Sunday, August 28, 2005
Day Four - squelching to Madison
I woke up after a restless night to find the entrance to the tent thrown open and the wind blowing wildly in. Nina was crouching there exclaiming enthusiastically over the view.
“Hey, Suz, you’re awake. You just have to come and see this!!”
What time was it? And how could Nina be so unbelievably perky? Had she found some catnip or dubious mushrooms or something? “Gimme few mins,” I mumbled irritably.
But eventually I poked my head out of the sleeping bag, overwhelmed by curiosity (having hiked two days without a shower, that wasn’t the only thing that overwhelmed me). The wind slapped me in the face. It was seriously cold.
“Look at the view!” she breathed. “It’s like heaven!!”
I had to admit, it was pretty impressive. The huge hump-backed mountains plunged like whales into the early morning mist that obscured the valley. The dew glistened on the grass outside our tent. And all around us, rising up from below to snatch the view from our sight before engulfing us and then rushing down the mountainside once more, were the clouds. We were sitting on the edge of a giant cauldron.
But I would be unimpressed by Elvis if he showed up at that time of the morning, and was way too tired to sit there in awe.
“Heaven’s cold,” I muttered cynically, and sank my head back into the sleeping bag.
Unfortunately, lie-ins aren’t really an option for the hiker. Late starts can make the difference between having a nice leisurely time setting up camp and cooking your dinner, and stumbling in the dark chewing an energy bar for tea before lying down to discover you’ve set up the tent on a large tree root.
Even with our self-imposed discipline, though, we still ended up getting a late start. And by this time, we were noticing something a little more worrying. The clouds that had looked so pretty at first light had become a permanent fixture. The weather was turning.
‘People have died above timberline from exposure. Turn back at the first sign of bad weather.’ The words from the cool warning sign at the trailhead were coming back to my mind. And this time they weren’t cool. But how could we turn back? Where would we go? Two days back the way we came, down Tuckerman’s Ravine which was a death sentence in bad weather? Or through the Great Gulf Wilderness, also two days over trails which were practically unmarked?
Nope – the only way out was forward. This was two days as well, but at least we knew the way and the trail was (relatively) good. At Mount Madison there was also a hostel where we might be able to stay. At the very least they’d have soup. We decided to go for it.
It wasn’t too long before the rain started pattering down and we had to put on our waterproofs. I’d learnt from our practice hike in the thunderstorm and had bought every Gor-Tex and polyester item imaginable so I wouldn’t get soaked again. I’d also wrapped everything in my backpack in a plastic bag. This time, we were ready.
Even with our waterproofs on, though, it was surprisingly cold. When you’re above treeline and it’s raining, hypothermia is a real danger (hence the warning sign). Just stopping for thirty seconds for a drink of water brought on uncontrollable shivering. There was no room for tiredness, moaning, self-pity, or anything else that would make you sit down and give up. Sitting down and giving up meant hypothermia, which could mean death. We had to keep moving.
So we just trudged, on and on across boulders that looked like the surface of the moon against the grey sky (left). It was not a friendly trail – often the boulders weren’t even flat, so the only option was to teeter on a sharp edge while finding somewhere to put your other foot. Sometimes you had to wedge your feet between rocks, or slide down them, or take a massive step down and land with knee-jarring force. I lost count of the times I turned my ankle over, with a stab of (thankfully brief) pain. We were just a wrong step away from immobility and – you guessed it – hypothermia.
But fortunately finding safe places to step consumed all our thoughts (they should have added ‘turn back unless you’re a mountain goat’ to the warning sign). Eventually it became mechanical, and we only stopped if we needed to look at the map (which was frequently). We weren’t hungry, we weren’t thirsty, and we couldn’t see the sun. We had absolutely no idea what the time was. We didn’t care. We just walked, knowing eventually we would find soup.
Hiking in the rain is miserable, like winter without Christmas. The amazing vistas and clear mountain air that are such a reward on other days simply aren’t there. The Grand Canyon could open up beside you and you wouldn’t see it. The wind can be fierce – on the summits, especially, the gusting wind would threaten to topple us so we had to crouch into the rocks until it died down again. Sometimes the wind was behind us, pushing us as we tip-toed across razor-sharp rocks, like a sadistic cowboy shooting at someone for fun: “Come on, girl! Move those feet! I wanna see you dance!”
But the worst part, the very worst part, the bit that made me want to go home and curl up on the sofa more than anything else in the world, was when we found out our waterproofs weren’t waterproof. It was a gradual realization – first my t-shirt began to cling to my skin, then my pack got heavier, then my boots began to squelch. While the bin liners kept the contents of my pack bone dry, the ridiculously expensive polyester and Gor-Tex crap cheerfully allowed the rain to saturate me. It was so depressing.
