Mt. Garfield (5/48)
Oct. 14th, 2006 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jtniehofAfter a somewhat chilly night, I woke up for good about six as the croo got busy in the kitchen, so put a few clothes on and went to sit in the common room and watch the sun rise over Franconia Ridge.
For reveille at 6:30, Emma brought out her flute and played the rest of the guests awake, the whole croo ending with "Good morning everyone!" The rest of the hut started stirring afterwards, and by 7 we were sitting at breakfast: cream of wheat, scrambled eggs, and cranberry juice.
Breakfast conversation was inspiring: one couple discussed winter hiking and their experience. The guys who'd carried the wine over the ridge had apparently had all sorts of adventures. One mountain biked the length of the great wall, with no maps or knowledge of any Chinese language. He navigated with I believe the 5 yuan note, with a picture of the wall: if he reached a point where the wall disappeared for awhile, he'd find someone and point at the note. And a gentleman who was up with his high school aged daughter talked about hiking in Nepal, with cheap lodging and food.
As we wrapped up breakfast, Emma read off the weather report from Mount Washington, in much the same tone as she had read off the dinner and breakfast menus.
As breakfast ended, the croo put on an atrocious (I hope intentionally) skit, with the mob family sitting around and discussing the proper way to fold blankets and the importance of tipping the croo (first folding the bills like the blanket).
We finished up, grabbed gear, and bid farewell to the croo.
Given we knew the trail was highly rugged, icy, and long, we set off at an easy pace. Coming through the col and back up towards the peak of Lafayette, we got a shot of the hut.
Despite the easy pace, we summitted in only slightly less time than we had the day before, when rushing. This was a very important lesson: over exertion does not gain us nearly enough time to be worth it. From the summit, we bid farewell to the father-daughter team, who were continuing south to finish the classic loop via Falling Waters. We set our sights north to the Garfield Ridge Trail...fortunately with the wind mostly at our backs.
The ridgeline was a long, challenging, and gorgeous scramble. We could always see Garfield Ridge below us, but had very little idea of how far we'd have to descend, each little knob blocking our view to the bottom. Wind, ice, cold, and blue sky....
YakTrax would have been nice--in fact, we found some tracks from the people who had come across the opposite direction the previous day.
We broke for lunch (salmon and cream cheese on bagels) once we were below treeline, with nice views back up to the ridge and out into the north country.
After several hours alone, we passed someone coming up the Skookumchuck Trail, headed for the summit of Lafayette. Then another long stretch of solitude, lots of up and down in the trees with some mud. The trail was fantastically rugged, but a look back to Franconia Ridge showed how much elevation we had lost.
This was a perfect day of hiking, but very rapidly tiring. As we started to scale Garfield proper, we ran into a woman who was obviously stretched beyond her endurance. Her husband caught up shortly. They were looking for a trail along Garfield Pond which was on his GPS maps, but not on the AMC maps--and he had checked those as well, but didn't think it was an issue that one of his maps didn't show the trail he wanted. I pointed out that only the AMC had up-to-date trail data, and DeLorme in particular (who provided his maps) had very poor information. He claimed "They all have college kids with GPS's running all over the mountains." His wife asked about continuing along to Skookumchuck, and we assured them it would be much quicker and less strenuous to go back up Garfield and down the Garfield Trail the way they came. He insisted on trying to follow the closed trail anyhow, with the real money quote "I'm not lost; I have a GPS!"
We paused for more bagels a minute or two later, and they caught up as we finished--so they were smart and went back to the trail. Then we found a nice sheer ledge, properly white blazed as part of the AT.
Yes, the trail is right up there...there's a narrow ledge you can't make out until you're right against it.
The summit is actually on a spur off the AT; we looked around for awhile down to Thirteen Falls by the base of Owl's Head
and out north
and of course the obligatory summit shot--five!
My hair was braided, and still blowing in my face like that...'twas windy. The footings of the old fire tower took up most of the summit, making it a bit frightening to scramble about. I wanted to pull up on top of it, but wasn't sure with the wind.
Back to the AT and down...the light was already changing in quality, as we were descending the north face of the mountain. That also made it fantastically icy and slow going. After passing the Garfield shelter, we faced probably the most rugged piece of AT we'd hit yet. The spring for the shelter flowed straight down the AT, and the trail just disappeared when viewed from above.
