Day 133: Long Gone Soon Arriving

Hiked 20.1 miles, staying with Long Gone in Newbury, Vermont.

Five score and sixteen days ago I hiked in the Smokies with a young chap who answered to the name Long Gone.  Two weeks ago he finished his thru hike.  He lives nearby in Vermont and offered to come get us and host us for the evening.  Sounds great to me!  So in order to do that we needed to do a 20.1 mile day to the road leading into Glencliff, NH which includes summiting Mt. Cube and later Mt. Mist.

Some nice color starting over the Whites

The clouds were sitting in the valleys this morning

The sun is getting close to cresting the horizon

The sky was fantastic looking north

Closeup of the sun about to come up

There it is!

I woke up early today to catch the sunrise from the fire tower knowing that it would be pretty spectacular.  It did not disappoint.  I was hoping the sun would come up directly behind Washington, but it was a little further south.  Humen slept in the fire tower with the goal of seeing the sunrise, so the two of us hung out as the colors changed and the sun finally crested the horizon.  Then I went back to my sleeping bag for another half hour.  On colder mornings like this it is typical for everyone to lay in bed awake but not wanting to leave their bags.  So we all lay there for a while until someone finally makes a move and everyone follows suit.  Well this morning I wanted to let a little air out of my pad to make it a little less firm and everyone took that as the cue to get up, not what I had planned but I reluctantly followed suit.

Looking around at the landscape with the fog in the valleys

The day started by slowly descending Smarts Mountain.  I had run out of water last night and I had to wait four miles to get water at the bottom of Smarts Mountain.  Aquamira, which I use to purify my water, is great but it is so frustrating when you are super thirsty to fill up water and have to wait another half hour before you can drink it.  I started my ascent of Mt. Cube while I waited.  This ascent was definitely the hardest of the day.  There were a few great places to stop and relax on the way up and I took full advantage of them.  On the way up I saw a moose!  I couldn't get my camera out in time before it fled into the woods though.

I almost took a wrong turn this morning, good thing there was this sign

Starting the climb up Mt. Cube, sitting on Eastman Ledge

9 AM photo

Climbing Mt. Cube

Halfway up Mt. Cube, looking back at Smarts

The top of Mt. Cube was really nice and I relaxed up there for a while.  At this point though we needed to make tracks a bit to get the last thirteen miles finished up before 5 pm when we were meeting up with Long Gone.  The terrain was less severe the rest of the day though and it wasn't too bad.  Why Not and I leapfrogged each other all day.  After a final climb up and over Mt. Mist I got close to the road and ran into Long Gone and his brother who had hiked up to meet us!  After a happy reunion we three hiked back to the car.  As an aside, my estimate to Long Gone at 9 am today was that we would reach the road at 5 pm.  It was 4:59 and 40 seconds when I got there.

Looking back at the trail up Mt. Cube

Still climbing up Mt. Cube

There is the summit!

Looking back at Smarts from the top of Mt. Cube

To the right of the above photo

To the right of the above photo

I found a nice lounge chair type rock on Mt. Cube

Why Not showed up a few minutes later and we headed back to Vermont.  Long Gone hooked us up with showers and laundry and a great all you can eat pasta dinner!  It was so much fun to catch up with him and hear how the last 116 days have been for him since we last saw him just before Clingman's Dome in the Smokies.  I think he had a great time talking trail with us.  We all love talking about the trail with non-thruhikers, but the conversation with another thru hiker is so different and he definitely is missing that.  We were hoping he could come climb Moosilauke with us tomorrow but it sounds like that may not work out.  Hopefully we can catch up and hike with him at some point again in the Whites though!

View just beyond Mt. Mist

400 miles to Katahdin

Long Gone with Why Not and I