Those strawberries I packed in barely made it through the night. No matter. I’ll eat them all this morning in my granola.

I’m STOKED for all the good food I packed out. Heavy food, but food I want to eat: sugar snap peas, bagged salad (dinner last night), an apple, 2 oranges, garden cream cheese and deli turkey for the first couple of days (or until it fails the smell test), nuts, apple sauce packets. That food bag must be crazy heavy you are thinking…yep, it is, but I don’t care…at least I won’t care till I start going up one of those steep New Hampshire ups. Most of this will need to be eaten quickly anyway.

I took my time this morning and made it down to the main shelter about 8:30 to find Gormet having a second breakfast. Excellent! We catch up for a while and I put on a second pair of socks. I ended up getting a men’s pair of shoes because I needed the width, but my feet are sliding in them some. Today’s hike will be the real test.

The next mile or so of trail is gentle and then goes up, but the rocks are well spaced, at no point do I have to put a hand down or dig deep to make a 3′ step up. I like it!

As I climbed up the sky seemed to get gray under the tree cover. It was windier the higher I got, and when I topped out for the view I could see a dark, fast-moving grey cloud was sitting on top of Mt. Moriah.

I stopped to put on my long sleeve shirt and continued on to try and find a protected spot for lunch. Nope, everything was windy and I got chilled as I tried to eat some of my heaviest food. Gormet came up and left….too cold and windy. I reluctantly packed up and picked my way down the trail slowly.

I had tons of time today. The White Mountains are closely managed by the AMC, or Appalachian Mountain Club. There were specific places to camp, and places we definitely couldn’t camp, especially above tree line. The campsites and huts have caretakers, and the sites cost money, which doesn’t make some of the thru-hikers happy. The miles and space between sites in this section means my best option is to have a short day. I’ll pay $10 to camp at Imp Campsite today, and then I’ll get the thru-hiker card that lets me stay at other sites for 50% off, and gives me a ticket to baked goods and lunchtime soup at the huts. I will pass my first hut tomorrow, so it makes sense for me to pay to play since it will mean more goodies for me soon.

I also checked weather while on high….it’s not looking good for Tuesday when I had planned to climb Mt Washington which has some of the worst weather in the world (or country?? One of those). Storms on forecasted for Tuesday afternoon, so now I have to decide if I’ll push hard to get over it before the storm, or slow down and go after. Mt Washington is surrounded by miles and miles and miles of trail above treeline, so I need to plan carefully. Most thru-hikers say 10 miles a day is reasonable…very few people can make the miles they were doing before the Whites for the shear effort needed to hike the trails.

I get to camp in the early afternoon, pay my $$ and find Gormet. You have to use wooden tent platforms here, and they make you share them since there are so many people that backpack in the Whites. I set my tent up next to hers, both of them have rocks and guide lines going all over the place to keep things in place in the increasingly gusty wind.

The rest of the afternoon I rework my itinerary, read, and nap a little.

Dinner is in the group kitchen (no eating in your tents) and then it’s back to the tent.