I was doing my first "work for stay" at Madison Springs hut in the northern section of White Mountain National Forest. Some explinations. The AT in the White Mountains is run by a group called the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). The AMC maintains several "huts" along the trail here-self sustaining miniture hotels capable of feeding and housing thirty to forty guests a day.
Tourists through the Whites pay up to a hundred dollars a night to "hut hop" through the mountains, walking six to eight miles a day and stopping at the huts for hot meals and cots in bunk rooms. There are very few other sleeping options available in the Whites-shelters are often thirty to forty miles apart and camping is stricktly limited, and downright forbidden above treeline.
This leads many through hikers to refer to the AMC as the "Appalachian Money Club" or "Appalachian Motel Chain". For the hungry and poor through hiker there is one good option: work for stay. Generally each hut takes two thru hikers a night and gives them menial work to do: dishes, sweeping, cleaning, and the like. In return hikers get to eat whatever the guests don't finish and a place to sleep on the floor of the dining hall.
As I said before, I managed to snag a work for stay at Madison Springs hut, just below the summit of Mt. Madison. A northbounder named Skunk Ape and I enjoyed four or five plates of leftover pasta, bread and salad and then washed some windows and started up on the dishes.
As we were finishing up (this was around nine thirty) I heard a voice behind me say "anybody up for a moonlight tour of the Presidential range?"
I turned around and there was a girl named Patches (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE GUY PATCHES I AM CURRENTLY HIKING WITH) , a northbounder I had run across in Maine, three weeks before. I later learned that she had finished her hike and was killing time walking around in the Whites before she started a job crewing one of the huts.
"What, right now?" I said? "In the dark?"
"It's a full moon!" Patches said.
She was right, the moon was gigantic in the sky, lighting up every nook and cranny and peak of those jagged, rocky slopes.
Skunk Ape laughed in disbelief and shook his head. I hesitated.
I remembered from our conversation in Maine that Patches was an expert in these mountains-she grew up in NH and hikes the Whites several times a year. If there was anybody who could successfully guide me through the toughest section of the trail, all above treeline, at night...
"I'm leaving in five" she said, breaking into my musing. "Anybody who wants to come has until then to make up their mind."
I'm tired. I thought. My right foot has a stone bruise that leaves me with a slight limp. I did a solid ten mile day straight up the side of Mt. Madison this afternoon and I haven't slept since then. In fact, it's already past my hiker bed time. This is rough terrain. It's dark. There is no reason to do this.
Except for the fact that it sounds like an adventure.
"Okay." I said. "I'll do it."
Everybody in the room, including Patches, looked at me in disbelief.
And that was how I found myself scrabbling through the boulderfields and rockslides of the Whites in the perpetual twilight of a bright full moon, five thousand feet in the air, bound for the highest peak in New England: Mount Washington.
Patches and I navigated with a combination of luck and skill. (My luck. Her skill.) Our headlamps were only necessary for the ground immediatly underfoot, all else was visible in it's bright, chinese lantern light.
Occasionally Patches would take a side trail and hit a summit that the AT bypassed. I should note that she is a ludicrously stronger hiker than me. (She did just complete a through hike after all, and I am merely a month into mine) I was going over mostly level ground, walking ridges and winding around peaks while she went up and over the top, and usually beat me to our meeting place. She kept up a running monolouge: her life story, hikes she had hiked, gear, food, the usual hiker conversations.
Meanwhile I contributed to the procedings with the occasional affirmative grunt or gasp inbetween muffled curses as I slipped and slid all around the mountain side. She was glad for the company. I was merely glad to be surviving the hike.
After five or six miles I was flagging badly. After a month of this, my body shuts down when the sun does, and the time was now 2:15.
We parted ways at the base of Mt. Washington. She had another six or seven hours of hiking to do and several more peaks to bag, while my final desitination, the summit of Washington, was merely a mile and a half away.
I watched her headlamp climb the mountainside until it vanished at the peak. I pulled out my quilt, wrapped it around myself, and slid to the ground at the base of a cairn. I mixed up some lemonade and had a snickers bar. I looked up at the sky.
The stars were few and washed out in the moonlight, partially obscured by whispy clouds running across the sky like finger marks on glass.
It was quiet.
No, it was silent. Totally silent. No crickets, birds, airplanes, cars, engines, voices, background hums and drones and whines...nothing. Here I was at the base of a mountain with the officially recognized worst weather in the country, and not a breath of wind stirred. Try to remember the last time you were in absolute and total silence. I bet you can't do it. I couldn't either, until that moment.
I sat there for hours, just being, thinking, existing.
At four I hiked up the last mile and a half to the summit. Washington is an unsual mountain for the AT...it has a road and a cog train that leads to the top, a visitors center, a muesem, in short it is a tourist attraction. But I had the entire mountain to myself as the sun rose up over the lesser peaks. I saw the clouds move in as the rocks heated up, crashing in slow motion against the crags like the worlds softest, gentliest tsunami. I saw the oranges and reds and yellows of sunrise tint the greys and greens of the mountain with a subtle sepia. I listened to the mountain slowly wake up: the jingle of keys as the buildings were unlocked, the first hints of engine noise, the far off whistle of the cog train as it steamed up the mountain.
Soon the tourists arrived and swarmed the peak, taking pictures, laughing, scolding children. The lady at the muesem let me in for free since I was the first one there. I ate two bowls of clam chowder, donated to me by a family from Birmingham, Alabama. (A swell of pride for my native south warms the nooks and crannies of my heart-thank you family from Alabama. I hope you are reading this. You made an already great day that much better)
But the best thing, the most awesome thing of all is this: Mt. Washington is swamped by clouds most days of the year. Something about the difference in moisture at the high elevations. Regardless, here is the fact that will remain with me for the rest of my life. The clouds moved in at seven, before anybody else was on the mountain. Nobody saw anything, any kind of view, all day long.
I am the only person that saw the view from Mt. Washington that day.
Of course I paid the price. I still had seven miles to hike that day, and I hadn't slept in more than twenty four hours. It rained, of course, as it has every day since I've been in New Hampshire. The trail went back to kicking my butt in every possible way. My knees started aching, my feet were swollen, and my stomach rolled with the pressure of unfamiliar food.
But for just a while, just a few hours, Mt. Washington was all mine. And I will always remember it.
Happy Trails,
Pawn
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