[Above: The rock cairns that showed us the way, and an absolutely drenched me. I'd stopped noticing the rain by this stage, hence the smile. It's amazing what you get used to when you're completely insane]
My inspiration though (apart from the promise of soup) was Nina. The wetter and wetter she got, the more effervescent she became. It was like walking behind an Alka-Seltzer. She bounced along the trail, guiding the way in her big yellow waterproof, picking wild blueberries while I caught up (honestly, anyone who can bend over to pick those things with a 50 pound pack on - see left - deserves a Victoria Cross). Then, when I eventually got to her, she would fill my hands with blueberries and start walking again. This had the effect of waving a carrot in front of a donkey, and kept me moving.
And so we worked our way towards Madison. We were less than a mile from our destination when we realized we were lost, thirty metres down a cascade of thigh-wrenching boulders which we had to climb back up again to retrieve the trail. I could see hikers on the right path, heading towards the hostel and hot food, and sprang back up the mountain in a desperate attempt to follow them. Nina followed slowly behind, the damp and the dreariness finally finding a chink in her stoic armour.
But after half an hour of peering desperately into fog, of wondering if this was the right trail or if we’d walk into a crevasse sometime soon, of deciphering cairns that guided our way as they marched into the mist, the hostel appeared.
I’d never been so happy to see a large shed. Inside were lots of very very dry people, who’d obviously given hiking a miss that day, drinking hot chocolate and steaming bowls of soup. Nina and I looked at them like tramps gazing through the window of McDonald’s. They were so dry.
I went and ordered bottomless soup and hot chocolate, then asked kitchen guy if there was anywhere we could put our tents.
“Sorry, you can’t camp near the hostel. There are tent platforms just under a mile down the mountain though.”
My heart sank. “Oh…how much is the hostel then?” It was only a mixed dorm of twelve bunk beds – how much could it be?
“Seventy-eight dollars”, he said, completely seriously.
Excuse me? How much? Seventy-eight bucks for a bunk?? It turned out that didn’t include breakfast, which was an extra ten dollars, and, by the way, wasn’t available to non-guests. So $78 buys you the right to get fleeced at breakfast. So much for the egalitarian spirit of the Appalachian Trail. Seems like no-one can resist ripping off people who have nowhere else to go.
But Nina and I did have somewhere else to go. We hiked that last mile, stumbling through the drizzle, chewing an energy bar for tea before lying down to discover the tent platform was fairly far from horizontal.
“Hey, Suz, you’re awake. You just have to come and see this!!”
What time was it? And how could Nina be so unbelievably perky? Had she found some catnip or dubious mushrooms or something? “Gimme few mins,” I mumbled irritably.
But eventually I poked my head out of the sleeping bag, overwhelmed by curiosity (having hiked two days without a shower, that wasn’t the only thing that overwhelmed me). The wind slapped me in the face. It was seriously cold.
“Look at the view!” she breathed. “It’s like heaven!!”
I had to admit, it was pretty impressive. The huge hump-backed mountains plunged like whales into the early morning mist that obscured the valley. The dew glistened on the grass outside our tent. And all around us, rising up from below to snatch the view from our sight before engulfing us and then rushing down the mountainside once more, were the clouds. We were sitting on the edge of a giant cauldron.
But I would be unimpressed by Elvis if he showed up at that time of the morning, and was way too tired to sit there in awe.“Heaven’s cold,” I muttered cynically, and sank my head back into the sleeping bag.
Unfortunately, lie-ins aren’t really an option for the hiker. Late starts can make the difference between having a nice leisurely time setting up camp and cooking your dinner, and stumbling in the dark chewing an energy bar for tea before lying down to discover you’ve set up the tent on a large tree root.
Even with our self-imposed discipline, though, we still ended up getting a late start. And by this time, we were noticing something a little more worrying. The clouds that had looked so pretty at first light had become a permanent fixture. The weather was turning.
‘People have died above timberline from exposure. Turn back at the first sign of bad weather.’ The words from the cool warning sign at the trailhead were coming back to my mind. And this time they weren’t cool. But how could we turn back? Where would we go? Two days back the way we came, down Tuckerman’s Ravine which was a death sentence in bad weather? Or through the Great Gulf Wilderness, also two days over trails which were practically unmarked?
Nope – the only way out was forward. This was two days as well, but at least we knew the way and the trail was (relatively) good. At Mount Madison there was also a hostel where we might be able to stay. At the very least they’d have soup. We decided to go for it.
It wasn’t too long before the rain started pattering down and we had to put on our waterproofs. I’d learnt from our practice hike in the thunderstorm and had bought every Gor-Tex and polyester item imaginable so I wouldn’t get soaked again. I’d also wrapped everything in my backpack in a plastic bag. This time, we were ready.
