Zealand Falls Hut 1836.6

As we're not making good progress in the Whites so far we decided to get up earlier to have more daylight to hike. So we hit the trail this morning at 5:45 already and instantly needed to climb up Little Haystack Mountain, from there we had an amazing view up to Franconia Ridge with Mount Lincoln and Mount Lafayette. We hiked absolutely stunned by the view on to Mt Lafayette, the highest peak along the ridge. There we had our breakfast but it got a bit chilly when the sun was covered by the clouds. So we hurried on hiking to warm up again. The next mountain on our daily list was Mount Garfield, a bit smaller than the ones before but still 4k.
For lunchtime we arrived at Galehead Hut, one of those AMC huts. And we could take advantage of the bottomless soup that is offered for thru hikers. So we had six bowls of potatoe dill soup each even though it wasn't very tasty it filled our stomachs and gave us enough energy for the upcoming peaks. A few hours later we had climbed South Twin Mountain, Mt Guyot and Mt Zealand. So overall we did six 4k mountains today and we rushed to Zealand Falls Hut because it started to sprinkle a little bit. On arrival we were surprised that there were actually still two spots open for work-for-stay. The one in charge did a thru hike this year and was really understanding and nice. We got an amazing dinner with enchiladas, bread, soup and salad.
The chores we needed to do were pretty easy. Julia cleaned the dishes and I scrubbed the cooking plates. Meanwhile it started raining heavily and you could hear the thunder rolling in the distance. It was a super lucky coincidence that we got this opportunity!!Read more