Gorgeous and brutal: The White Mountains leave their mark on Morristown’s A.T. hiker

Editor’s note: As Nichole enters the home stretch of her Appalachian Trail adventure, she is glad to have New Hampshire’s White Mountains in her rear-view mirror.

By Nichole Young

I’ve made it through the White Mountains — and almost a hundred miles of Maine afterward – and I still feel slightly dazed.

I last wrote about southbound-hiking Mt. Moosilauke, sort of the introduction to what’s coming.

It was challenging and fun and so beautiful and a little scary. The following day I started into the Whites in earnest. I figured I could do the hike from Kinsman Notch to Lonesome Lake Hut in six hours without much trouble.

Ten brutal hours after I started, as night was falling, I finally walked into the hut exhausted and starving and filthy, having barely managed one mile per hour, less than half my usual pace. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

To hike in the White Mountains, you use not only your feet and legs, but also your hands, arms, knees, elbows, and butt.

Gone were the gentle, smooth switchbacks of the South. They were replaced with giant tumbles of boulders the size of cars, mud pits, bog boards that were meant to help you cross soggy areas but had somehow sunk six inches under standing water, sheer granite faces 15 feet tall, and at two points, a near-vertical climb down a waterfall.

Literally, the trail became one with a stream bed and then tumbled down hundreds of feet, directing both the water flow and the hikers to the bottom.

My trekking poles were useless, as I was essentially rock climbing now, using both hands to grab onto roots, small tree trunks, and rough granite outcroppings to haul myself up and down, and also trying desperately not to slip.

As thru-hikers, we joke that our upper bodies atrophy, but in the Whites, my triceps and shoulders were constantly sore. I am generally steady and balanced and deliberate in my steps, but I slipped or tripped and wiped out nearly every single day in the Whites. It was frustrating and humbling.

Once I realized what my body needed, I cut back my miles, sometimes doing as few as eight in a day. I started to enjoy the landscape and the experience much more.

I took hour-long lunch breaks next to pristine glacial ponds. I ended my hiking day by 4 pm and enjoyed an early dinner, then read my Kindle until a stunning sunset, and fell into a deep sleep before the sky was fully dark.

I rested after every brutal climb instead of pushing right into the descent. I was blessed with near-perfect weather, and was hiking mostly in mild temperatures under bluebird skies, finally able to appreciate the breathtaking vistas all around me.

Even 6,288-foot Mt. Washington — which gets 300 days of fog a year and regularly experiences 50-80 m.p.h. winds — cooperated and provided a very cold but relatively mild summit experience.

Now I’m out of the Whites, writing from mile 2,000.9 in Stratton, Maine. I have only 188 miles to go now, or about 17 per day.

Southern Maine has been almost as difficult as New Hampshire, but slowly the terrain is smoothing out for us, and compared to what we’ve come through, it feels like a red-carpet stroll up to Mt. Katahdin.

The Hundred-Mile Wilderness starts soon, a remote and gorgeous stretch of trail that delivers us right to the base of the great mountain, our final climb, rumored to be the most challenging mountain of the whole trail.

I plan to summit on Sept. 21st or 22nd, hopefully surrounded by some of the people I’ve come to love on this journey, and the next time you hear from me, I’ll be an Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker.

MORE ABOUT NICHOLE’S A.T. ADVENTURE

Nichole Young is a third-generation Morristown resident, and a 2004 graduate of Morristown High School (as Nichole Fortier). After earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Richmond, she worked in pharmaceutical research for three years, then studied dietetics at Rutgers. You may know her from stints at Be Well Morristown, SmartWorld Coffee and, for 13 years, at Glassworks Studio. Nichole fell in love with backpacking during several short trips to national parks out west. After she conquers the Appalachian Trail in October, she plans to start a health-coach training program at Duke University, and celebrate her 31st birthday and her one-year wedding anniversary. More photos from her hike are on Instagram: @nicholeyoung1.