Why Does Julie Want Me Dead?

Do you see the forced smile on me?
Do you?

And why, you might ask, am I smiling this way?

I am smiling that forced smile because I just discovered that Julie, one of my best friends on the planet, evidently wants me dead. And not just any sort of dead, but a death that is slow and painful and lingers over the entire 6 miles of the world's most sweaty, smelly, rocky hike.

Julie and I have hiked many a mountain over the years. And, in fact, she just recently completed hiking all the 4,000 footers in NH. I think there are about 26 million of them, so it's quite an accomplishment.

So, naturally, when I wanted some advice on a pretty hike to take with my daughter, Tori–one with a great ridgeline–I turned to Julie for advice.

And she tried to kill me.

She suggested that perhaps Tori and I should hike a little trail called Webster Cliff Trail. "It's short," she said, masterfully concealing her evil laughter. "I've never done it, but it looks really great. And it's Monday so you should have the whole trail to yourselves. I'd go with you, but I'm not insane...uh... I mean, I have to be in a meeting. All day. Darn it. Well, have fun!"

And, Tori and I, being trusting souls, took her advice.

And we suffered.

Tori and I left the house bright and early to begin the long drive up to the Great White North. As we drew closer to the trailhead, we saw towering cliffs above us along the road.

"Wow," Tori mused. "Imagine if the trail went on those cliffs? That would be insane."

It's almost like Tori can see the future.

Our hike began along a short, meandering, wooded trail. We passed several groups of through-hikers, who were packing up campsite along the trail in preparation to heading back out on the trail. Webster Cliff Trail is, in addition to being lethal and painful, part of the Appalachian Trail, a 2,000+ mile long walk in the woods that people take in order to really get in touch with their personal, intimate bodily odors.

Passing through-hikers on the trail is like getting hit in the nose with a cinder clock. Each hiker is possessed of a unique, pungent smell that clings to you and coats the inside of your mouth as you pass them.

I suspect that they gather together at night at secret campsites along the trail and compare odors.

Tori and I waved away the dizzying fumes and continued along the trail, still oblivious to what was in store for us.

The trail began to slope upward sharply and we began to sweat. A lot.

I generally use my cap as a sort of altimeter. The line of sweat rises as we gain altitude on the hike.

When the sweat line is half-way up my hat, I'm half-way up the mountain.
That is called science, my friends.

We stopped for a drink and Tori discovered that one of her water bottles was empty.

"Huh," she mused. "I thought my bag seemed damp."
"The bag that was sitting on my stuff in the back seat of the car?" I asked.
"Yup."
"So, all my stuff back in the car is probably soaked?"
"Yup."

But at least we were short a full bottle of water.

We slogged upward along the trail. The guide book suggested that there were a few places where the going was tough and you would have to scramble over rocks on your hands and feet.

Places like this.

"What is this?" Tori asked. "Is this the trail? Because it is not a trail. It is a wall."

"The book said there would be a few places like this," I reminded her.

We scrambled over the wall.

"See?" I said, picking the gravel out of my knees. "That wasn't too bad. And now it will be easy."

It will be easy.

"It will?" Tori asked, indicating the next wall along our path.

We scrambled over and found ourselves on a terrifying precipice overlooking all of creation.

A panorama of terror. 

Tori contemplates leaping off in order to avoid any more walls of death.

And she discovers that there is no cell service so she cannot call for a helicopter rescue.

A beautiful view of how far you will fall if you slip at all in any way.

This seems like as good a time as any to confess that I am terrified of heights.

Absolutely terrified.

But I had a lot of opportunities to get in touch with my fear and really get to know it intimately.

Thanks, Julie.

 We discovered more thrilling walls to scale.

Are you kidding?

This is a joke, right?

Come on! Seriously?

Tori scrambled up past me and poked her head back over a precipice. "Hey!" she called. "I found some water!"

"All you have to do is scale this huge cliff and we can go for a swim!"

