After two lovely days off full of hibachi, brownie Sundaes and yes, one short hike, it was tough to get back on the trail this morning. Even after eating a bacon, egg and cheese with hash brown, I didn’t have the energy to get started. But Tanya had pulled away after dropping me off on the side of the road, so I didn’t really have much of a choice. 

Today was to be my intro to the white mountains. The prerequisite class needed in order to take the higher level classes. I had to summit two mountains today. While neither were technically in the whites, I was told, both were intimidating. Especially the first one – Smart’s mountain. 

In looking at the map, that one looked like it would be a steep climb up. And after climbing up less than a quarter of it, I confirmed. It was a steep climb up. And even though it wasn’t that long, it left me exhausted. 

I climbed up the fire tower atop the mountain, ignoring my encroaching fear of heights and ate a packed out sandwich as I looked out over the mountains around me. It should have been a great view of the whites but smoke from the Canadian forest fires had drifted over, leaving the views to look quite hazy. 

The next climb, Mt Cube was much more gradual. But i still found myself plodding away quite slowly. I finally admitted that I just wasn’t going to snap out of it today. I slowly went up and then slowly went down. But as I was going down, I took a funny step over a root and found myself sprawled on the ground. 

I was unhurt, but frustrated. I sat there for a long while, trying to convince myself that just sleeping right there on the forest floor was probably imprudent. 

I finally made it to camp and was greeted by two overly friendly women who I’d be sharing the space with. They were both teachers, one from New Jersey, the other from Washington who had been introduced by a mutual friend to do adventures tofether. Last year they had done two weeks on the PCT and were now two days into a 2 week section on the AT. 

Unfortunately they did the thing that many section hikers do where they feel they have to prove themselves to you and so I listened for the next two hours as they talked at me about other hikes they had done, made fun of other hikers’ gear that they’d seen so far and told me that normally they’d go further if the trail was just a bit better maintained or they had slept better or any other host of reasons.

It was a fine evening but I wasn’t too sad to be getting into my hammock as it got dark. 

Key stats:

Miles: 16

Elevation gained: 4500

Mile marker: 1790

Ice cream sundaes today: 0