Not Moosing Around

Okay, so, today is Saturday, August 17, and I woke up at Hikers Welcome hostel and had breakfast at a picnic table outside. There's a big a group of people every day who slack pack Mount Moosilauke. And for whatever reason, there's this huge mystique around how difficult Moosilauke is. So Hikers Welcome basically suggests that you slack pack it, and they offer that service for hikers. What they do is they take you north, and you hike over Moosilauke from north to south. If you do it in that direction, when you come out on the road at the end, you can just walk back to Hikers Welcome, rather than having to wait for a shuttle. The hostel is that close to the AT.

Since I was heading to the Notch hostel tonight, rather than going back to Hikers Welcome, I decided to take all my gear with me and hike from south to north over Moosilauke, and then I’d make my way to Kinsman Notch, which is on the other side. And then the Notch hostel folks would come and pick me up there.

One of the variables about getting over Moosilauke is that it’s really steep. It’s a very steep climb up, and then it's a very steep climb down, so it's difficult to gauge how long it will take. And one of the factors I was concerned about was whether or not I could make it over Moosilauke with a full pack and still manage to make it down to Kinsman Notch by the time the shuttle from the hostel would come to pick me up. They have scheduled pickups at various places around the area, and I’d have to make it up and over the mountain and into Kinsman Notch by 4:30. So that was a bit stressful for me.

I left Hikers Welcome and hit the trail by around 7:30, and almost immediately, I was confronted with a rather large stream crossing. If I’d read the comments on the Far Out app, I might have been at least somewhat prepared for it, but unfortunately, I just hadn’t assumed there’d be something like a big river crossing 100 yards after I started out on the trail this morning.

So that took me a little while to navigate. Some people just take their shoes off and walk across, but since I had a long day ahead of me, I didn't want to do that. I was able to get about halfway across the river to a little bit of an island in the middle. From there, I kind of hiked up the stream as far as the little island would take me, and then I hopped over some rocks to get to the other side and bushwhacked my way back to the AT. All that took probably 20 minutes, and it might have been faster and easier to just wade across in the first place, but I still had dry feet, and that’s what mattered to me.

The trail then went up and around some roads, and I had a bit of a road walk before entering the Moosilauke official park area. There was a parking lot there and all that, because a lot of people do the mountain as a day hike. Even though the weather today wasn't particularly nice, there was a fair number of people there getting ready to day hike.

[Wife note: Rob texted me this pic at about 8:20 a.m., so this must have happened pretty early in the day, though he doesn't mention it in the post. I mean, it's only 1,800 miles, right?]

I got to work making my way up Moosilauke, and before long, I bumped into Groovy and Half Boot. The three of us sort of played leapfrog all the way up, and I don't know if it was all the buildup that had made us expect it to be horrible, or maybe people just got it wrong, or the hostel wanted to scare hikers into signing on to do a slack pack with them, or what, but it was challenging and a very long climb up, but it actually wasn't that bad.

Almost before I knew it, I was on the summit of Moosilauke with a bunch of day hikers. And not long after that, I started to see people who were slack packing, coming the opposite direction. I crossed paths with Swiss and a few other hikers from the hostel. I was definitely ahead of schedule at that point, but since there weren't any views, thanks to the fog, there was no reason for me to hang out on the peak, so I just started heading on down.

 [Wife note: Okay, I’m sorry, but 😐with these “steps”?! This would have been the end of my hike. I’d still be up on that damn mountain.]

As I’d expected, it was a very, very steep descent, so it was slow going. It was also pretty slick because of the bad weather. The best visual highlight was the cascading waterfalls that were right next to the trail for a good portion of the way down. There were some places where if the weather were good, it’d be nice to just drop your pack and take a dip in the water. But today, it was raining, so that wasn’t going to happen.

Fortunately, I was making good time, so I got down to the parking lot at Kinsman Notch by 2 o’clock, a good two and a half hours ahead of schedule. And to make things even better, I was thrilled to find some Trail Magic there. A very nice couple from Milford, New Hampshire, had set up and were starting to cook up some hamburgers. I was chatting with them, and a guy who was doing a slack pack from the north, named Rip, showed up, followed right after by Groovy and Half Boot. And apparently, both Rip and Groovy had been texting with the shuttle driver, so pretty soon after they arrived, the shuttle showed up. So that was a huge streak of luck. The nice couple who were doing the Trail Magic quickly handed me a hamburger, and I put a little ketchup on it, jumped into the shuttle, and snarfed it down.

So the Notch hostel is very different from the Hikers Welcome hostel, which — don’t get me wrong — it’s a fine hostel, but it's got sort of a different vibe to it. The Notch is this really nice home that’s been converted into a hostel. It’s got two kitchens and multiple bathrooms and lots of bunk rooms and just overall, it's a much nicer place. And I actually checked in for three nights, because I'm going to do a rather large slack pack tomorrow and then take a zero the next day to recover.

It was so great to get to the hostel and claim my bed and just kind of relax for a little bit. I went to the grocery store to get some food for the next couple of nights, including more ice cream, and I had a chance to sit down and hang out with some people, which has been really nice.

On my way back from the grocery store, I saw Pathfinder, whom I haven’t seen since Virginia, and he had some interesting stories he shared with me back at the hostel. He went to a wedding, so he had to get off trail for a few days. And then he got poison ivy in every area that you would never want to get it, so he had to get off trail again to deal with that. And then he got some sort of infection, which forced him to get off trail yet again. So at this point, he's kind of feeling like he's cheated death a few times, and he's ready for anything that Maine has to throw at him. It was really great to see him again and to get to sit down and have a beer with him. It was a nice little reunion of sorts.

And earlier, when I was getting the tour of the hostel, I saw Moniker. He’d taken a zero that day and was leaving the next morning, but I got a chance to catch up with him, too, which was really great.

Groovy and Half Boot are here now, along with a whole host of other hikers that I hadn't met before. So it’s been fun to just sit in the common area and listen to people talk about their hikes. Tomorrow, I’ll be doing a big 16- or 17-mile slack pack over the Kinsmans, which promises to be challenging, so we'll see how that goes. It’ll be nice to come back here afterward, for sure.

New shoes! That's pair number four.