (Nick) who had also started on May 11th with Croc and we decided that the newly formed team of the “May-ers” should roll together to Mt. Katahdin. But first we had to get to the top of Mt. Washington:

and throw a party!

After all of the festivities, that at least for me, included cake and ice cream we moved on Mt. Madison where we were caught in a thru-hiker traffic jam as eight people were trying to descend out of the alpine zone as lightning was striking all around us and the wind was tossing us around:

So despite the scary “I’m-going-to-die” feelings on that day, I am kinda glad to have experienced the insanely fast and unpredictable weather change that can happen above the tree line. I have a whole new respect and understanding of dangers of alpine hiking. From that day onward we had 4 days of straight rain and miserable weather. Just look how happy we are to have reached Maine:

I think Maine was a little misinformed as to what life should really be like that day.

Maine, so far has been pretty enjoyable. I broke my left pole before descending into Mahoosic Notch for an hour long rock scramble over rocks the size of cars where moose apparently go to die as there were bones strewn all about. We got some magnificent trail magic from Peter Bingham, Crocstar’s second cousin, who has a ski condo near Grafton Notch. We got cleaned up, resupplied, and taken out for a nice dinner. Thank you, Peter! We had a couple of really cold mornings here the past two days and it is really starting to sink in that we are only a week and a half from looking up at Katahdin from the base. Each day as we get closer to the end, I look out over the mountain range and think to myself just how far I’ve walked to get here and I think about all the things I’ve seen and how beautiful the earth is when viewed from above. This whole experience just hasn’t had a chance to sink in, but thankfully I’ll have lots of time while I recover to digest and share it all with you when I get home.

Happy Trails,
Hazard