Carter Notch Hut (12/23-24/24)
It has become a yearly tradition for me to travel up to Carter Notch Hut on the night before Thanksgiving, spend the night, and then hike out Thanksgiving morning. This would have been my third year in a row doing so. However, this has been a terrible year for me for illness, and so I got sick right before the Thanksgiving hike. Thus, I had to call AMC, pay a small fee, and move the hike. The question was where to move it to? I thought a Christmas Eve hike sounded kind of fun, so I went with that.
The weather forecast was calling for a couple inches that night, which sounded manageable. It hadn't been snowing much recently, and trail reports indicated a packed down trail, so I opted for spikes rather than snowshoes. In general, I will always opt for spikes over snowshoes if given the opportunity, as snowshoes are just a lot more unwieldy and eat energy a lot faster.
I got lunch at Big Dave's Bagels and Deli in North Conway, as I normally do. I used to get a plain bagel with cream cheese, but recently I have been opting for an egg and cheese sandwich instead to start my hike with a bit more protein. The place was absolutely mobbed, more crowded than I have ever seen it. I think it was because it was right before Christmas and a lot of people were picking up some of Big Dave's famous confections. Their crumb cake is particularly good.
I drove up Route 16 and parked at the Nineteen Mile Brook trailhead parking lot. I strapped on my equipment, left my non-hiking water bottle in the car along with the remains of my sandwich, and hit the trail.
I struggled a bit at first, as I hadn't hiked for a while and needed to find my stride. Once I did, I was off to the races. I was cruising along so quickly that I hit the halfway point of the hike and I was like, "I'm here already?"
With music playing in my headphone, I continued up the trail. I went by a couple people struggling with the terrain, but I didn't have any difficulty with it. There's no question that the top part of the trail is a little steeper than the bottom part, but it's not what I would consider a strenuous hike.
I crested the top of the ridge where the hike to Wildcat A splits off, and from there I proceeded down the hill towards the hut. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I made a slight wrong turn and bumped into a tree branch that dumped snow down my back, which I didn't appreciate very much because the ambient temperature was quite cold.
From there, I proceeded up a slight hill and finished at the hut. I took my spikes off and went inside, where I found nobody. I was definitely early, because the hike up had gone so quickly. It was around 2:00, which wasn't great because they don't normally start the wood stove at the huts until 4:00, which meant I had a couple hours to kill. There was a note from the caretaker, Adam, saying that I could pick whichever bunk I wanted. I chose the middle bunk room in the upper bunkhouse, and set up my sleeping bag and other equipment in there, as well as getting changed out of hiking gear and into hut gear.
When I got back to the hut, Adam was there. He told me that there was another group of three supposed to arrive that night, and that was it, just the five of us. Well, the other group never showed up, so it was actually just two of us. Adam had set up a Christmas tree, which you can see above. It was just a part of a blowdown, which he reinforced with another part of a blowdown to make it appear less scraggly. I thought it was beautiful, certainly my favorite Christmas tree of the year. It appeared a lot more genuine than most of the other trees you see in modern society.
Adam and I hung out for the evening, reading our books and occasionally chatting. We both stayed close to the wood stove, as it was the only source of warmth. This was a very cold night, with a temperature below ten degrees Fahrenheit, and Adam considered it a victory when we managed to get the temperature of the main hut building above freezing with the wood stove. Keeping the temperature above freezing is helpful so that your water doesn't freeze.
Adam was reading one of my favorite books, Not Without Peril, so I asked him to skip ahead to the section about MacDonald Barr and Madison Spring Hut, as I find it to be the most compelling chapter of the book. I won't spoil anything, but it offers up a situation where a choice has to be made, and different people that I have spoken to about it over the years have seen the choice differently. I wanted to know what Adam's thoughts were. He read ahead, and his thoughts on it aligned pretty closely with mine.
We spent some time looking through old hut logs, which was really a treasure trove. Those logs stretch back decades and decades. Most of the stuff in there is just day to day normalcy, but occasionally you find something really interesting.
The snow really picked up by the time I went to bed, and I was becoming skeptical that it was only going to be two inches as the forecast had said. I spent a cold night in the bunkhouse, which is detached from the main hut at Carter, unlike at Zealand. The temperature must have dropped near zero, and I wore quite a few clothes inside my zero degree sleeping bag. I also kept a lot of things in there with me, including my electronics, my hiking clothes, and most importantly, a water bottle filled with boiling water, which was there to serve as a heater. I stick it between my thighs when I go to bed, and it keeps me warm.
In the morning, I made breakfast of Peak Refuel Mountain Berry Granola while Adam got the weather report. It turned out that it was six inches of snow that had fallen overnight! That's a lot more than two. Without snowshoes, hiking out through that much freshly fallen snow was going to be tough. I packed up, said goodbye to Adam and left him a nice tip, and headed out.
If I am being totally honest, I had a great time on the trip out. The beginning was tough, as climbing back up to the ridge through all that freshly fallen snow was difficult. However, once I got past that, pushing through the snow going downhill wasn't too bad. Also, hiking through all that new snow was beautiful! I put on some Christmas music on my headphone and belted it out as I was heading downhill.
The log bridges were a little dicey, as I wasn't thrilled about having to clear snow and cross them at the same time, but thankfully I didn't run into any trouble.
I saw quite a few critter tracks on the way out, though I am not skilled enough to identify which critters made them. The deep snow slowed me down a bit, but thankfully I was able to use my new satellite texting feature on my iPhone to let Dragonfly know that I was running late. Honestly, I couldn't think of a better way to spend Christmas Eve morning than tromping through freshly fallen snow. I wasn't sure if others were going to get a white Christmas, but I sure was.
When I made it back to my car, I was amazed to find that the water in my water bottle in the car was still liquid despite the overnight temperatures. My water bottle is apparently very well insulated, especially for a non-hiking bottle. I had to clean the snow off my CRV, but that didn't take very long. Once I made it back out onto Route 16, I found that the conditions were way better than I expected. I headed towards Dragonfly and several days of Christmas celebrations. Remember that even at Christmastime, you can't take flight until you spread your wings!
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