Sept 2

Catching some Zeas

Miserable morning.  I had no idea what time it was.  It was light out, but everything was a dull grey.  As I usually do, I had left my pack outside my tent with the pack cover on.  The pack and my tent's fly were damp.  I hurried to get packed up.  As I finished breaking down my tent, a light drizzle began.  Great.  We donned our rain jackets and headed down the trail.  Heading down the trail toward Galehead Hut, we talked about how we hoped we could score some breakfast leftovers.  Galehead was a smaller hut, but really nice, having recently been remodeled.  I took a few minutes to read about the alternative energy sources that are utilized there.  Unfortunately, there were no free leftovers from breakfast, so we continued on down the dreary trail toward South Twin Mountain.  The extra fuel from some oatmeal or pancakes would have been great considering the climb ahead of us was over 1100 feet, in less than a mile.  The path up Twin was a direct assault on the mountain.  Straight up.  Surprisingly, it wasn't as laborious as I expected it to be, and we were at the top in no time.  Dozens of hikers were up there, having left the hut below earlier in the morning.  We took a short snack break to get some energy, up there stuck in a cloud, cold and breezy.  After descending Twin, the trail leveled out and continued along a ridge, just below the ridge line.  The trees were all about waist high, and the path was rocky.  As we approached the side trail that led to Guyot Shelter, the clouds enveloping us lifted, and we had sunshine once again.  We climbed to the top of the ridge and went down the other side, treated to amazing view along the way.  We could see the U-shaped direction that we would travel for the rest of the day.  The trail would wrap around to Zeacliff Ridge, Zeacliff Pond, Zealand Mountain, and then descend sharply down to Zealand Falls where there was another hut.  Directly across from us, we could see where the trail would leave the hut and continue along a flat (yes, a truely FLAT) section down in the valley below as it continued toward Ethan Pond.  At Zeacliff Ridge, we took the 0.1 mile side trail to the top of Zealand Mountain.  We knew there were no views there, but we just wanted to say that we did it.  The reward was a cool looking carved wooden sign at the top that said, "ZEALAND", but instead the A's had been replaced with cone-shaped evergreen trees.  We made it down to Zealand Falls Hut, and checked out the falls.  I was underwhelmed.  It was pretty, but I had this idea in my head of it being more impressive.  Inside the hut, we ponied up a few bucks for some baked potato soup.  The hutmaster there was pretty cool, and talked to us a lot.  He even cooked a fresh pizza and offered us a slice while we ate our soup.  Re-energized, we left the hut, and the Twinway Trail behind.  Continuing down the Ethan Pond trail, we cruised through a beautiful valley.  Perfectly flat trail for miles.  Huge mountains rising on either side of us.  To our right, we could see the ridge we were on earlier.  To the left, was a steep slope, peaking with a shear cliff.  Amazing, enjoyable hiking.  Beautiful, warm, and sunny.  We stopped to check out a side trail that led to Thoreau Falls.  The path led to the top of the falls.  After a few moments, we kept on moving, since it was the middle of the afternoon now.  We began to see pops of bright red in the forest.  Fall colors were arriving early in the White Mountains!  We stopped at the trail to the campsites at Ethan Pond.  I ran down to the site to scope things out.  The pond there was really pretty, especially in the late afternoon sun.  I came back to the trail head with good news.  There was no caretaker at the site, since we were now technically in the 'off season'.  It was tempting to be able to stay there for free, but we hadn't caught up with Slims and Rainbow Eyes yet, so we pushed on to make some more miles before dark.  After a long descent, we arrived in a gravel parking lot at Grafton Notch.  There was a couple there set up doing trail magic.  We snacked on sandwiches, chips, cakes, veggies, and sodas until dusk.  We had to move on quickly with night approaching, so we walked down the trail, and the bridge across the Saco River.  We took a side trail, and set up camp in our stealth spots about a quarter mile away from the AT, just as the last light of the day faded.

The trail to Ethan Pond was so easy, there was even time for some warrior poses.