Originally Posted by
Gambit McCrae
Daily Mileage thru the whites I am expecting 10-12.
Weather was kinda all over the place first 2 weeks of September in North Mass and Vermont. How will the weather be first 2 weeks thru NH? About the same? I am expecting slightly cooler due to elevation and exposure but geographically speaking will it be cooler on top of that due to being further north?
These huts have got my gears really grinding. I do not want to reserve a spot at the lakes and then be subject to having to keep that schedule. I am sure it is, but if I had my wish, I would walk all of the whites without using a single hut, and without having to climb 1000 ft down just in order to sleep. The rocks in PA, and the mud in VT have taught me that hikers amplify the actual severity of things for most situations. I understand that some times the mud may be terrible in VT, but I proved that it is not always that way as I had no issues with mud. So are the huts similar? IF it is getting close to dark, dinner is over, will they allow hikers to (of a number more then what is doing work for stay) sleep on the floor? Or will they toss ya back out into the grueling storms of the night to survive and fend for yourself?
Originally Posted by
Gambit McCrae
tdoczi let me clarify the only willing to tent. I will not pay to hop from hut to hut every night. I will stay at shelters, or tentsites. I would prefer to sleep in my tent every night, but if logistically a shelter space is the only space, I am not above it, I just really prefer my tent. I am open to spending 1 night in a hut and figured from others comments that Lake of the clouds hut is the hut you wanna pick logistically.
As others have stated the weather in the Whites is all over the place due to the location and how the air masses react with each other in that area. One big thing I noticed is that on most of the AT clouds are not an issue as they are usually up in the sky, but in the Whites a lot of the peaks are in clouds and it gets cold up there. You can literally be walking in a valley with it mild and sunny only to ascend into a cloud where it's in the 40s with a stiff wind. Mt Washington in particular can be very fickle if you hit it when it's in the clouds, which I think is most of the time.
As for the huts, I'm not sure what your opposition is but to each his own. I was very averse to the huts until I stayed in one (I also like my privacy in my tent), and it's just a much easier way to go through the whites in my opinion...but again to each his own. I think your plan of staying at Lake of the Clouds if you are only going to do 1 hut is a good one. It's about 15 miles between the tentsites (Nauman an Osgood) on either end of that ridge, and that hike is tough. Add in the X-factor of potential bad weather and it might be really tough.
In regards to rolling into a hut without a reservation, you will most definitely get the boot unless you get one of the work for stays or pay for an open bunk if there even is one. I saw it happen at multiple huts, and talked to several unhappy thrus that had gotten the boot. Lake of the Clouds has the most capacity of all the huts, and has the "Dungeon" underneath it, which looks similar to a typical AT shelter on the inside. So there is a little more room, but it's also the only place to stay legally up in that area so it fills up quick.