Part 5: Where are we?

Jon lost his basket to the crust on the far side of the low piney ridge. Then he fell on his pole and broke it. He replaced it with a stick, but he splintered the other one in a fall. Alanna’s binding froze up so she couldn't take her ski off. The splint on her ski came apart. There was nothing to be done for it as we had only a small scrap of duct tape left. Jon nearly fell into Crystal Brook when a snow bridge collapsed. The coming of the dark could be sensed after a quick but beautiful sunset to the south of Mount (G.P.) Bond. We soldiered on, troops in a scene from Napolean s retreat from Moscow.

The 2.3 miles from Stillwater to the Thoreau Falls Trail seemed endless. Some of us were cheered slightly when we came upon evidence of the presence of other warm-blooded beings, a set of moose tracks in the trail (my, but he or she took big steps) and two sets of ski tracks coming up from the Thoreau Falls Trail.

We reached the suspension bridge near the junction of the Cedar Brook Trail and the East Branch Road around 5:45. Claudia scouted the condition of the Road in the dim light but couldn t tell whether it was superior to the Wilderness Trail. Choosing the more familiar way, we kept to the Wilderness Trail and crossed over the bridge.

From here on the trail was packed out fairly well and we began to make better time. Our eyes could adjust to the gathering darkness only so long, however, before the woods turned truly black. Jon became concerned that the girls, who had gone on ahead, might get lost, but Ed thought that was unlikely since the River was on our left and the Bonds were on our right. The path of least resistance lay straight along the railroad bed.

Jon really had no idea what he was looking at. It was dark.. He was alone. He had this craving in his exhausted famished barely functioning cerebrum to follow Venus, the goddess of love, daughter of Zeus, star crossed wife of Hades, shining pertly above the trail. As he advanced one ski in front of the other in metronomic fashion, she called out to him and beckoned him to our destination and our fate.

Claudia put on her headlamp by the broken down railroad bridge over Black Brook and Ed whipped out his foot long Maglite with the oversize batteries. About this time Jess put her headlamp on. Kate, Alanna and Jon just kept on slogging along in the dark until we all regrouped by the bridge near Franconia Falls.

Here Jess and Alanna had changed into clean clothes thinking that they were almost out of the woods. While they were about 3 miles off in their calculations, we discovered with delight that the trail from here on was a 15 foot wide double-tracked cruiser. Jon put a headlamp on for good measure and we glided along easily, pulled by the horizontal component of gravity toward our destination. Our feet hurt like hell, but how sweet the skiing was!

Around 8, we found the suspension bridge on our left. The guidebook states that the trail ascends a wooden stairway and runs across the porch of the Lincoln Woods Forest Service Information Center. We felt somewhat foolish front-pointing up the stairway and staggering over a series of fences next to the building, but no one was around to see us.