Appalachian Trail Hiker

Night 43: Night Hiking Mousilauke and Dreaming of McDonalds

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

McDonalds In Lincoln New Hampshire With My Tricycle Outside

Saturday July 17, 2010

17.8 Miles, 1788.6 Miles to Springer, 390.5 Miles Hiked

I slept sound after a day of emotional highs (McDonald’s Hot Fudge Sundae, Sarah’s texts, being alive)  and lows (Thinking I was going to die, being frustrated with this whole endeavor, feeling like what I was doing wasn’t worth the risks, the solitude, the sacrifice.) that had broken me into a million tiny pieces. I felt better this morning. In fact I felt a hundred times better than I had when I was in that rocking chair, in that basement that smelled like my grandparents house, crying while the laundry machine clunked in the background.

My morning started around 8:30 A.M. None of the normal bikes remained in the garage as other hikers had taken them out so I used what I would describe as a giant adult tricycle which you rode while sitting. My bike ride down Lincoln’s Main Street was like a scene out of a bad 80′s or early 90′s movie. I headed right for McDonald’s.  I pedaled down town with my metallic sunglasses covering my eyes, a bandanna on my head, and my Danskin short shorts riding up my thigh, and I felt like a bad ass. If it had been a movie the song playing would have been “Born To Be Wild.” I was sweating by the time I got to McDonald’s and I could tell it was going to be a hot one.

I was feeling ambitious and ordered the McDonald’s Big Breakfast which included, three pancakes, a sausage paddy, a biscuit, and scrambled eggs, and I ordered two milks and sat down to enjoy my feast after the people working there gave me more than a few looks for the outfit I was sporting.

Everything was amazing. Yes, my McDonald’s breakfast was amazing, except for the eggs. They were dry, and crusty, and the opposite of amazing.

I turned my phone on to see if I could get a hold of Sarah before I headed out and right when I turned it on I got a text from her saying, “Bib 3 is lee Robertson.”

“I don’t know who that is, but you are going to do great. I love you so much and can’t wait to see you. I’m sorry I was so down yesterday.” I texted and shut my phone off and left McDonald’s in the same bad ass fashion I had arrived there.

When I returned from breakfast I called the shuttle service. Bishop, myself, and a NOBO hiker named Snickers all shared the cost of the ride back to the trail head at Franconia Notch just past the Flume visitors center.

Before I loaded into the van Chet rolled out onto the driveway and each of us thanked him and gave him whatever donation we were able to and said goodbye.

“Thank you so much for taking me in last night. You have no idea how much I needed a night off the trail, and you can’t imagine what you’ve done for me, for my hike.” I said.

“Sure thing man, no problem.” He said as though he’d heard the same thing from thousands of hikers before and he’d been saying the same thing in return to each of them each time.

As we drove back to the trail we passed a huge water park that was already crowded at only 10:30 in the morning.  Snickers informed us that he planned to stay in Lincoln another day because his birthday was tomorrow. He said he was going to Whale’s Tale Water Park, the one we had just driven passed to celebrate and that he was going to ride every single water slide and float in the lazy river until the park closed. It sounded like a pretty awesome birthday to me.

We also passed a place called Clark’s Trading Post that looked like the ultimate tourist trap.

As we drove passed the trading post, our driver, a different man then the man the who picked me up the night before, but equally obese as that man, began to tell us about Clark’s.

“They got trained black bears in there that do all sorts of tricks. They also got a train that rides through a covered bridge and along a stream, real nice place. Tourists love it. I heard they even got bears riding on segways that play basketball now. One hiker even told me he saw a bear on a unicycle with violin, but I think he was lying.” Our driver said.

“I want to go to there.” I thought.

The idea of spending a day watching bears shoot basketballs while riding segways  and going on fun and relaxing train rides sounded way better than hiking up and down mountains in blistering heat. It was just a pipe dream though and I would be hiking in the heat today. I hoped though that I might see a bear and I would have been especially pleased to see a bear playing basketball with beehive or something, as long as that something wasn’t my head or the head of another hiker.

Bishop and I stuck together the first few miles and stopped at Lonesome Lake Hut hoping to score some leftover breakfast. We were given a pan of baked eggs with sliced tomatoes on top of them that looked promising, but the eggs were downright vomitous. These were by far the worst eggs I had ever eaten, and the thing is, I still ate all of what I was given, but I did turn down the offer for seconds.

