After the Presi traverse we weren’t too concerned for the wildcat because it was supposed to be easier and shorter. But it would still be longer day than normal. And this hike was not as common as the Presi so it might it a little difficult to plan.
So Friday July 29th we were getting ready for the hike. We were supposed to be house sitting for Pam, Tony’s boss but we didn’t want to deal with packing and trying to stay the night there just for one evening. But she had a golden doodle dog named Zoe that we needed to take care of so we decided we would bring her back to our house to stay the night. Well man was that a bad idea. The poor dog could not relax and every noise she heard she would start to bark. We tried to get her to calm down and we thought at some point she would get tired and fall asleep. Well finally at 1:00 am we gave in and decided we had to take her back to the house. We were supposed to be waking up at 4 am so we were not pleased with this situation. And on the way to the house we got pulled over because a brake light was out, aka he wanted to bust us for a DUI. And it turns out that the brake light was never out, that little punk.
Anyway, we finally dropped Zoe and got back to our house. We kept debating on if we should start the hike right then, try to sleep for an hour or if we should postpone our wake up time. I didn’t want to start the hike right then but I figured an hour worth of sleep was not a good idea either. So we set our alarms for 5 am and snoozed for three hours. We were on the trail by 6:30 am and it was light enough that we didn’t need headlamps. We took the Carter Moriah trail up to Mt. Moriah. The entire hike was going to be 20 miles and 8000 feet elevation gain.
The hike was not very eventful in the beginning, but it was a tricky hike because it was very rocky, like big long rocks that you had to walk up but they were super wet so that meant they were very slick. It’s interesting how much longer a hike can take if the rocks are wet. Instead of being able to just walk up the rock you have to make sure your feet are firmly placed before each step and that you are holding onto trees, hiking poles, or anything that would help you get up. But other than that the hike was pretty typical and fine.
Tony was not feeling hiking but for some reason I actually felt really good throughout the day. Tony did say that he came into this hike not well-prepared. He was thinking it would be a little jaunt and we’d be done pretty quickly but then he realized that he wasn’t thinking and it would be another long day of hiking. Then he felt trapped and so it just made it seem very long. I on the other hand felt the opposite; I prepared for another Presi Traverse but the hike was much easier so I felt great!
This trail was on the AT as well so we met a lot of thru-hikers, including a few older gentlemen which was really cool to see (most of the time thru-hikers are 30 or under). Multiple times we had people say to us, “you aren’t going to go down the trail near the wildcat resort right?” and they would have extremely concerned looks on their face. We had heard that the trail up, (or down in our case) from Wildcat was really sketchy, even for White Mountain standards. Everyone kept saying they would be scared to go down that trail, going up was hard enough. And with the wet rocks you could tell people were very concerned. We had gone up some sketchy parts already but I was curious what that trail was actually like. But we would never know because Tony and I planned to walk down the ski trail once we got there.
At one point the wet rocks got the better of us and as Tony was walking down one wet rock he started to slip and he flailed his arm. Well unfortunately I was too close to him and SMACK! His arm went straight into my face and he hit hard. Luckily it was my forehead that took most of the hit so although it hurt it was way better than it could have been. I learned to give Tony more room when we’re on wet rocks.
About 8 hours into the hike we reached Carter Hut which was in Carter Notch. Coming down the notch was a steep half mile or so but it was really cool because it was a lot of rock steps. And the hut was very pretty because it was right on a little lake/pond and then behind it there was this fairly flat area with all these boulders. A lot of people just hike up to the hut for the day and do lots of bouldering and scrambling. We knew we still had a lot of hiking ahead of us so we didn’t go inspect it closer. But it was still cool to see. Now that we had descended into the notch we of course had to ascend back out to the first Wildcat peak. It was steep, but you rarely needed your hands and we got through it within 30 minutes. We found a sweet viewpoint that we got some pictures at but then continued on. We never found a cairn for Wildcat A and eventually we talked to these guys that said the viewpoint was the peak. Oops, no official picture but at least we did it. All that was left was Wildcat D!!
Wildcat is actually a ski resort that Tony and I snowboard at in the winter. And it has a few peaks but only two of them are official 4000-footers. Well we reached Wildcat D in 10 hours and 50 minutes and we were still feeling good. Definitely tired, and ready to be done hiking but nothing as miserable as the Presi traverse. There was a nice fire tower that we sat at and ate some delicious foods staring at the humungous Mt. Washington directly across from us. It’s so weird to be on one peak but still staring UP at another, especially when it’s so close to you; just across a highway.
Well after a short walk we eventually reached the ski chairlift and said okay let’s do what we’ve heard you’re supposed to; walk down the ski trail. Alright, well after 11 hours of hiking you are a little fatigued and not using your brain as well. Tony and I thought the winding cat track would be nicer on our knees but take longer so let’s just deal with a painful but short hike down the steep black diamonds. Mmm….we didn’t realize that during the summer the trails aren’t smooth like snow. They are actually very overgrown, rocky, hollow-ground at points, and little cliffs. Needless to say we made a big mistake and should have immediately made our way to a cat track, but we were kind of stuck on this trail unable to get to the other ones because there were really thick trees in the way. So we kept going down this trail with shrubs up to our chests and unable to see where we were stepping. Multiple times we both would roll our ankles or fall over. I even lost tall Tony once when he fell all the way to the ground and had all these shrubs around him, I actually could not see him anywhere. We would get spurts of shorter grass or we would stumble upon some animal’s path which gave us a break from the overgrown shrubs but we’d always end back on the tall dangerous stuff. I of course hated it the most because there were lots of bugs and I figured there must be ticks and/or spiders all over us! And it was so annoying because the entire time we could see Pikey, our car, and know we were so close, yet so far.
Finally we found a cat- track and of course it had a lovely dirt road on it. Man were we glad to see this road, even though we felt stupid that we didn’t get on it earlier! But either way we found it for the last ten minutes of the hike which put us to the car at 12 hours and 7 minutes.
These are our times for each peak:
Mt. Moriah 2:39
Middle Carter : forgot it
South Carter 6:01
Carter Dome 7:47
Wildcat A 9:37
Wildcat D 10:50
Ended at 12 hours and 7 minutes.
I will say it was much easier than Presi traverse, despite getting punched in the face and having the gnarly ending down the ski trail. And it was neat because a week later Tony had a hiker into his hospital that had fallen on the descent into the notch so that was cool to know where he fell. Although it was not cool that he fell because he broke his hip and was right in the midst of hiking the AT! Hiking can definitely be intense!
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