August 7, 2004 - After a nice breakfast I began my hike over Mt. Madison. The .5 mile up wasn’t so bad, the down was the killer. The 2.5 mile hike down was all loose rock and very steep which is very slow walking and not fun. It took a long time to get to the bottom but once I did I was back moving at a good pace all the way to Pinkham Notch where I ate lunch. Right as I was about to leave it started to rain a little but I needed to move on so I hiked in the rain but it only lasted 10 minutes, just enough to get the rocks all wet. Had a long and steep hike up all 5 Wildcat peaks, then a steep downhill to Carter Notch Hut where I planned on eating dinner since they had hot water then I would move on. By the time I had finished dinner I really didn’t feel like moving on so decided to do a work for stay but I wouldn’t get free food since this hut was bring your own food. However I did get some leftovers from the guests. I never ended up doing any work because it was the caretaker’s birthday and a lot of his friends came to celebrate and since they made so much noise from all the beer consumption he said that he was sorry about it all and we didn’t have to do any work. I’m so tired but wasn’t able to go to sleep until 9:30 which is lights out time. Only 13.7 miles for the day, better get some big miles in tomorrow.
