Sore feet and mountain sunrise

What's your favorite plan for a fun, relaxing four day weekend? Thanks to awesome MITOCer (MIT Outing Club) Sally, I ended up with the rather terrifying plan to do a one-day Pemigewasset traverse. On paper, this looks like:

•   53 km of trail, with
•   6 km of vertical (half up, half down)
•   9 summits
•   a lot of rocks to step on

So I spent a lot of time in the gym for the preceding few weeks, and ate a lot of fattening things, and prepared myself to be completely destroyed. It didn't help to realize that Backpacker Magazine lists this as the second-hardest day hike in America.

Of course, it feels pretty awesome now that I'm sitting at home at MIT eating a late-afternoon breakfast and putting my feet up, with a solid hike and five new 4000-footers under my belt: the conclusion of the this story is yes, we made it.

Having driven up north the night before, at 4am we headed out of the Lincoln Woods trailhead towards our first summit of the day: Mt. Flume. Hardly a word was spoken, and I can't imagine any of us was much awake those first two hours. Around us fell mist and clouds, thicker and thicker as we pushed upwards, until my headlamp blazed to illuminate a few feet of water droplets ahead of me. Partly afraid of losing the trail, but mostly in the hopes of sparing us fatigue by the end, I kept our pace just slow enough to keep my breathing even. We would manage to sustain this sleepy 3mph for about the first third of the trip.

Stars! calls out Sally. Suddenly, time is moving, space is opening up above us, and the ceiling is lifted from our little tunnel of mist and endless footsteps. We're getting higher, so when we turn off our headlamps for a few moments to watch the light peek at us through leaves and clouds we might just glimpse the shadows of mountain ranges lifting around us. After that, things go quickly. We climb on, up rocks and a few sets of manicured wooden stairs, passing better and better viewpoints as the mist gets thinner, the sky paler, and the surrounding mountains more visible through the trees. 'This is the start of my first full, clear mountain sunrise', I think, and it's electrifying.

The competition for the most glorious sight of my life is wonderful and fierce, but this hour - from the first glimpse of stars to the stunning climax of Mt. Flume - surpassed all expectations. I thought I'd seen my fair share of sunsets, and passed meditative morning hours in the valleys watching the sun strike ridge after ridge in the distance, but now I see why it's the sunrise for which mountaineers and photographers submit themselves to summit camps and alpine starts. The air is still clear, and we see that the clouds did not dissipate: we surpassed them. The sky is orange; the last stars still linger; and below us is a rolling white cloud sea. Nothing is visible above but the mountains, with mist running down their slopes into the ocean. We were on Flume for a few chilly, thrilling moments before descending towards Liberty.

If I were to do this again, I would have started earlier and made it truly above treeline in order to draw out the sunrise, but nonetheless the weather stayed beautifully clear, the trail near deserted, and the valleys below us mesmerizingly cloud-covered until we ascended Mt. Lafayette. This was our fourth summit (after Flume, followed by Liberty and Lincoln which we passed quickly) and the highest, and rather full of tourists.

Stopping on the summit of Mt. Flume - Photos thanks to Tyler

If we weren't tired, we were by this point at least conscious of the miles behind us. We made slower time on the three mile descent from Liberty (another great reason not to do the loop the other direction!), and then on the bumpy, rocky route to Mt. Garfield, filling up on water at Garfield Pond. Still, it was quite fun to finally hit the peak and announce it as our fifth summit! After Garfield was a quick jaunt to Galehead Hut, our halfway point where thanks to the AMC we had a long and caffeinated break before what we gratefully realized would be our final steep ascent of the day up to South Twin. 

In my experience, hiking is an essentially solitary activity. This doesn't reflect negatively on other people; meeting someone in the mountains creates and instant bond of friendliness, and the hiking community has an incredible way of attracting like-minded and wholehearted people. However, serious hiking ultimately requires you to immerse your mind and body in the mountains around you. It invites both physical challenge (like Pemi loops...) and deep introspection. Sometimes this is because the wild beauty around you will sweep your heart up with the wind, and sometimes because it's the only way to draw out enough of your reserves to make it home.

So, Sally and Tyler introduced infuriating guessing games on the way across the Bonds to try to forget about our footsteps for a few miles. We dreamed together about hot chocolate, baths and bed. Sally and I went out of our way to tag West Bond (summit 7!), leaving our packs and taking the extra mile at a jog, which felt fabulously energetic. We wound our way to Bondcliff across rocky slopes dotted with tiny alpine trees and bright berries, until amidst evening clouds that obscured what might have been a stunning view of the wilderness, our group stretched thin. Alone with the moss and the stones I felt the mist swirl intimately around me. Tired, blistered; how could I feel less than love for these mountains? I gave them quite completely my body, and they left me thrilled enough to run and happy enough to hunt wildflowers with my eyes. 

There is little to say about the last ten miles after sunset, except that they felt far longer than I can convey in brief words. The descent tired my knees and ankles painfully at every step until the final flat had the chance to tire my feet and bones. Tyler went ahead of us old ladies so he'd have a chance to nap in the car before driving, and the rest of us made the last five miles by singing children's songs and Simon and Garfunkel and anything our minds were straight enough to remember the words to. Nonetheless, we made it. We were back at the car just in time for the clouds to leave us again with a sky full of stars.