A Beeline to the Barn (Door)

Today is August 15, and right now, I’m at the Barn Door hostel. I’ll talk a little more about it later, but this is just a phenomenal place to stay. You don't even need to be a hiker to come here, either.

Anyway, I woke up this morning at the Trapper John campsite and shelter. I’d set my alarm for 5 o'clock, because I needed to cover 17 miles to get down to the pickup spot for the hostel. But doing 17 miles in New Hampshire terrain by 4:30 is a bit of a tall order, which is why I woke up extra early to give myself the best possible chance of making it. Unfortunately, when you wake up that early in the morning, it's still dark, so that was a little depressing. But I got up nonetheless, though I hit the snooze a few times. I couldn't help it.

The Trapper John campsite was about a third of a mile off the AT, and I wanted to be on the trail by 6:30, so I left the campsite at about 6:15 and made it a few minutes ahead of schedule. Not long after I left the shelter, I caught up with Rainbow, and he and I hiked down to the road crossing together. It wasn't very far, maybe two miles.

So I'll occasionally check the Far Out app to see whether there might be a bit of a shortcut to the next trailhead, and I don’t do this because I’m trying to avoid hiking the AT, but sometimes, making miles quickly is more important than staying true to the trail. And today happened to be one of those days.

So I looked at the app and saw that there was gravel road that ran parallel to the AT for about a mile. We took that route, knocked it out pretty fast, and then got back to the trail. From there, we had a pretty muddy stretch that turned into a very steep incline up Smart Mountain.

At the peak of Smart Mountain, there's a big fire tower, but neither Rainbow nor I had much interest in climbing to the top of it. For one thing, it looked pretty sketchy. Plus, time was of the essence, and we didn't want to waste a lot of it getting up to the top.

So we continued onward, and we were making good time. We’d made it up Smart Mountain at a good clip, and we got out of camp early this morning, and by the time we got down to bottom of smart Mountain, it was around 11:30, and we’d already gone about 10 miles. So I definitely hit 10 miles before noon today.

We hiked on a little further and came to a gravel road. So we stopped to look at our maps and noticed that there was a road walk that would get us around Cube Mountain. Now, Cube Mountain has a truly punishing ascent, and technically, I probably had enough time to do it, but I didn’t have a ton of wiggle room. So Rainbow and I plotted a course and decided to take the road. Mileage-wise, I think it actually might have been longer than the official AT section, but whenever you walk on a gravel road, you tend to be able to maintain a pretty good pace. So we decided to go for it.

I didn't have any cell service at the time, so I used my Garmin to send S. a message to say, Hey, we're going to be on a road walk for a little while, but don't worry if you don't hear from me, because I don't have a cell signal, but I'll get in touch with you as soon as I can.

We headed out, and the road we took actually goes perpendicular to the AT for quite some time. So, we were hiking along, and I heard my Garmin ding, and it was a message from S., who was apparently watching our progress via my tracking device, and she was like, “You appear to be moving away from the trail. Is that okay?”

And of course, it was fine, but it was kind of funny, because I’d mentioned to Rainbow that my friend Scott typically kept a close eye on my Garmin tracking and might notice that we’d veered off trail and send me a message. And as soon as I’d said that, I got the note from S. [Wife note: In my defense, this is what I was seeing on the screen, so I had to wonder.]

Rainbow has a service from Gaia, and it has a much much better topographical map than my Garmin has, and it shows the roads. So we were using it to help us navigate around these remote back areas.

We eventually reached a road crossing, and apparently, the road hadn't been driven on for decades or something. It was totally overgrown, so at one point, we were sort of bushwhacking our way through, all the while keeping an eagle eye on the Gaia app to make sure we were still heading the right way.

In the end, the route we chose might have actually been more challenging than just staying on the trail the whole time would have been, but at least it was an adventure! We rejoined the AT and hiked down to the road crossing where we were going to be picked up. I had cell signal for a couple miles before we got to the road, so I texted the hostel, saying, “Hey, I'm gonna be down earlier than I had anticipated.”

And I’d just assumed that when I got to the road, I'd have service, but I didn't. Rainbow and I popped out onto the road and were greeted by a thru-hiker named Navajo Jo, who’s a woman from the Navajo Nation in Arizona. I had originally met her way back in North Carolina, I think, but she's been doing quite a bit of slack packing, because she hurt her foot. Her husband has been helping her slack through New England.

She was extremely generous and gave us Gatorades, and we sat and chatted for a bit while I attempted to communicate with the Barn Door hostel by sending S. messages via my Garmin that she would then try to relay via text and email. We weren’t making much progress, it didn’t seem like, because she wasn’t getting any responses. But then a hiker named Jaybird showed up, and he was like, “Oh yeah, Barn Door is going to be here at 3:30 to pick me up.” And I was like, Yes! That really made my day.

The shuttle driver for the Barn Door hostel arrived, and Jaybird, a hiker named Stillwater, another hiker named Thimbles, and I all jumped into the shuttle together. On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at Walmart for a quick resupply.

So the Barn Door hostel is a really great place. It was started because there's a great rock climbing face nearby. So it was initially meant to cater specifically to rock climbers, but the hostel eventually extended its business to include thru-hikers, which is great. Tonight, there's a good mix of rock climbers and hikers here. And it's just a phenomenal hostel.

It's got a bit of a Hawaiian surf vibe to it. I think I'd like to have my house be like this at some point. I took a lot of pictures. There are some really nice dogs here, too. Maybe when my hike’s over, I'll just come back here and move in. I'll be back on the trail tomorrow, but I think tonight I’ll have an absolutely lovely stay here at the Barn Door.

Appa [Wife note: I kindly asked Rob/Patch to stuff her in his backpack when he left.]

Goose