Part 2: What could happen?

Underway again, we made very good time up to Zealand Pond, arriving at the wooden platform below the hut around 9:30. Six feet off the ground in summer, the platform was now knee high. Its function has always been a bit of a mystery in summer, but it serves nicely as a ski rack in winter.

Zealand Pond has two outlets, each draining into a different watershed. The northerly outlet becomes the Zealand River and drains into the Ammonoosuc River, and thence westerly into the Connecticut River. The southerly outlet is Whitewall Brook, which soon meets the North Fork of the East Branch of the Pemigewasset River, one of the two major tributaries of the Merrimack River.


The facilities at the hut proved a powerful attractor, and we migrated up the steep slope to the hut. Jess, who seems to know just about everyone in the White Mountain backcountry, ran into a friend who had spent a chilly night in a tent pitched a ways up the Twinway.

The view to Mount Tom (Crawford) and Mount (Darby) Field, and southeast past Whitewall Mountain to the big one, Mount (Philip) Carrigain, and Mount (Anderson) Lowell was as fine as ever. The sun's rays had softened the hard edges off the mountain slopes but we had now learned how easily water froze in our water bottles and how hard it was to twist the cap off with water frozen in the threads. [Note to file: one solution is to keep the bottle in a hat or a sock or some such.]

The hutmaster eventually stepped out from behind the 'do not disturb' sign. He knew that two guys had left the hut that morning intending to ski down the Thoreau Falls Trail, and he said bobcat tracks had been seen in the vicinity of Shoal Pond. However, he didn't know the condition of the trail ahead or whether the trail was packed out. A suspicion not voiced: did his lack of local knowledge perhaps stem from too much time snuggling in the sack with his female assistant?

Even if he had known the trail conditions, it probably wouldn't have mattered to us. Jon sensed we were committed to the trip as planned, driven by fate (fato profugus) just as Aeneas had been a few years ago.

The conditions ahead began to reveal themselves as we slipped through Zealand Notch. Whereas on the way to the hut the snowpack seemed a little crusty, the Notch was boilerplate, giving us reason to imagine a long slide into Whitewall Brook if we weren't careful.

Once past the Notch and the goofers from the hut who slowed our progress, we had a fine ski along the North Fork to Shoal Pond. The surroundings so occupied our attention that we did not immediately notice the unpleasant experience our feet were beginning to have.