August 13th, 2018, New Hampshire
It was a nice, smooth trail for a number of miles this morning and I had a hard time remembering the last time we enjoyed a trail like this. It’s been a while.
It even passed a giant rock slide that we didn’t have to traverse at all. That made the trail even more enjoyable.
In addition to blueberries there is another fruiting shrub up high in sunny places. The bark and leaves look similar to blueberries but the fruit is red as it ripens. I am wondering if it is a serviceberry plant but am holding off trying the fruit until I find out for sure.
I also notice that New Hampshire marks some tiny trees with white blazes. Before now the markings were always on mature trees. The markings work just as well and I’m guessing the trees will just grow into them.
The hike took me over Zealand Mountain, Mt Guyot, and South Twin Mountain which were a series of ever higher peaks which didn’t have too much downhill between them. They just sort of worked their way higher throughout the day before dropping me back down a bit lower to the place I stopped for the night. There was a good bit of rocky up and down. The rocks were still wet from yesterday but dried slowly as the day went on.
I succeeded in getting eggs, oatmeal, and sausage from Zealand Falls Hut around 9:15 today. That allowed me to save some of my food for tomorrow.
I also stopped at Galehead Hut around 2pm for a bowl of soup. I hoped they had baked goods for sale but were all out except for two small muffins which I bought to eat with the potato leek soup.
I pushed on from the hut for just a couple more hours. I found a nice site, cooked dinner, and camped for the night. I also did a rough inventory of my remaining food. I had about six thousand calories remaining. This would suffice in normal life for three days but for maybe 1.5 days of hiking. I hope to hit the next hut, which may also be my last one, early enough to pick up some extra baked goods to augment my food tomorrow. I should be able to make a resupply run soon. I can get off trail either 27 or 37 miles ahead. Given my pace here in the Whites, 27 miles over two days is probably easily achievable but 37 would be a stretch.
And here are a couple of the other interesting things I noticed on the trail today.
