Appalachian Trail (day 75) - Wilder to Lambert Ridge / mile 1776

I've said farewell to Vermont and welcomed my new overlord New Hampshire arguably the toughest state to hike on the entire Appalachian Trail, especially 100 miles of White Mountains or as people liked to call them "Whites".

I've woke up way too early and cooked myself a breakfast consisting of six eggs, four toasted tortillas (they are great toasted!) and a chocolate milk. Greg didn't came down until quarter to eight so I had time for a quick, unplanned nap as well.

At 8 AM Greg gave me a ride to town, I took a picture with him outside of his house, he took another one of me and said that he will upload it onto his Facebook page which was fine with me. I've shared with him my plan to potentially come back here and finish the Long Trail and he was happy to help me, he would shuttle me to Killington and let me stay over for another night if needed. When I offered him money for his help he politely refused and said that "trail angels don't take it", from my experience I knew that it wasn't always the case but I said nothing.

Before heading back to trail I went to Lou's Bakery to pick up a free baked item for thru hikers, I chose a blueberry muffin and bought a large coffee as well. Then I went to Coop supermarket where I've met Iceman, he looked quite tired and surprised to see me, he also stayed with a trail angel last night and was starting his hike a bit later today. I bought a second coffee, two bananas and sat down outside talking to some crazy Russian dude teaching me about communism and how he personally knew half of the politicians from behind the Iron Curtain.

I started hiking at 9 AM and from the very beginning New Hampshire got quite challenging, steep and scrambly it reminded me of New York and I still had two days before I would arrive at the White Mountain's. 

Plastic Sawyer bag I was using to filter water with decided to burst at this very point in time as well. If it was yesterday I could have swapped it in town for a new one. Emergency option was to turn the bigger one litre bottle into a filtering device and have the other half a litre bottle to drink from which made things more complicated but it was better than nothing.

Trail was almost completely empty, I saw three day hikers in the morning and that was it. Only mosquitoes were keeping me company, so much so that I decided to wear long pants as my legs were turning into one big red scratchy mess, no matter how much deet I've sprayed on, sweat would wash it away half an hour later which was quite infuriating. I've tucked the pants into the socks for the defence against my second enemy - ticks, which was a perfect solution as I found four of them later in the afternoon trying really hard to bit through it and failing.

Day was cloudy but the sun came out in the afternoon, I've stopped at a campsite just few metres away from a great view at Lambert Ridge and this is where I had my dinner after setting up camp.

I've also googled "how good the bears smell is?" after someone told me recently that if you store your food in a odour proof freezer bag bears won't be able to smell it. It turned out that bears have 7 times better smell than bloodhounds which have sense of smell 300 times better than humans, which means that bears have sense of smell.. 21000 times better than us and can smell food from 20 miles away! The freezer bag theory immediately went to the bin. Luckily there was a decent tree by the campsite I could hang my food from for tonight.