From here on it was continued rough footing with some ice over a few rises in the ridge. Coming out of the shadow of Garfield made it all much more pleasant, looking out through the trees in the fading light.
"Fading light" was the problem...dinner was at 6, and we were running slow. Lovely as the col between us and the hut was, it looked further and further away.
We hit the Gale River trail, half a mile from the hut, at about 5:20 and decided to run. It was a tough, steep trail to run on, but just as I was getting tired we hit the Frost Trail and turned up it. We burst onto the scene, apparently scaring the heck out of everyone there. It was 5:45, almost exactly the same time we arrived at Greenleaf the day before. Nobody talked to us, everyone seemingly already broken up into groups. The Saturday night group was a bit different...we later found that everyone had hiked up the Gale River trail that day and was shocked at the distance we had covered for the day.
After we claimed bunks and laid things out to dry, I dropped shoes and socks and sat in the common room to moleskin some hotspots. We had just about enough time for that before the bell rang and the croo called out "Dinner!"
Bread was an herb and cheese; soup was a beef vegetable. Dinner was turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, and green beans. Dessert was a chocolate-chip-topped bar. Good, but not as impressive as the meal at Greenleaf (sorry!) We did have a full house. Sadly conversation wasn't nearly as lively as it had been Friday night...very different crowd, again. The Friday night crowd was probably mentally comparing the hut experience to being out in a tent boiling water over an alky stove; the Saturday night crowd probably was comparing to a full-service ski lodge.
After dinner was quiet. I mucked about with contacts and gear, then sat for Maia's naturalist presentation on the geologic history of the Whites. A fair bit was review for me, but I just sat back and enjoyed the talk. She was giving basic geology and applications in thirty minutes, to a lay audience, with only a whiteboard...highly effective. I buttonholed her afterwards and complimented her on it (which seemed to fluster her a bit.)
As lights-out approached, it began to snow. We turned in after watching for awhile, afraid that the snow would ice up the trail enough to disrupt our plans for the next day.
Breakfast conversation was inspiring: one couple discussed winter hiking and their experience. The guys who'd carried the wine over the ridge had apparently had all sorts of adventures. One mountain biked the length of the great wall, with no maps or knowledge of any Chinese language. He navigated with I believe the 5 yuan note, with a picture of the wall: if he reached a point where the wall disappeared for awhile, he'd find someone and point at the note. And a gentleman who was up with his high school aged daughter talked about hiking in Nepal, with cheap lodging and food.
As we wrapped up breakfast, Emma read off the weather report from Mount Washington, in much the same tone as she had read off the dinner and breakfast menus.
As breakfast ended, the croo put on an atrocious (I hope intentionally) skit, with the mob family sitting around and discussing the proper way to fold blankets and the importance of tipping the croo (first folding the bills like the blanket).
We finished up, grabbed gear, and bid farewell to the croo.
Given we knew the trail was highly rugged, icy, and long, we set off at an easy pace. Coming through the col and back up towards the peak of Lafayette, we got a shot of the hut.
Despite the easy pace, we summitted in only slightly less time than we had the day before, when rushing. This was a very important lesson: over exertion does not gain us nearly enough time to be worth it. From the summit, we bid farewell to the father-daughter team, who were continuing south to finish the classic loop via Falling Waters. We set our sights north to the Garfield Ridge Trail...fortunately with the wind mostly at our backs.
The ridgeline was a long, challenging, and gorgeous scramble. We could always see Garfield Ridge below us, but had very little idea of how far we'd have to descend, each little knob blocking our view to the bottom. Wind, ice, cold, and blue sky....
YakTrax would have been nice--in fact, we found some tracks from the people who had come across the opposite direction the previous day.
We broke for lunch (salmon and cream cheese on bagels) once we were below treeline, with nice views back up to the ridge and out into the north country.
After several hours alone, we passed someone coming up the Skookumchuck Trail, headed for the summit of Lafayette. Then another long stretch of solitude, lots of up and down in the trees with some mud. The trail was fantastically rugged, but a look back to Franconia Ridge showed how much elevation we had lost.
