Waterworld, NH
Waterworld, NH
A hidden cascade buffet in the Northern Presidentials
Some of you might not know that before my wild, bacchanalian years of freelance writing, I used to work in the Appalachian Mountain Club huts. The “high mountain huts,” as described by the AMC, are essentially backwoods hostels. Located a day’s hike apart from each other in the White Mountains, the eight huts cover leafy ground between Franconia Notch and the Carter-Moriah Range near the Maine border. Hikers spend the night in musky bunk rooms. During the summer, the huts are staffed by live-in “croo” members—usually college students on their seasonal break—and each night, the croo serves a communal meal of gooey comfort food to the guests. But in order to prepare all those pans of lasagna and cauldrons of black bean kale soup, the croo requires regular resupplies of fresh ingredients. That means hiking down to the valley twice each week and using a wooden packboard to carry hefty loads of boxed food back up to the hut. Did I mention that many of us now have back or knee problems?
The AMC huts are not created equal, when it comes to the rigor and length of the trails that are used for direct access. Packing 70 pounds of fruits, veggies, and frozen meat to Zealand Falls Hut along the flat, 2.8-mile Zealand Trail was, to paraphrase Depeche Mode, a pain that I became used to. But packing a massive food load up to Madison Spring Hut was another story. Tucked in the saddle between the summit cones of Mount Adams and Mount Madison, just beyond the treeline, Madison Spring Hut is high and remote enough that all of the trails to the hut from the valley necessitate gaining at least 3,000 feet of elevation. And since this is New England, we’re talking 3,000+ feet of climbing through sadistic terrain like massive rock stairs and webs of slick tree roots. Most of the trails to Madison Spring Hut begin from a large parking lot on Route 2 called Appalachia (about 10 minutes from the town of Gorham) and the most common ascent route is the Valley Way: a thankless 3.8-mile slog through endless corridors of trees that are dense enough to snuff out the view and the breeze.
The AMC describes the Valley Way as “the most direct and easiest route to Madison Spring Hut.” Technically they’re correct about the “easiest” part, but in the same way that a hanging is preferable to being burned at the stake. The other trails to the hut involve bouldering, crawling through caves, and scrambling up rockslides that feel like they could give way at any moment. And yet, when I spent a summer working at Madison Spring Hut, some of my fellow croo members experimented with packing on these alternative trails, desperate for a change of scenery from the Valley Way. And one afternoon in July, unable to stomach another routine exertion, I decided to follow a trail that branched off from the Valley Way, eventually rejoining it before breaching the boreal treeline and arriving at the hut. I had never heard anyone talk about this trail.