I slogged up to her and found a pool of human tears left by many hikers who had come before us.

You can tell they are through hiker tears. They smell.

Following tradition, I added my tears to the pool.

We slogged ever upward into the thinning atmosphere, made rich by the tangy essence of through-hikers who kept sharing their stink with us as we met them along the trail.

And, did I mention the walls that the trail is made of?

Tori stooped to say hello to a tiny toad along the path.

"Hi, little guy!" she chirruped at it.

"You probably shouldn't touch that thing," I told her. "It could have through-hiker stink on it."

Tori scoffed and continued up the giant stone wall disguised as a mountain.

She soon disappeared from view and I found her enjoying another scenic overlook.

"I told you not to touch that toad." I said. "Now I'm going to eat your lunch."

We enjoyed the view as we ate our delicious PB&J sandwiches.

"Do you think this is the summit?" Tori asked, indicating the huge cairn on the trail.
I shrugged. "Must be," I said. "That wasn't too bad, was it?"

Then a couple through-hikers wandered onto the overlook with us. We discreetly covered our noses, adjusted ourselves to be upwind,  and struck up a conversation.

"Wow," the guy said. "This has been a tough one. We've been on the trail for about 4 months. And we got rained on last night. Everything is soaked."
His wife nodded, tears welling in her eyes.
She was not having a good time.
The man indicated the trail toward the road. "How far is it to the road?"
I shrugged. "About an hour and a half."
"Is it bad?"  he asked.
I nodded. "Yeah," I said. "It's bad."
"This is going to suck," his wife mumbled.
And off they trudged, disappearing into the swirling clouds. "Enjoy your climb to the summit," he called back over his shoulder.
"Summit?" I asked. "This isn't the summit?"
His laughter was carried away on the wind.

Apparently, THAT is the summit. A million miles away.

I don't have many photos of the trail beyond this point. I was too busy clutching onto rocks for dear life to stop and take photos. I did manage to get one photo of the view in the other direction before we set off for the summit.

An inspirational photo to help me remember when I used to be happy. In my car. Back on Earth.

We did get a few more scenic vistas to help me more fully embrace my mind-bending fear of heights along the way up.

Thanks, Julie.

We eventually found the summit and joy reigned supreme.

Why, Julie? Whyyyyyyy?

Our descent was, like the ascent, steep.
Very, very steep.

Thanks for giving me the chance to watch my daughter plummet to her death, Julie.

On the plus side, most of the effects of the toxic toad seemed to have worn off and Tori was fine except for the occasional, unavoidable dizziness from through-hiker miasmas we passed through.

About an hour into our descent, we passed the husband and wife through-hikers we had met earlier. They were sitting in the middle of the trail, smelling terrible and eating some sort of dried jerky. Possibly toad.

"Are you headed south?" he asked. "Toward the road?"
I nodded. "Yup."
He shook his head and sighed. "I TOLD you we were going the wrong way," he groaned to his wife.
She sighed and more tears welled up in her eyes. I suspect that she alone filled up the pool of tears we had passed earlier. 
He turned back to me. "We stopped in a stealth campsite to have some lunch and when we got back on the trail, we started in the wrong direction."
Rolling my eyes and asking how they didn't notice that they had been climbing up instead of climbing down for at least an hour seemed indelicate.
"It happens" I sighed. "Well, have a good rest of the day."

I suspect that they did not have a good rest of the day.

We spent much of the rest of our day scooting down a mountain on our butts.

Tori demonstrates proper technique here:

And then, just 85 hours after we left, we were back at the parking lot. It was easy to spot because of this guy's awesome parking job.

That was fun, wasn't it, Tori?

Next time, we will make Julie come with us.

High Heat in the High Hills

Last Tuesday, as the temperature soared to a brain bubbling 90-something degrees and the humidity made it feel as though you were living in somebody's old, but recently used gym sock, Julie and I hiked another mountain.

