NH Appalachian Trail: Mt. Garfield to Zealand

Moody morning sky from the Garfield Ridge camp

After a restless night at the Garfield Ridge campsite (possibly from sharing the platform so closely with another camper) I checked my phone and learned about potential severe thunderstorms around 4 pm. So at 5 am I walked up to the food area to retrieve my bear bag. The sky was a vivid, angry red. Red sky in morning, hikers take warning. Yup. Time to make time. I broke up camp as quietly as I possibly could and headed down towards the main trail. Others were getting up, too, and preparing to hit the trail.

Garfield Spring

The day before, I'd heard something about a very steep downhill and bam, there it was, first thing in the morning. The little stream from the spring went down the hill and the trail soon joined it, so many of the rocks were wet. I didn't need any coffee after that descent.

Looking back up the trail

The trail continued down pretty steeply, so it was slow going. My legs were quite sore from the previous two days and I think I heard them groaning.

More downhill

After the steep stuff, the trail did some gradual ups and downs and I passed a number of tents in this area.  Makes sense. It was quieter and the thru hikers didn't have to pay $10 or share a platform. Smart.

Overlook a mile from Galehead Hut, looking into the Pemi Wilderness

The trail eventually came to a nice overlook. By this time, the thru-hikers were starting to pass me, and one came up while I was standing there. We conferred with the maps and managed to spot Galehead Hut a mile away at the base of the Twin Range. It was so tiny.

Galehead Hut is the tiny white dot up in the upper center part of the photo. 

More thru-hikers flew past me on the way to Galehead, but I met up with them again at the hut, which was bustling. This must happen every morning this time of year, the wave of northbound thru-hikers coming in from Garfield. It was the last source of water for a long ways, so everyone was topping off their tanks and grabbing something to eat. They have food at the hut, which some people were eating, but the downside to that is you aren't lightening your pack. Food is heavy, so the more of it you eat, the lighter your pack gets. I ate something from my pack.

Galehead Hut

It was much cooler and breezier that the two previous days and it felt wonderful and energizing. People actually started to get chilly and talked about heading up South Twin to warm up. The word going around was it was 1000 feet up in 0.8 mile. That would be the highest elevation for the day, and then I'd be following a ridgeline. Pretty sure I heard my legs grumbling.

From Galehead Hut back to the main trail, Twin Range ahead

I got out before most of the other hikers, eager to make time before the storms, but they all flew past me going up the hill. I bet fifteen of them at least. They've been hiking up mountains since Georgia, while I've been mostly sitting at a desk all summer, and it showed. The cool breeze was refreshing, though.

Looking back at Franconia Ridge and Garfield

Getting up to the top of South Twin was a psychological milestone for me. At elevation 4902, it was the last big climb of the trip and it was a gradual downhill along the ridge to Zealand Mtn and the drop to Zealand Hut.

South Twin summit, Mt Washington on horizon

So I was overjoyed to find that the summit empty. Views opened up to the east and the buildings on Mt. Washington were sort of visible. That's where the thru-hikers were headed. Good for them. The sky seemed pregnant with the approaching front, and isolated low clouds raced across the higher peaks. After a few minutes, one of the older thru-hikers came up and asked me to take a photo of him at the top with his camera. The thru-hikers were mostly in their twenties, but there was a good minority of retired men (no older women, though). They were a bit slower and definitely quieter. I had the best conversations with the older men. The "kids" didn't seem to realize I was even there. I don't blame them. I'd probably be the same if I were them.

A level trail!!!

After a short but steep descent, the trail leveled out and for about a mile it was like a typical Connecticut trail: mostly level but full of roots and rocks. I flew. Around 11:00 am came across a family hiking the opposite way to Galehead Hut and asked them about the weather forecast (I had no coverage at this point). They said they had recently seen the radar and there were big storms in Vermont headed our way, and we had maybe two hours at most before they hit. Yikes. I practically started running down the trail. At some point I checked Guthook and found I was five miles from Zealand Hut. Seemed pretty close considering how easy the trail was. My hope was to get to the hut before the storms hit.

