Yesterday Hansel and Gretel climbed Mount Lafayette. The hike included a walk along the mountain ridge for about 6 miles and it was gorgeous! The White Mountains of New Hampshire are truly breath-taking. Even in the rain, the magnificence of the mountains does not go unnoticed.
"It's like we're in the land of the giants," Hansel said. "These mountains are enormous!" And this is definitely the toughest part of the AT they have encountered. There are times where they have to put their poles away and used the hands to scale the rock faces. Going down hill is probably the scariest. It's very steep and the rain has made everything wet and slick.
After reaching the peak of Mt. Lafayette, they started their decent and were greeted by a glimpse of the sun! How convenient that the sun decided to come out right around lunch time. So they took their packs off, found a spot to sit, and took out their food bags. About five minutes into their lunch break, the clouds came rushing back and the rain came pouring down. Of course their pack covers were off, their food was all over the place, and everything was getting soaking wet.
This was most definitely not the best time to meet 5 French women. Nor would it be convenient to have a semi-flood come washing down the mountain. But one can never plan these things. And in the midst of their scurrying to get their things together and out of the rain, 5 French women come traipsing down the mountain followed by a wave of water soaking everything. Instead of putting things in their packs, they had to move their gear out of the way so the French ladies could get by. Now that everything was thoroughly soaked, they couldn't put it back into their packs because that would just cause any remaining dry items to get wet too. There was only one thing to do... the Nutella was going into the pocket of Hansel's cargo pants, they carried their food bags and sit pads and headed down the now slippery wet Mt. Lafayette.
Happy trails and a dry lunch!
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