Hanover, NH 1752.9 to Lyme-Dorchester Road 1771.6 (18.7 miles, 746.2 total miles)
It was very cold this morning, only 45 degrees in Hanover when Shrek and I started getting up around 5:15AM. I had slept great, and was so excited to start hiking in New Hampshire and to get to Hiker’s Welcome that packing up was much easier than usual.
Shrek was nice enough to give me a couple coffee packets and a vanilla breakfast essentials to use as creamer, and I had cold oats mixed with peanut butter that I’d soaked the night before.
I left first, and immediately was having a great time hiking through the pine forest up to Velvet Rocks. It was a couple short climbs to start the day, and I was loving being in NH again. I was feeling so good and strong, enjoying the new hiking style I’d been living with more rest and breaks.
Velvet Rocks was 1.6 into the day, and I took off my rain jacket when I got to the wooded summit, since I had been hiking in it to stay warm. After that, the trail stayed quite flat with an overall upward trend for about 3 miles or so.
The Dartmouth Outing Club was in charge of maintaining that section of the trail it seemed, and they had really cool orange signs marking a lot of places, the blazes were frequent, and the brush was well trimmed on either side of the trail.
I saw my first hikers of the day when I ran into Legz and Rude after a short bridge crossing and boardwalk. I had spent quite a while there, 3 miles into the day, freaked out because there was supposed to be a lot of hornets under the bridge that stung hikers quite often.
Bees have always rather scared me, and it took a while to muster up the courage to cross. I ran for it, and ended up turning my ankle and falling on the ground just past the bridge, but I didn’t get stung.
Rude and Legz walked casually through and didn’t get stung either. It was my first chance to talk to Legz, who had passed me the day I met Rude, but I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her.
Legz is finishing a 900 mile section of the trail, ending at Katahdin, to finish a four year section hike. Rude is a fellow flip-flopper who I had met in Massachusetts. They are both middle-age, and pretty cool hikers.
I stopped for a snack and a break 5 miles in at a stream, which had taken me two hours to get to. I hiked another few gently sloping uphill miles, and stopped at another stream with Shrek, who had caught up just a little before.
We saw four little weasels, about the size of red squirrels, that ran around very fast, diving into various holes in the ground. The weasels were impossible to get a picture or video of, because they were so unpredictable and fast.
I had also seen what appeared to be a small black bear running away from me into the brush earlier in the morning, and some sort of young woodpecker flying tree to tree.
When I was getting ready to take off from the stream, a whole group of hikers arrived at the same time including Legz, Rude, four day hikers, and a dog.
I hiked after Legz and Rude, and walked with Rude for a little bit talking about the White Mountains. I felt sort of like Harry Potter in the sixth book where he is the only one who knows what apparition is like, and the other students pepper him with questions about it. I was still enjoying my New Hampshire trail cred from having done the Whites before.
I hiked behind the two day hikers with the dog for quite a few minutes, talking with the woman, who had thru hiked in 2012 on the Appalachian Trail, and thru hiked the Long Trail the following year.
Her trail name was Blue, the man she was with named Peter, and the dog, which I found out was a Vizsla, was named Juno. She was 10 months old, super well behaved, and very sweet.
They were quite fast, and ended up hiking just a little ahead of me to the top of Moose Mountain South. It was a pleasant surprise up top when I saw that there was quite an expansive view. There had been no picture in the guide, but Shrek said later she found out that they had cut the foliage down the year before, so there hadn’t been a view until recently.
There was no one on the summit when we first arrived, then several people got there all at once. It was like a little summit party, and I had some snacks and enjoyed the sun for a few minutes. Not for too long though, because I had gotten a little sunburnt the day before in Hanover.
Less than a mile ahead was Moose Mountain Shelter, where Shrek and I had agreed to meet for lunch. The shelter was very close to the trail, had a nice bench at an overlook, and one of the nicest privies I’ve seen on trail, also courtesy of the Dartmouth Outing Club.
A couple day hikers from earlier arrived after me, and I had an enjoyable time answering all their questions about the trail. After a bit, Legz, Rude, and Shrek arrived, and we hung out and had lunch. A couple other people came and left as well, and I hiked on a little before Shrek, as had become our usual method.