This was a perfect day of hiking, but very rapidly tiring. As we started to scale Garfield proper, we ran into a woman who was obviously stretched beyond her endurance. Her husband caught up shortly. They were looking for a trail along Garfield Pond which was on his GPS maps, but not on the AMC maps--and he had checked those as well, but didn't think it was an issue that one of his maps didn't show the trail he wanted. I pointed out that only the AMC had up-to-date trail data, and DeLorme in particular (who provided his maps) had very poor information. He claimed "They all have college kids with GPS's running all over the mountains." His wife asked about continuing along to Skookumchuck, and we assured them it would be much quicker and less strenuous to go back up Garfield and down the Garfield Trail the way they came. He insisted on trying to follow the closed trail anyhow, with the real money quote "I'm not lost; I have a GPS!"
We paused for more bagels a minute or two later, and they caught up as we finished--so they were smart and went back to the trail. Then we found a nice sheer ledge, properly white blazed as part of the AT.
Yes, the trail is right up there...there's a narrow ledge you can't make out until you're right against it.
The summit is actually on a spur off the AT; we looked around for awhile down to Thirteen Falls by the base of Owl's Head
and out north
and of course the obligatory summit shot--five!
My hair was braided, and still blowing in my face like that...'twas windy. The footings of the old fire tower took up most of the summit, making it a bit frightening to scramble about. I wanted to pull up on top of it, but wasn't sure with the wind.
Back to the AT and down...the light was already changing in quality, as we were descending the north face of the mountain. That also made it fantastically icy and slow going. After passing the Garfield shelter, we faced probably the most rugged piece of AT we'd hit yet. The spring for the shelter flowed straight down the AT, and the trail just disappeared when viewed from above.
From here on it was continued rough footing with some ice over a few rises in the ridge. Coming out of the shadow of Garfield made it all much more pleasant, looking out through the trees in the fading light.
"Fading light" was the problem...dinner was at 6, and we were running slow. Lovely as the col between us and the hut was, it looked further and further away.
We hit the Gale River trail, half a mile from the hut, at about 5:20 and decided to run. It was a tough, steep trail to run on, but just as I was getting tired we hit the Frost Trail and turned up it. We burst onto the scene, apparently scaring the heck out of everyone there. It was 5:45, almost exactly the same time we arrived at Greenleaf the day before. Nobody talked to us, everyone seemingly already broken up into groups. The Saturday night group was a bit different...we later found that everyone had hiked up the Gale River trail that day and was shocked at the distance we had covered for the day.
After we claimed bunks and laid things out to dry, I dropped shoes and socks and sat in the common room to moleskin some hotspots. We had just about enough time for that before the bell rang and the croo called out "Dinner!"
- Cricket, the hutmaster (later found out from the huts blog that her real name was Christina). She had a wooden duck (think of the sort that gets stuck in flower beds) that she called "Welcome Duck", presumably due to the "Welcome" banner across it.
- Ben, Assistant Hutmaster, nearly always wearing a baseball cap with giant stuffed moose antlers, who claimed to hate Welcome Duck and terrorized Cricket by stealing the duck and running around.
- Eliza, hair pulled back and lower half a deep purple.
- Maia, naturalist and cutie (which makes me think maybe I shouldn't make these public...).
Bread was an herb and cheese; soup was a beef vegetable. Dinner was turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, and green beans. Dessert was a chocolate-chip-topped bar. Good, but not as impressive as the meal at Greenleaf (sorry!) We did have a full house. Sadly conversation wasn't nearly as lively as it had been Friday night...very different crowd, again. The Friday night crowd was probably mentally comparing the hut experience to being out in a tent boiling water over an alky stove; the Saturday night crowd probably was comparing to a full-service ski lodge.
After dinner was quiet. I mucked about with contacts and gear, then sat for Maia's naturalist presentation on the geologic history of the Whites. A fair bit was review for me, but I just sat back and enjoyed the talk. She was giving basic geology and applications in thirty minutes, to a lay audience, with only a whiteboard...highly effective. I buttonholed her afterwards and complimented her on it (which seemed to fluster her a bit.)
As lights-out approached, it began to snow. We turned in after watching for awhile, afraid that the snow would ice up the trail enough to disrupt our plans for the next day.