Extra Strength
Today is August 14, and last night, I spent the night in my tent just outside the perimeter of Dartmouth University's athletic complex. I must not have slept very well, or maybe I woke up during the wrong cycle or something, but I just could not manage to wake up today.
My plan this morning was to pack everything up and hike about a mile or two to the Dartmouth Outdoors Club’s home campsite, which they call the Velvet Rocks Shelter, and have breakfast there. I could sit at a table and use the privy there and all that good stuff. So I was up and walking by about 6:30, and unfortunately, the trail went straight up for the next mile. I was already tired and still groggy, so I basically just dragged my butt up there, but I made it.
And the Velvet Rocks campsite turned out to be very nice. I ate breakfast at the picnic table and chatted with a fellow from France who had come over to hike the White Mountains. He’d been hiking southbound and was finishing up and going to be leaving later in the day. Normally, I don’t think people just jump into hiking the Whites like that. They typically need to take a little time building up their trail legs. But this guy apparently just got right to it and did fine. So, good for him.
After I finished breakfast, I continued on my way, and my next task was getting up Moose Mountain, which was a real introduction to New Hampshire. There were a lot of rocks. It was pretty steep, with some nice long ascents.
And as I was hiking, I started thinking about this YouTube video called “Granite State of Mind,” which is based on the “New York State of Mind” song [Wife note: That’d be Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” but you knew that, right?], because this is my first full day in New Hampshire. It's a very funny video, and the song became sort of my internal soundtrack as I was hiking for the first few hours of the day. [WN: Seriously, it’s worth a watch. It’s very clever and pretty hysterical if you’re familiar with New England.]
I somehow managed to make it to the top of Moose Mountain, and I seriously can't overemphasize how unenergetic and lifeless I felt. I was just making terrible time. You know, normally, I’ve been trying to get at least close to hitting 10 miles by noon, but today, I think I was at about seven by noon. I was just flagging the whole time.
When I came down off of Moose Mountain, there was a support van there. Earlier, I’d seen a slender fellow with trekking poles moving south at a pretty good clip, and I’d just thought he was out for a training run of some sort, but then I saw this support van. A nice lady popped out of it as I walked by. She looked very familiar, and it turns out that it was Captain Morgan's mom.
Some of you might remember that there was a guy trying to achieve the fastest known time on the Appalachian Trail earlier this summer, and his trail name was Captain Morgan. He passed through when S. and our friends were doing some Trail Magic in Virginia. I guess he made it to Maine but then injured his hamstring and had to abandon his attempt. So he went back to England to nurse his injury, but his mom stayed behind and is now supporting someone who’s doing a southbound hike. They’re doing it to raise money for charity. I took a picture of the van, and it has the Instagram account on it and all that.
I stopped to talk with her for a while, and she asked, “Has this been a hugely life-changing experience for you?”
And not to diminish my experience or anything, but I had to be honest, and I was just like, “No, actually. I think I've realized that distance hiking might not be for me after all.”
And she said, “Well, in that case, you're showing some real extra strength by continuing.” So I took that as a very big compliment.
Shortly after that, I came across a cooler that someone had left in the woods at the edge of the trailhead, and it was full of soda. And it was one of those things where I just desperately needed something like that, because I’d been feeling so sluggish all day. So I grabbed a Coke and just chugged it. And then I started listening to the episode of the Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast with Will Arnett, which was kind of funny, though I was hoping it would be funnier.
From there, I headed up a climb of about 1,300 feet in just over a mile, which I think is the steepest climb I’ve done so far on the AT, so that full-sugar Coke with caffeine really came in handy. I also had a little energy shot on top of that. So the combo of the podcast, the Coke, and the energy shot certainly helped get me to the top.
There were these little outcroppings up there that are part of something called the Holts Ledges, and they're just beautiful. They provided a really lovely view of the surrounding area, and that was a nice reward for having hiked up that very steep and challenging section of the trail.
I was considering going further than the next shelter, which was just a little bit past the ledges, but I decided that I wasn't really up to the task. So I just called it the day when I got to the Trapper John shelter and campsite. I kept thinking about the old Trapper John MD television show, though I never actually watched it. I have no idea who the Trapper John shelter is named for. [Wife note: All I could find was some general discussion that it was probably someone who used to live in the area, but nothing from any official source.]
By the time I got to the shelter and had set everything up, it was practically dark, so it was good that I hadn't tried to continue on to the next site. But one of the reasons I’d been considering it was that I have a reservation at the Barn Door Hostel tomorrow night, and I didn't want to have a huge hike tomorrow. But now I've got to cover 17 miles over reasonably tough terrain and be at the pickup spot by 4:30.
So I'm a little bit nervous about that. My plan is to get to sleep very soon and get going as early as possible tomorrow morning. All in all, it was a decent first day in New Hampshire. I just wish that I’d had more energy. I guess I'll chalk it up to not sleeping very well. I'm hoping tomorrow I'll have a little bit more in the tank.