Mt Guyot ("GEE-oh")

There was a bit of uphill to Mt. Guyot, which was unexpectedly open. A couple classroom-type groups were sitting about the trail, in one spot actually blocking the Appalachian Trail, and I had to asked them to move so I could get through. They didn't seem too disturbed about any approaching rain, which I hoped was a good thing. Or maybe they just had no idea. I could have taken a side trail to the Guyot Shelter and set up my tent, but it seemed way too early and I wasn't in the mood.

Mt. Zealand

I got about another mile down the trail when I first heard the thunder. Or maybe it was a plane. Nope, thunder. Ack. I donned my rain gear and continued. More thunder, closer, and the trail was going up to a more open area. What? I checked Guthook to find I was going up Zealand Mtn. Great. Because I want to be on a mountain top during a thunderstorm. Even if I stopped, I'd still be on a ridgetop, so I continued. The rain started at the top of Zealand. Not heavy, but steady. Oh well. I slowed way down in fear of slipping on slick rock, but the crumbly, scoured granite turned out to have very good traction in the rain. Still, it got very steep on the way down towards Zealand Hut, with many shear rock faces that were rather terrifying since they were wet. But I never slipped. It was about 2.5 miles to Zealand Hut in the rain, but it seemed to take forever. 

It stopped raining here

Eventually I needed some energy and all I had handy was a bag of pretzels and a cup of peanut butter to dip the pretzels in, so I sat down in the rain on a log and ate my pretzels. A younger hiker came down the trail while I was sitting there. "How much longer to we need to hike to get to the hut?" "Forever," I replied. "We will be hiking downhill in the rain until we die of old age." He cracked up and commented that he could check Guthook, but his phone didn't work in the rain. That was my problem, too.

The rain stopped about a quarter mile from the hut. Figures. Descending the ridge, I was noticing how lush all the vegetation was getting. So much diversity after being up on the ridges for a few days. Instead of the balsam-spruce forest, there was a dense mixed forest with all kinds of species competing for space.

Lush mixed forest

I had been to Zealand Hut about 25 years ago with my husband and remember that we really enjoyed the hike and the hut. We didn't stay there, just stopped in to admire the hut. So I was looking forward to returning as an older backpacker.

Crossing Zealand River

The area got it's name because at one time it was considered so remote as to be "New Zealand", but no longer. The hut was full of soaked hikers. I got a delicious cup of hot coffee. They also had clam chowder and various sweets for sale. I hung out for a good half hour or more, trying to dry off. My raincoat had not been terribly effective, and water had seeped through the material. Good thing this happened here and not during a long cold spell.  There was still no cell phone service. I asked around and was told it was supposed to rain all night. What?? I looked outside and the rain had started up again. Argh.

View from the Zealand Hut

There was supposed to be an informal tenting site just a bit further down the trail, so I headed down past the turn-off for Zealand Trail and found the site near Whitewall Brook. It was deserted. Much of the site looked like water from heavy rain flowed right through it. The rain had picked up but was still pretty light, so I picked a spot on the higher, grassy periphery and pulled out my tent. That's when the sky opened up and it POURED. Seriously?  It turned into the worst tent set-up I've ever done. There was a lake of water on the tent floor I kept trying to dump out before staking down the tent. Water was coming down in buckets and I was swearing up a storm. After doing a bad job of staking the tent, I ducked inside for cover. The tent was leaking due to my poor job of staking and the fact that I was at the toe of a good slope, so I kept everything tightly sealed in my wet backpack and used my bandana to bail out the incoming water.

This went on for about an hour until the rain stopped. Thank goodness. I popped outside and restaked the tent so that the fly would actually drain water. The tent was on a significant cross slope which I normally would have fixed, but I didn't want to risk another downpour at the wrong time. An older thru-hiker came in and set his hammock tent on the far end. I found a spot for my bear bag. Bear boxes are probably the biggest advantage of the busier official campsites. Bear bags are a hassle.

Last night camping in the rain

The rain started back up, but this time the tent was secured. It still leaked a bit, but I had a big plastic inner liner which kept things mostly dry. I still kept everything in plastic bags and didn't pull out the down-filled sleeping bag or jacket until it was time to sleep. All night I rolled downhill into my pack and bag of stuff. But it didn't matter, I slept pretty well my last night on the Appalachian Trail.