Even with our waterproofs on, though, it was surprisingly cold. When you’re above treeline and it’s raining, hypothermia is a real danger (hence the warning sign). Just stopping for thirty seconds for a drink of water brought on uncontrollable shivering. There was no room for tiredness, moaning, self-pity, or anything else that would make you sit down and give up. Sitting down and giving up meant hypothermia, which could mean death. We had to keep moving.
So we just trudged, on and on across boulders that looked like the surface of the moon against the grey sky (left). It was not a friendly trail – often the boulders weren’t even flat, so the only option was to teeter on a sharp edge while finding somewhere to put your other foot. Sometimes you had to wedge your feet between rocks, or slide down them, or take a massive step down and land with knee-jarring force. I lost count of the times I turned my ankle over, with a stab of (thankfully brief) pain. We were just a wrong step away from immobility and – you guessed it – hypothermia.But fortunately finding safe places to step consumed all our thoughts (they should have added ‘turn back unless you’re a mountain goat’ to the warning sign). Eventually it became mechanical, and we only stopped if we needed to look at the map (which was frequently). We weren’t hungry, we weren’t thirsty, and we couldn’t see the sun. We had absolutely no idea what the time was. We didn’t care. We just walked, knowing eventually we would find soup.
Hiking in the rain is miserable, like winter without Christmas. The amazing vistas and clear mountain air that are such a reward on other days simply aren’t there. The Grand Canyon could open up beside you and you wouldn’t see it. The wind can be fierce – on the summits, especially, the gusting wind would threaten to topple us so we had to crouch into the rocks until it died down again. Sometimes the wind was behind us, pushing us as we tip-toed across razor-sharp rocks, like a sadistic cowboy shooting at someone for fun: “Come on, girl! Move those feet! I wanna see you dance!”
But the worst part, the very worst part, the bit that made me want to go home and curl up on the sofa more than anything else in the world, was when we found out our waterproofs weren’t waterproof. It was a gradual realization – first my t-shirt began to cling to my skin, then my pack got heavier, then my boots began to squelch. While the bin liners kept the contents of my pack bone dry, the ridiculously expensive polyester and Gor-Tex crap cheerfully allowed the rain to saturate me. It was so depressing.[Above: The rock cairns that showed us the way, and an absolutely drenched me. I'd stopped noticing the rain by this stage, hence the smile. It's amazing what you get used to when you're completely insane]
My inspiration though (apart from the promise of soup) was Nina. The wetter and wetter she got, the more effervescent she became. It was like walking behind an Alka-Seltzer. She bounced along the trail, guiding the way in her big yellow waterproof, picking wild blueberries while I caught up (honestly, anyone who can bend over to pick those things with a 50 pound pack on - see left - deserves a Victoria Cross). Then, when I eventually got to her, she would fill my hands with blueberries and start walking again. This had the effect of waving a carrot in front of a donkey, and kept me moving.And so we worked our way towards Madison. We were less than a mile from our destination when we realized we were lost, thirty metres down a cascade of thigh-wrenching boulders which we had to climb back up again to retrieve the trail. I could see hikers on the right path, heading towards the hostel and hot food, and sprang back up the mountain in a desperate attempt to follow them. Nina followed slowly behind, the damp and the dreariness finally finding a chink in her stoic armour.
But after half an hour of peering desperately into fog, of wondering if this was the right trail or if we’d walk into a crevasse sometime soon, of deciphering cairns that guided our way as they marched into the mist, the hostel appeared.
I’d never been so happy to see a large shed. Inside were lots of very very dry people, who’d obviously given hiking a miss that day, drinking hot chocolate and steaming bowls of soup. Nina and I looked at them like tramps gazing through the window of McDonald’s. They were so dry.
I went and ordered bottomless soup and hot chocolate, then asked kitchen guy if there was anywhere we could put our tents.
“Sorry, you can’t camp near the hostel. There are tent platforms just under a mile down the mountain though.”
My heart sank. “Oh…how much is the hostel then?” It was only a mixed dorm of twelve bunk beds – how much could it be?
“Seventy-eight dollars”, he said, completely seriously.
Excuse me? How much? Seventy-eight bucks for a bunk?? It turned out that didn’t include breakfast, which was an extra ten dollars, and, by the way, wasn’t available to non-guests. So $78 buys you the right to get fleeced at breakfast. So much for the egalitarian spirit of the Appalachian Trail. Seems like no-one can resist ripping off people who have nowhere else to go.
But Nina and I did have somewhere else to go. We hiked that last mile, stumbling through the drizzle, chewing an energy bar for tea before lying down to discover the tent platform was fairly far from horizontal.[Right: abstract shot of our stuff drying on the tent ceiling - including our mascot, Blake]
We made a mutual decision to get off the mountain the next day – what with rip-off hostels and thunderstorms on the way, the Presidential Range was no longer somewhere we wanted to be.