I ended up spending two dollars to buy some almond coffee cake and a piece of chocolate cake. I ate them quickly and I left on a sugar high with the contented feeling of being full. I was sad that this would be the last hut I would visit and that from here on out through the remainder of the trail I would never run into anything like the hut system of New Hampshire again. This was the end of the huts, but it also meant that this was almost the end of the Whites and that was something I was extremely happy about.

As we approached North Kinsman my pace picked up and I was well ahead of Bishop by the time I had reached Kinsman’s peak. I was flying through these hills and I was eager to be off all the peaks before the stormy looking clouds all joined forces and unleashed hell as my experience told me was likely possible.

I was listening to a small AM/FM radio I found in the hiker box at Chet’s place and I felt like such an idiot for not thinking of this earlier. Hiking with music made the miles fly by. ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ came on the radio and I literally felt like I was bounding down the mountain to the beat of the song. Music was the best thing to happen to my hiking experience in weeks.

I stopped at Eliza Brook shelter, a decent sized, well maintained shelter that had two wooden tenting platforms nearby. The shelter was located just up and away from a strong flowing stream. I refilled my water at the stream and sat at the shelter for a late lunch around 4:00 P.M. During my break Bishop caught back up to me and told me he was spent and was staying here for the night.

“I’m going to push on to the next shelter nine miles away, the one that’s halfway up Moosilauke. That way I won’t have to tackle all of Moosilauke tomorrow.” I said as I packed up my gear and headed off back out onto the trail. I ran into some NOBO hikers who assured me the nine miles to the next shelter weren’t terrible.

The nine miles weren’t terrible, but they were the usual ups and downs the A.T. always offered.

The nine miles wasn’t anything hard, but it absolutely wrecked me this late in the day, on a very hot day. I felt finished at just under eight miles into my final nine and desperately did not want to hike that last mile.

When I finally reached the road at Kinsman Notch I still had 1.1 miles to go to the shelter, but I was dead and the 1.1 miles I had left would be straight up Moosilauke.

I sat on the guardrail of the road and turned my phone on. I got service for a couple minutes and called Chet hoping he would let me come back for one more night at the hostel. I was getting weak for the comforts of home. He said I could come back, but that it would make more sense just to find a flat spot at the base of Moosilauke and set up my tent for the night and then I could tackle Moosilauke with fresh legs in the morning.

Chet was right and I was crushed. All I wanted was to be back inside for another night and back at McDonald’s for dinner and desert and breakfast again tomorrow. I would have done unspeakable things to be sitting in a McDonald’s eating a Big Mac with an unholy sized soda that I would refill multiple times, but I knew that was not going to happen, and that if I did go back tonight I would want to go back every night for the rest of the trail and if that was the case I might as well go home for good.

I crossed the road and I took a break at the picnic table by the parking lot at the base of the mountain and ate a pouch of sweet and spicy tuna and talked to Sarah about her triathlon the next day. She sounded so excited and also so nervous and I was so excited for her. I wanted to be there to watch her first triathlon and I wished I could have been there to calm her nerves, and cheer her on, but I’d just have to do my best over the phone tonight.

My side of the conversation went much like this;

“I’m psyched for you! I can’t wait to hear all about it. I know you’re going to do great!….. All I want right now is McDonald’s, you cannot imagine how bad I want McDonald’s in my mouth at this moment…… You’re going to have a blast, you’ve been training really hard and you’re going to wreck it!……. I would kill anyone who crossed my path if it meant I could have another hot fudge sundae…… The run won’t be that bad and you can take breaks if you need to, plus you’ve training so hard on the bike that you’ll already be way ahead……I need you to teleport here with a platter of everything that is on the dollar menu……..You’ll be amazing. I love you.”

I meant every word I said.

By the time Sarah and I had finished talking and I was ready to start hiking again it was 8:30 P.M.  Hiking under the cover of trees as the sun began to vanish made me anxious. I got my headlamp on and read the sign at the base of the mountain which read, “This trail is extremely tough. If you lack experience please use another trail. Take special care at the cascades to avoid tragic results.” I became even more anxious. I instantly began to doubt my decision to start this hike up the last and what some consider the most formidable mountains that made up the Whites.

Then my mind flashed to the other option, camping at the base of this mountain which was less than a half mile from a parking lot that spit right onto N.H. 112 a fairly heavily trafficked road.

