December 23, 2024 6 min to read

AT Blog: Day 115 and 116

Days Off and Seeing My Brother Again

Day 115:

Start at Beaver Brook Shelter, Snowman the southbounder left before I woke up. Goose heads out before me and I take my time packing up. My mom and brother have a few hours before they’ll arrive at the parking lot, so I have plenty of time to hike the 1.5 miles down.

Around 8 AM I start to make my way down the trail. Keeping to the name I follow Beaver Brook down the side of the Mt Moosilauke. It stays extremely steep down, to the point they have installed wooden steps into the rock face for proper steps. There’s general warnings not to go down while it is wet. If you don’t know it’s typically harder to descend steeper sections than to ascend, due to the way you face. If you slip or fall you typically fall foward. So when you go down, you would fall very fall.

Keeping all this in mind the descent was super slow. I barely hike a mile a hour to reach the base. There’s some nice rapids and falls from Beaver Brook on the way down, but I was glad when it ended.

After reaching the base I have some time to kill before my family arrive in the rental car. There’s some neat history from a US bomber crashing during training during WW2. The local town of Lincoln was able to save 5 of the 7 crew men during winter in the mountains.

Eventually they arrive, we also pickup a hitch hiker… Bluebs. I last saw him briefly in New York, he is the guy who has hiked the AT a few times and this would end up being his second successful attempt. My mom was so funny with him, giving him extra goodies she packed for other hikers, at this point of my trip she had it to an art. She had the essentials protein bars of all varieties (including vegan friendly ones) candies, extra Gatorade bottles, toiletries and hand sanitizers.

We dropped him off at the hostel before going straight to a breakfast diner.

I ended up getting a “southern style” breakfast with a Frappé, a milkshake like drink.

Importantly my brother hadn’t seen me since Tennessee, where they just saw me briefly cause they were traveling. Now we both looked radically different. After I left, he got picked up by Atlanta CV a professional drum core. It’s super difficult to get into, with most kids in the program being in college, while he was a high-schooler. All of this happened while I was gone, but he looked pretty fit and had more wicked tans than I did.

We all caught up and relaxed mostly. The pouring rain and steep descent knocked me out. We did the classic visiting a visitor center, did a scenic drive, did some shopping for a beanie for myself and some gloves.

The place we were staying at is part of a dreaded time share property, mostly used by skiers in the winter. It was nice, but my mom and brother had some interesting activity happen tomorrow.

We went to the Common Man Grill and I grab another huge amount of food. We also accidentally shatter a cup but everyone was fine. We hit the hay afterwards, and that’s when the fun begins for my brother and mom…

Day 116:

I sleep in at Innseason resort. While I was sleeping in my mom and brother had waged a war. A war against the ants. There seemed to be an ant infestation that they had to fight against in the middle of the night. They were super kind in not waking me up.

Once I’m up it’s time to pack up all my stuff. After ressupplying and getting new stuff, it always takes a long time to repack. My mom helps me out when she gets up.

Eventually I finish packing my bag, while both my brother and mother had their bags packed for a while. We head out the door to grab breakfast and drive up Mount Washington. I’ll be hiking up it in a few days, but I wanted to show them what it looked like, so we drove over to its auto road and made our way up.

The road is precarious especially as you get closer to the top. With close edges and no guard rails, the road is an adventure in itself. Also by the time we get to 4000 feet the clouds completely cover the road severely limiting sight lines.

Eventually we make it to the top and can barely see anything. Anything more than 10 feet away disappears in the clouds. We take some photos at the summit and look around. They have a museum facility there that we look around in and get a break from the cold and mist.

We eventually head down and start making our way to my drop off. We take the northern route away from Washington giving us new views and stop by a deli for sandwiches on the way. Eventually we make it back to Beaver Brooke where I get back on trail and say my goodbyes to my brother and mother.

I ended at Eliza Brook Shelter, the last non payment shelter in a while. The AMC maintains the shelters and have caretakers during peak season at each one.

Appalachian Mountain Club

While we are talking about the AMC they are the oldest hiking club along the AT, operating since the 1870s. They do have some controversy as they have a lot of paid services… expensive paid services too. There are huts along the trail operated by them.

The huts are more than just a cabin in the woods. Huts have limited power for heating and cooking (no phone charging), full cooking services and staff to operate them. Meals are elaborate if you stay there, with full 3 course Thanksgiving meals or other elaborate things.

These huts get most of their supplies by hikers carrying it, and a small amount via helicopter (to refill propane tanks, haul in New solar panels, etc.). Most of these huts are miles away from the closest trail head.

Which is also why they can cost more than $300 a person a night. So basically very few thruhikers stay at them (and a lot of them are booked for months) they do