Is there a better way to beat the heat than by strapping on a heavy backpack full of water and granola and hauling your sorry, sweaty self up rocky trails? Frankly, yes. A cool, refreshing beverage (preferably with a little pink umbrella and several tinkling ice cubes) served poolside sounds about right. But Julie is stark-raving insane and I'm her friend, so off into the hazy gray yonder we went.

We climbed Mount Pierce, a 4,000 footer in the Presidential Range and named, obviously, after former president Jimmy Carter. What struck me first about this hike was the fact that the parking lot was full. This is a rare occurrence.

When Julie and I go hiking, there are typically very few cars in the trail-head parking lots. Most of the cars that are there are the vehicles of people from Massachusetts who have mistakenly wandered into The White Mountains to "Do a little hiking and get back to nature." We often see them stumbling past us on the trails, their high heeled shoes broken and flapping off their ankles and their make-up running down their cheeks, headed for their cars and grumbling about the fact that there are so few places to get a Dunkin Donuts Mocoolattachino on the trails.

Most people have more sense than to willingly hike mountains in the first place. I figured that surely, as Tuesday was so hot that furry woodland creatures were exploding in fiery balls of fur, we would at least have the luxury of sweating ourselves into strips of human jerky in relative privacy. It turns out that the trail we were hiking is like some sort of superhighway for freaks who actually find joy in hiking when it's so hot you can hear yourself sweating.

Our trip up the mountain was punctuated by a brief stop at Mitzpah Hut, an Appalachian Mountain Club outpost where, for the small price of about a hundred dollars a night, you get a bunk in a room filled with several sweaty, snoring strangers who share your passion for being sweaty in the woods.

We took what might generously be referred to as 'the scenic route' when we left Mitzpah Hut, heading off down the wrong trail toward another, and far distant mountain. It was the steep decline of the path that made us think we may have made a slight navigational error.

"My, my, Julie," I observed. "This is the easiest summit ascent we have ever made. This gently rolling, mossy path headed downward certainly makes the hiking a breeze."
"Hiking is never easy," Julie answered, "We must be doing something wrong."

And what do you know? We were.

After locating the proper path (easily identified because it was steep and treacherous and towering high into the hazy sky above us), we began to test the limits of human perspiration. We reached the summit and were greeted by hungry swarms of black flies, thirsting for human blood. We had sweated so much that I imagine our blood had thickened to the consistency of milkshakes, giving the black flies a delightful treat and causing them to tell all their friends to give us a try. Which they did. As a brief side note, if you look closely at the picture of me (I am the hairier, ugly one) you will see a strange, blurry form in the sky above my head. That is actually a single black fly about 3 miles away. It had feasted lustily on my blood just a few moments before and had swollen to the size of a 1965 Buick.

On this particular hike, Julie and I decided to try something different. Given the proof of her powers over the animals on previous hikes, we decided that we didn't need to bother packing lunches today. Instead, Julie packed trail-mix and we used it to lure gray jays into our hungry clutches.



After our refreshing lunch of gray jay, we began our descent, pausing briefly at the summit marker so Julie could touch it and have her picture taken at it. She operates under the odd misapprehension that if she doesn't actually touch the summit marker, the hike does not count and she will have to do it over again.

As we approached the bottom of the hill, after passing many pungently aromatic hikers headed for Mitzpah Hut to revel in their mind-altering stinkiness with other similarly olafactorally enhanced hilers, we spotted a small mountain stream with a delightful carved out spot just right for taking a cool, refreshing dip.

Mountain streams have the amazing property of always being frigid. A brief plunge in the water was enough to cramp our toes and cleanse us of all desire to ever swim again. I would have posted a picture, but our fingers were too cold to push the button on the camera.

We slogged back to the car and headed back home, stopping only for the mandatory ice cream cone in Lincoln which melted into sticky puddles almost before we could gulp them down.

Almost.

We're planning our next hike for sometime in the early fall. I'm packing BBQ sauce for that one.