That was when I remembered the most recent of the nine  reported murders that have occurred on the Appalachian Trail since 1974. Given this most recent murder occurred over a decade ago it still sat in the back of my mind because to this day the crime remained unsolved and the murderers remained on the loose. Two young women were found in their tents in the Shenandoah with their arms bound, mouths gagged and throats slit. One was found in their tent, the other just outside hers and their golden retriever was found roaming outside the tents unharmed.  There was an article in The Washington Post about the murder that said the FBI believed that this crime may have been done by two or more people, not one.

I pictured myself setting up my tent at the base and falling asleep easy enough after a long day of hiking in the hot sun. I then pictured myself waking to the sound of a pickup truck rolling into the parking lot with it’s headlights off. Then I’d hear the sound of heavy, black, leather boots walking through the woods toward my tent crunching on sticks with each step. I’d call out “Hello,” but there’d be no response. I’d here two sets of boots each heading in different directions around my tent. Then I’d listen even more closely and it would be dead silent. I’d wait for the boots to move again and then there’d be a slash through my tent with a huge blade and that would be the end.

I decided I’d take my chance hiking up Moosilauke in the dark. I didn’t think a murderer would waste his or her time doing the same, and my imagination was far scarier than a hike up this mountain in the dark could ever be, so I began to hike. The ascent wasn’t bad and would have been beautiful in the daylight as the trail paralleled a streaming waterfall almost the entire climb up (the cascades, where tragic results could occur according to the sign.

By 9:15 P.M. it was pitch black and I was tripping and stumbling even with the aid of my headlamp. At 9:40 P.M. I saw a sign indicating I was a quarter mile away. My pace quickened and my stumbling and falling did too.

I heard the sounds of dogs barking. I was close to something or someone if not the shelter. “Keep on barking so I can find the shelter.” I thought as I fumbled down the trail in the dark. When I arrived at Beaver Brook Shelter there were already six day hikers and not a single thru hiker inside. This was somewhat enraging to me because A.T. shelters are meant for thru hikers only and even though this shelter was made to fit ten people, these hikers had spread their things all around the shelter and there was currently no room for me in the shelter. I was pissed.

After I asked the day hikers inside, they moved their things and squeezed together to make room for me and I hungrily and angrily devoured a packet of oatmeal in one quick gulp as I got ready for bed.

As I wrote in my journal the sky was lit by flashes of lightning. It was heat lightning and it was beautiful in it’s own violent terrifying way. Within a half hour winds were gusting at intense bursts of up to 40 miles per hour and rain began slamming against the tin roof. Lightning flashed like clockwork every couple seconds and the roar of thunder now accompanied the lightning. I was glad to at least to be under the roof of a shelter with other humans and not tenting by a road by myself where I might get murdered, and murdered while wet in the middle of a terrifying electrical storm.

I was beginning to see the good in even the worst of situations. Maybe I was beginning to find a way to survive this hike. Maybe I would be able to see the positive in the worst of what the trail had to dish out. Maybe my mindset was all that needed changing for me to get through this thing with some sort of sanity. Was I being brainwashed by this trail lifestyle? Was I being tricked  into thinking that just because I wasn’t dead things were pretty great?

I don’t know but I was beginning to think that maybe just being alive regardless of whatever else was going on in my life was something pretty amazing, something I should be over the moon excited about.

I think I’m going crazy, but I was happy to be right where I was, but I still would have killed anyone in that shelter for a Big Mac, a large Coke and a hot fudge sundae.

Rose – Talking with Sarah about her triathlon and joking about how much I wanted McDonalds.

Bud – Officially being out of the White Mountains.

Thorn – Hiking up Moosilauke in the dark and thinking about getting murdered.

Tags: AM/FM radio, appalachian trail, Appalachian Trail Hiker, Appalachian Trail Murderer, Appalachian Trail murders, Beaver Brook Shelter, big mac, black bears doing tricks, Clark's Trading Post, Dartmouth Outdoors Club, Eliza Brook Shelter, fear, hot fudge sundae, Kinsman Notch, lightning, Lonesome Lake, Lonesome Lake Hut, mcdonalds, McDonalds Big Breakfast, Moosilauke, Mount Moosilauke, night hiking, North Kinsman, parking lot, thru hiker, thru hiking, thunder, trained black bears, Whale's Tale Water Park | Posted in Appalachian Trail | 2 Comments »