(Some photos on these posts are courtesy my friends Bryan and Topher and posted with their permission.  This series of posts will be fairly photo-heavy.)

Day Three – Zealand Falls Hut to Mizpah Springs Hut

(I’ll supply an elevation profile for each day, courtesy GPS data from Bryan and processing done by Google Earth.)

With morning came clearer skies and another beautiful mountain sunrise.

Breakfast on the third day was oatmeal again, but followed up with pancakes and bacon. The previous day, we had discussed our options for Day Three. Our plans called for two possible approaches to Mizpah Springs Hut. Both took us down to Route 302 for a midday break. One was substantially more difficult than the other, and even with a good pace would get us into the hut after dark. Looking back on day one, we had all decided the shorter route was better. It would get us into the hut by mid-afternoon again, giving us a chance to rest and relax before our last day, when we would have some rougher climbing to do.

So the day started with a descent down to Zealand Pond and some nice hiking through forested terrain. The path was a mix of ups and downs which eventually dropped us a few hundred feet in elevation.

There was a mild but persistent unpleasant odor here, maybe from the pond ecosystem, maybe from the hut’s compost system, we weren’t quite sure. The bridges here were frosted and slippery, a little preview of cooler weather to come.

The path began to slope more upwards before cresting and then descending consistently towards Route 302.

We took the A-Z Trail and the Avalon Trail for about five miles, over around four hours of hiking to arrive at the Crawford Notch Highland Center in time for a lunch break.

It was interesting going from the more remote areas of the mountains into this more popular section; we passed day hikers with no packs, groups of kids playing and throwing rocks in rivers, and other signs of “civilization” which seemed at odds with how we had spent the last couple days.

But the trails themselves were mostly pleasant (yes, there were some steep challenges but they never turned into hours-long endurance events).

The unfortunate story of the third day was one of cumulative damage. No particular section was terribly difficult or painful, but every downhill step caused my knee to twinge in pain, and it started to happen on uphills too. I felt not just “out of shape” but older and weaker as well. It was frustrating because my spirits were high and my overall physical approach felt stronger than on the first day, but the repeated ups and downs were causing pain at every step. I quietly worried I was damaging my knees, but kept up a solid pace.

We broke for a trail lunch (granola bars, trail mix, jerky — the usual) out on the patio of the Highland Center. We even bought a beer for each of us, and sitting in the warm sun sipping a cold, well-earned pale ale is one of my more pleasant memories of this trip.

After using the facilities and discarding some of our accumulated trash (lightening our backpacks and giving us a chance to wash our hands with actual warm water!) we crossed Route 302 and started the climb to Mizpah Springs Hut via the Crawford Trail. This section of trail climbed steadily up, 1500 feet in a mile and a half, but we actually made time on that leg as compared to our predicted pace, which was a first. My knees were grateful that the downhills had stopped, and maybe that cold beer had alleviated the pain a bit. A comfortable 0.7 mile cutoff from the trail to the hut brought us to our last overnight stop of the trail at 3 PM, with a few hours of warm sunlight awaiting us.

It was the most pleasant afternoon of our trip, sitting outside in the sun, finishing off our whiskey and sausage, and reflecting on our progress so far. We went inside and played cards, we made conversation with our fellow hikers, and we were acutely aware that our little vacation from reality was approaching its completion.

Dinner was an incredible carrot, ginger, and quinoa soup with loaves of fresh bread (honestly, I could have eaten just that) followed by some salad and a lasagna (for my non-dairy diet, they prepared some pasta and sauce, which was fine but I just wanted more soup and bread). Every meal came in four courses — soup/bread, salad, main dish, and dessert. I’ve not focused much on the other courses, but the Croo puts a lot of work into all of them and they were always much appreciated.

After dinner, we stepped outside with most of the other guests and admired the stars as a member of the Croo explained the Milky Way and pointed out constellations with a laser pointer. The view of the night sky was amazing, one of the highlights of the trip. Without a moon and with minimal night pollution, the Milky Way stood clearly visible and every section of night sky rewarded us with an explosion of stars. It was hard to go back in.

We stayed up until lights-out, playing Pitch in the hut’s library as a couple played Bananagrams next to us at the same table. I think we wanted to extend this night as long as possible. I read in my bunk for a little while, and finally drifted off to another good night’s sleep, cold but bundled-up in an eight-bed bunk room we had to ourselves. At six, again, I stepped outside for my last open-air coffee of the trip, and made it back inside in time for the 6:30 wake-up, a pleasant song played on ukulele by one of the Croo (I’ve not mentioned this before, but every morning the Croo wakes anybody still asleep up at 6:30 with a song, a poem, or a passage from a book; the ukulele was the most pleasant of the trip).