Appalachian Trail (day 76) - Lambert Ridge to Hikers Welcome Hostel / mile 1799

Hot, humid, stormy day. My goal was to place myself withing the short distance before the climb to Mount Moosilauke.

AT in New Hampshire definitely prooved from the very begining that it means business. The first and second climb of the day:  Smarts Mountain and Mt Cube were steep and rocky, the path was muddy, overgrown and not very well marked, combined with the hot and humid weather I was moving at a snail's pace.

Views were quite rewarding though and after the initial struggle trail got easier for the rest of the day. I've seen yet another two bear cubs, no mother in sight this time around which got me a bit spooked. Cubs climbed so high up the tree I could hardly see them from the trail, they were so incredibly agile! I've taken a blurry video of the couple as I thought it was fairly safe to do so, that's 10 black bears I've seen so far on Appalachian Trail. 

At one point I took a break  by the road and tried to dry my feet a little, it looked like I will be loosing one of my fingernails soon.

In the afternoon the weather became stormy but luckily I narrowly missed the worst of it with only few minutes of rain, sun and thunder at the same time, it was quite bizarre. My initial plan of staying at the shelter changed when I saw a hostel quite close to the trailhead in the area I was planning to stay anyway, it was 35$ for the night with a free shower and a shuttle to a shop, a great offer for New Hampshire and hard to pass on.

The place was called: Hikers Welcome Hostel, it was ran by the guy called Patience, there was many slack packers and section hikers staying here tonight. Iceman with Yukon I've met before arrived here as well in the evening, they looked really tired, it was a 25 mile day for them.

We sat by the fire and talked for a while, lady called Roofwalk from Florida was taking a day off tomorrow, she was taking it slow, hiking only 5 miles per day. Gutsy from Austria was living in US on the Green Card for a long time. This year he decided to flip flop AT from McAfee's Knob in Virginia, he had lots of questions about PCT I've done few years ago, he was planning to hike John Muir Trail in Sierra Nevada which was also a part of PCT. Tum Tum was doing last section of AT to Kathadin and then going to start CDT southbound in the middle of July to finish his triple crown, he hiked PCT in 2011.

I've got a shower and sorted out my provisions which with a small top up from the shop should last me now until town of Gorham 100 miles away, at least that is the plan. 

Tomorrow will be a big day of starting the traverse through White Mountain National Forrest, I'm looking forward to it.