Heavenly Haven

Guess what? When I woke up this morning (August 21), it was still raining. It rained all night. Shame on me, but I kept my food in my tent with me all night, which is kind of a big faux pas, but I obviously lived to tell the tale. I think a lot of the rain was because the clouds were low, and the campsite was over 4,000 feet, so we were in the clouds, which meant that it was just perpetually raining. And you know, setting your tent up in the rain is one thing, but taking it down when it's raining is an entirely different thing. There's just no possible way of keeping anything dry.

I ate breakfast in my tent, trying to delay the inevitable as long as possible, but eventually, I had to get going. I did my best to keep everything as dry while I was packing up, but it was somewhat of a futile effort. And after I’d shoved everything into my backpack, it was easily several pounds heavier than it had been yesterday because of all the water.

I’ve definitely realized that I’m going to need to get some more gear to help me with the cold and wet conditions. Some of the other hikers at the shelter and I were discussing how we feel like we can handle wet. And we can handle cold. But when you have both cold and wet, it's definitely a different dynamic, and it's a lot more dangerous. So the next time I'm anywhere near a town, I need to get some more warm clothing. I also need a better raincoat.

I left the Garfield Ridge shelter and headed down the trail a little bit, maybe 100 yards or so, and I came to a literal waterfall. And that waterfall was the trail. The trail just went very steeply downward, and it was totally flooded. I was talking to this guy Turbo later, and both of us had had the same reaction when we walked up to it. You just kind of look around, because you can't believe that what you’re seeing in front of you could be right. You’re supposed to walk down the waterfall? But I looked down and saw a tree right in the middle of the waterfall with a white blaze on it, so that confirmed it. It was definitely part of the trail.

To be fair, this wasn’t a complete surprise. I’d sort of suspected that I might run into something like this, based on some of the videos I’d watched before I started hiking. But I didn’t fully believe it. And I'm sure that in drier conditions, it's probably a reasonable — or at least a more reasonable — section of the trail, but since it’s been raining practically nonstop for the past several days, it was a very aggressive torrent. I had to decide whether I was going to just forge ahead and get my feet wet or was I going to try to keep them dry somehow. I generally try to keep my feet dry if there’s any chance I might be able to pull it off, and I tried my best this time, but it turned out to be impossible.

The waterfall accounted for about a third of a mile, which would normally take me, you know, about 10 minutes, but getting through it actually took me close to 45 minutes. I talked to a couple other hikers about it later, and it turns out that 45 minutes is considered a fairly reasonable amount of time to navigate that stretch. So I guess that was good.

That was not a particularly fun way to start the day, though. I was already wet. I was already cold. It was still raining. From there, I managed to hike 2.7 miles to the Galehead Hut, which is part of the Appalachian Mountain Club Hut Network. All these huts are just beautiful, and they’re spaced about a day's hike apart from one another throughout the White Mountains — or what I suppose would generally be a day’s hike for someone other than a thru-hiker.

You have to pay to stay in the bunk houses at these huts, and they’re notoriously not cheap. Each hut has a crew that lives there and cooks dinner and breakfast for the guests and takes care of the day-to-day chores and such. The huts also serve as sort of way stations for hikers passing by to come in, warm up, have a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, maybe use the restroom, and just relax for a little bit or get out of the weather or whatever.

When I got to the hut, I was very cold and very wet, and I realized that it had taken me three hours to hike just 2.7 miles, which is a record low for me so far. And at that point, I just didn't have the energy or the motivation or anything else to keep going. I was totally spent, and it was so comfortable in the hut and so welcoming that I went up to the guy who was working there at the time and asked, “Hey, do you have any bunks for tonight?”

He told me that the occupancy rate was really low, so he could actually sell me a bunk if I wanted it. It was only 11 o'clock, but I had already kind of mentally checked out of hiking for the day. I was like, You know what? This is it for me today. I'm just going to stay here at the hut and be warm and dry and get fed dinner and sleep in a nice bed.

If I had kept going, I would have definitely ended up either sleeping in a very crowded shelter or setting up and sleeping in my tent, which was totally wet, inside and out. And as I mentioned earlier, I didn't feel adequately prepared, gear- and clothing-wise, to spend a cold night in a wet tent. So I decided that it was definitely worth the money, even though it felt indulgent. It would certainly be much safer.

I spent the afternoon talking to different people at the hut. Some of them were day hikers passing by, some were people who were spending the night at the hut, and some were thru-hikers that were just stopping for a break.

Sometimes, the huts offer a work-for-stay option, where hikers can help with some of the cleanup or meal prep or some other chore that needs to be done, in exchange for getting to sleep in the bunk house and eat the meals that are offered. I was not in a position to get the work-for-stay, so I just went ahead and paid for a bunk. Apparently, the way the work-for-stay option works is that the two hikers that arrive closest to 4 p.m. get it. There were some other hikers at the hut who were hoping to get selected for the work-for-stay, but they’d gotten there in the midafternoon.

Now, it doesn't seem fair to me that if a hiker arrives at three, and then another hiker arrives at 3:50, the one who arrives at 3:50 gets the work-for-stay, and the one who was already at the hut doesn’t. My guess is that they want to prevent hikers from getting to huts early and just hanging around and waiting for the work-to-stay.

So two guys came in just before 4:00, put their hats in the ring for the work-for-stay, and got it. And one of the jobs they were given was to entertain all the people staying at the hut that night by discussing their thru-hike.

There were two other thru-hikers, in addition to me, who decided to pay for bunks. One of them was Rainbow, and the other was Salamander, both of whom I’ve mentioned before. When Rainbow arrived at the hut, he was thinking along the same lines as I had, just, Forget it. I need to be inside and warm, and I need to sleep in a real bed, and I don't care — I'm just going to pay for it. And Salamander had the exact same experience.

For dinner, they served us a nice meal of pulled pork with a beautiful salad and green beans and mashed potatoes. And we had black bean soup with focaccia bread to start things off. I was in seventh heaven. It was so great.

The two guys who were told to give a presentation on their hike as part of the work-for-stay were Bumble and Hot Rod. After dinner, they stood up in front of all the guests at the hut and talked about their hiking experience so far and did a big Q&A session, and then it was time for bed.

So, I didn't really cover a ton of miles today or manage to get my gear dried out, but I did have a relaxing afternoon and got to talk to a lot of nice people. Now I get to go sleep in a real bed. We'll see what tomorrow brings, and hopefully, it won’t be so wet.