Today's miles 10.3. AT miles 1822.5
It rained heavily all through the night last night but had stopped by this morning. We were breakfasted, packed and called for a shuttle back to the trail just before 9am. The lady who shuttled us said she was glad we said we wanted to go to the Liberty Springs trailhead and not Kinsman Knotch trailhead (where we went the other day) as part of the road had been washed away in flash floods. From the trailhead we had the mile side trail to walk again to get back to Franconia Notch, our last AT position where we arrived at 9:30. The river here was running so fast after all the rain. We were glad we had completed the previous section because we had to stone hop across that river as the bridge was down, it would have been impassable today.
We had a lot of uphill today, 4000ft of ascent up to Mount Lafayette 5291ft. Not long after we started climbing we hit the mountain mist. It was warm and humid but remained damp. The morning wasn't too bad just cloud and mist but in the afternoon we had drizzle and rain. The trail going up had turned into streams again in places. We passed Liberty Springs campsite where we met a youngish lad, 'Mr Moody' the campsite caretaker. All the campsites/shelters in the Whites have caretakers to maintain them as they are so well used. He was a mobile caretaker moving from campsite to campsite and was heading for Garfield campsite where we were heading.
It was another tiring rocky trail day but not as difficult as Moosilauke or Kinsman. The wetness underfoot though made for slow progress especially on the downhill sections, some of the rocks were very slippy. The last few days on the trail have definitely been the most tiring/challenging so far. Franconia Ridge on the way to Mount Lafayette summit though was very atmospheric in the mist, it was a shame we didn't have any views today it would have been beautiful. From the summit it was a steep rocky downhill then steep rocky up again to Mount Garfield. It started raining on this section, we had dried off at one point then got soaked again. Another steep down after the summit and we reached the side trail to Garfield Ridge Campsite and shelter. It said it was 0.2 miles to the campsite. It was a very long 0.2 down a very steep rocky path. Then we came to another sign to the campsite which took us back uphill again, not quite so far, we got there eventually. There were a few people already in the shelter so we decided to pitch our tent, there were lots of tent platforms, we were the only ones camping to start then a couple more people turned up later. The rain had just about stopped as we arrived and the sun made a brief appearance in the evening before it disappeared behind the mountain. The forecast for the next few days is sun so I hope it's right, it was definitely wetter today than forecast.
In the evening Mr Moody came to collect our campsite fee, we have to pay $8 per person to camp at caretaker campsites. A nice lad we had a good chat with him. Early on today we saw a lovely red squirrel. It was so busy eating a nut or acorn it took a while until it even noticed we were there.
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