Washington, Washington, 20 Stories Tall Made of Radiation...

8-6-09 day 65
start: Mizpah Hut, NH
end: Madison Hut, NH
daily mileage: 11.8
total mileage: 839

After all the hard work from the night before, it was finally time this morning to perform our highly anticipated skit and song. Our skit explained the three rules of the huts and was titled "Goldilocks and the Three Huts". The song was the coup de grace and re-stated all the rules to the tune of "Afternoon Delight". The performance was a rousing success and immediately lifted us to trail super-stardom. We had a nice, if cloudy, day to tackle the Presidential Ridge. We were above tree line the entire day and had an awesome hike along the ridge leading to the big one, Mt. Washington. In all we summited Munroe, Washington, Clay, Jefferson, and Adams. For some reason the AT doesn't go over most of the summits so at certain points we branched off on blue blaze trails that actually went to the tops instead of skirting around. The whole ridge was super rocky with lots of bouldering up the peaks, which seemed mostly like big rock piles. Once we finally got to Washington the clouds had blown in and obscured the peak. We climbed the mountain and summited to find a zoo of tourists. Crowds of people who drove to the top or rode the cog train formed a line to wait and stand on the actual summit. You're telling me I just climbed this rock pile and have to wait behind these tourists to summit? Forget that, we didn't even care to go up there at that point. With an auto road, snack bar, and gift shop, Washington was super disenchanting and honestly pretty lame.

On the way down, the trail passes right by the cog train track. The thru-hiker tradition is to moon the passengers riding up. Not wanting to leave any hiker achievement un-tested Disney and I waited until the trail was passing and mooned those goofers good. We made our way to Madison Hut with little hope for a work for stay but were willing to give it a shot anyway. They told us there wasn't any more work but we ended up bartering our skit and song from this morning and they went for it. The Croo was really cool. Madison was also the highest place we've ever slept at 4882 feet.