Hiker Hangout

I woke up this morning (August 16) at the Barn Door hostel, and even though I was in a bunkroom with three other bunks, I was lucky enough to have it all to myself last night. The Barn Door is unlike a lot of other hiker hostels. I think I mentioned in yesterday’s post that it caters mostly to rock climbers who come to the area to scale a rock face that's about 1 mile away from the hostel — whereas the AT is more like 18 miles away. Eventually, the hostel just expanded its business beyond climbers to include hikers.

Appa at the Barn Door hostel [WN: Waiting for me to come pick her up, no doubt]

I got up, had some breakfast, and caught the 7:30 shuttle, which got me back to the trail by 8 o'clock. I was only planning on doing about 10 miles today.

So, I hiked those 10 miles, which were really uneventful, and got to the road, at which point, I realized that there was a hostel about a quarter mile up the road, called the Hiker's Welcome. And I was just like, You know what? Forget it. I'm just going to go to another hostel. Why not continue the Platinum Blaze?

Hikers Welcome doesn't take reservations. It’s much more of a loose, Bohemian-type joint. They have a two-story barn on the property, and it's just packed full of bunk beds. Fortunately for me, when I showed up at around 2 o’clock, there were still a couple left. They have 30 beds total, and I think there were just three openings when I got there. I claimed the last bottom bunk on the second floor.

And I just decided to sort of chill out for the rest of the afternoon. The previous few hiking days have been pretty strenuous. And today was technically the last day of the quote-unquote easy portion of New Hampshire. Tomorrow, I'll be hiking Mount Moosilauke, so want to get some good rest ahead of that.

All afternoon, I’ve been bumping into hikers that I’ve met before at different points on the trail, and more people keep arriving. First, I saw Groovy and Half Boot, who I initially met in Connecticut. They’re a boyfriend-girlfriend couple, and we’ve all been sort of hiking in the same general area for a while.

Matcha, Groovy, and Half Boot [Photo credit: Christopher Marshburn]

Rainbow is here, and I know I’ve mentioned him in some of the more recent posts. Thimbles and Stillwater are here as well. I met them when we caught the shuttle to the Barn Door hostel together.

I also bumped into Not Yet, who I did a slack pack day with, along with Poles, back in New York. And there’s a guy here who rattled off about five or six trail names, and we looked at each other and knew that we’d hiked together a little bit, but we couldn't picture where. Later, it hit me that we’d hiked over Bear Mountain, and I’d run into him when I was hiking with Poles. I think one of the names he said was Gator. He’s a super nice guy. I believe we both camped at the Greymore Spiritual Center, too.

I’ve seen Ma and Pa Wampus. I originally met them back in the Smokies, so I've hiked with them on and off for close to 1,500 miles now. 2fer and Shenanigans also showed up. I met those guys in Connecticut, the day that Jon Bauer dropped me off at the Riga shelter.

Swiss is here, and I officially met Swiss at the Barn Door hostel, but I’d actually crossed paths with him a couple of days previous. There’s kind of a funny story behind his name. At one point, he put a block of Swiss cheese in his pack, and it slipped to the bottom, and he forgot about it. Until the smell reminded him. It had become this gooey, green, gross mess. After that, everyone started calling him Swiss.

Swiss [Photo credit: Christopher Marshburn]

There's a hiker here named Huckleberry who was working for a time at the Stanimals hostel in Glasgow, Virginia. He’d had to get off trail for a little while because of an injury, so he was doing some shuttling for Stanimals, which is how I met him.

Also, Miss Janet is here with her dog, Dexter. She’s doing some shuttle driving. There are actually a lot of people I know staying here tonight, which is pretty fun.

Oh, there’s one more — this hiker named Doc. He's a 60-year-old German guy I first met back in New Jersey, when we shared a campsite. There are some other people around, too, that I’ve just sort of casually bumped into but never learned their names.

Not long after I’d gotten settled in, Miss Janet drove us all to a local store, sort of a gas station-slash-convenience store-slash-general store-type place a few miles down the road. So I was able to get some food, a couple beers for back at the hostel, and a little bit of resupply.

The way that Hikers Welcome is set up is that there are picnic tables and little awnings and everything all over the place. So you just kind of pick a spot and have a seat and eat and hang out with everyone. It's a real communal atmosphere and very conducive to socializing. I talked to Ma Wampus for a bit. I talked to 2Fer and Shenanigans. And I chatted a while with Groovy and Half Boot.

It was starting to get dark, and I was walking over to a picnic table when I saw Doc, who was sitting on his own. He had a six-pack of Coors in front of him and took out a bottle and started waving it at me and telling me to come over. So I did, and he opened the bottle and plopped it down in front of me, which I thought was kind of funny.

After I sat down, he started explaining all the other long-distance trips he's done. He's hiked in New Zealand and Australia, and he’s done the Pacific Crest Trail, which is where he got his name. Apparently, he had a really good first aid kit, and a lot of people were getting some pretty bad blisters, and he was patching them up. Thus, the name Doc.

I’m going to bed tonight much later than I was hoping for, but I think that's just kind of how things go around there. Tomorrow, I’ll be hiking up and over Mount Moosilauke. Some people pronounce it Moose-uh-lock-key, but I think the general consensus is that it's Moose-uh-lock.

It's sort of the first major mountain in the Whites, and it should be an interesting experience. A lot of people are choosing to slack pack Moosilauke tomorrow, but I’m going to be carrying my full pack, because I have a reservation at the Notch hostel tomorrow night. It wouldn’t make any sense to slack my way back to Hikers Welcome and then take a car over the Notch. So we'll see how it all goes.