It was a bit of a long, steep descent off the mountain, after a short walk to the northern summit with no view. I met a SOBO hiker from Europe shortly after the shelter, who was finishing his Triple Crown with the AT, and had also hiked many other trails.
His name was Paya, and we talked about what we both had coming up ahead in either direction. He gave me some good tips to see a moose, which I was still really wanting to accomplish this time. I’ve also been doing as Wizard had suggested, and getting all of the southbounder‘s contact information for the second half.
I noticed I was feeling pretty tired on the descent, and realized the heat had definitely picked up, and I had forgotten to drink some caffeine at lunch. After about a mile I took a minute to do that, and hiked on, where it was getting hotter the more I descended.
I saw more day hikers and weekend hikers as I went along, enjoying the change of there being other people around again. At the bottom of the mountain, I ran into Rafl and Puzzles, who I had just met, and they told me where there was a piece of bark set up so that I could collect some water.
A lot of New Hampshire had been rather dry so far, with several unreliable water sources that had slowed to stagnant pools. The flipside of having had beautiful weather this year was that the seasonal sources were a bit dry.
It took a while to collect a liter of water, but there wasn’t good water for several miles ahead. Shrek arrived just as I was leaving to collect water for herself as well. At a beaver bog .7 further, I managed to take another tumble, rolling my right ankle this time.
I definitely needed to be more careful, but at least it hadn’t been the same ankle twice. I didn’t have any propel packets available, but I finished the peanut butter filled pretzels that Shrek gave me earlier in the day, and I ate the rest of the salt at the bottom of the bag, which I think definitely helped.
The climb up to the next mountain was very steep, about 1000 feet of elevation gain in just over a mile. It was the second to last climb of the day.
The grading was definitely true to how steep it looked in the guide, there were no switchbacks to be found, rather the trail was running a diagonal up the side of the mountain. Depending on the angle that the trail is climbing up the mountain, it can be tough to tell how close you are to the top at any given point.
However, at a certain point I realized I was at the top when the foliage changed, indicating the elevation gain. Very sweaty, I found a place to sit among the pine needles, and elevated my left foot on my pack. The tendons there were feeling a little sore and in need of rest.
Shrek hiked up not long after me, and sat down for a break as well. She saved the day by giving me some snacks, as my appetite has been highly elevated lately.
I breaked from 4:30 to 5, and we still had 7.5 miles to go, including a very long hike up Smarts Mountain to camp. As The Cult would say, this is the price we pay for a zero day.
The hike down the mountain to the road was less steep than the climb, and didn’t seem to take too long. A couple miles of easy uphill further took me to Grant Brook, which was the last on trail water source for 8 miles.
I was feeling hungry and starting to get anxious when I got to the brook. It was 6pm, with 4.4 miles of a very large mountain to go. The sun had sank behind the ridge, and it was feeling late to me, and I was tired. I perused the guide to see if there were any bail out points before Smarts Mountain.
While I sat and waited for Shrek, three young men in their early 20s arrived. When they heard my name they became really excited, and I understood why a moment later.
I had run into Canoe, Kodak, and Quickbeam, funny enough. The day before when Shrek and I walked out of Molly’s Restaurant, we had met Canoe’s mom. She told us all about each other, but it’s so easy to miss people on the trail that I never expected to actually run into him.
I spent a few minutes talking with the group, who were hiking on to Smarts Mountain for the night as well. Shrek arrived as they were leaving, just in time for her to say hi quickly to them from across the Brook.
I told Shrek the plan I’d come up with as a backup, to camp right off the Ranger Trail, a blue blaze half a mile ahead with tent sites.
She’d already thought about it earlier in the day, and I didn’t need to convince her. We could make up the miles the following day, and end at a pond 2 miles before Hiker’s Welcome. That way we could nearo there Tuesday and not pay for two nights at the hostel anyway.
I was very relieved for the new plan, and we hiked the last half mile together to the camping spot, catching up on our last few miles.
It was a nice spot near the brook at the base of Smarts, and we got to bed around 9:30, and I fell asleep at 10. We would have another big day ahead of us, then a day off at one of my favorite trail hostels, where I would get to see two or three familiar faces. It would be off to the White Mountains after that.