GOURMET TRAVELLER 145“I don’t really miss New York,” Firth tells us above
the din of a big crowd for a Monday night. “Life’s
pretty good out here.”
NEW HAMPSHIRE
New Hampshire folk are the archetypal “forgotten
outdoorsmen”; seemingly everyone hikes, fishes,
skis or hunts. Their resilience is summed up by
the state’s motto: “Live Free or Die” – though recent
tourism campaigns in this state, which has some of
the most lax gun laws in the country, have dropped the
latter sentiment.
Thru-hikers both love and hate the Appalachian
Trail in New Hampshire. Its huts, in which hikers
can rest overnight, are considered some of the most
comfortable on the trail. But its terrain, which passes
through the imposing White Mountains, is some of
the toughest. Beyond the trail, the state is notable
for its pretty woodland, grand old hotels, country
inns and treacherous Mount Washington, at the
confluence of three weather systems that generate
the kind of storms that claim the lives of a handful
of hikers every year.
Not far from Lincoln, a colonial-era town of
weatherboard houses and ski lodges, we set out on the
most enchanting hike of our journey, the Lonesome
Lake Hut hike in Franconia Notch State Park, in the
heart of the White Mountains.
It’s only 2.5 kilometres from the car park to the
pristine glacial lake named Lonesome, but the walk is
entirely uphill, and it raises a sweat. Thickets of birch,
beech and sugar maple line the track, their thick roots
twisting treacherously across the path. The lake is
still and serene, capped by a wisp of fog and circled
by an uneven path and boggy banks bristling with
carnivorous sundew and pitcher plants.
I’m met by Whitney Brown, a member of the
New Hampshire Appalachian Mountain Club High
Hut “Croo”. The mountains are in her family’s blood;
her grandfather took part in mountain search-and-
rescue missions in the 1940s, and she’s employed
to maintain the huts and share her knowledge of the
area with visitors. Lonesome Lake Hut is one of the
eight “high huts” of the White Mountains, some of the
most comfortable along the Appalachian. A central
octagonal wooden building has a kitchen and rustic
dining room, surrounded by bunkhouses.
Brown offers us bowls of thick lentil soup that are
comforting and taste just right out here in the woods.
Beside us are Tyler from Massachusetts and Ben from
New Hampshire, college graduates who are hiking the
trail from north to south, an approach that only about
one in four thru-hikers attempt. We exchange trail
tales and share more soup. They turn in early ahead
of a long day’s walk tomorrow, while we backtrack to
a dinner of Maine lobster and comfortable four-poster
beds at the Adair Country Inn, near the town of
Littleton, by the Ammonoosuc River.
Littleton’s main street is lined with cheerful diners,
a 1920s Italian deli and an old-fashioned candy store.
“Our town has won awards for being a typical American
main street,” says Cathy Bedor, born in Littleton and
the co-owner of our inn. In 2003 the town won a Great
American Main Street Award for its “exceptional and
attractive main-street community”. President Johnson
might have had more time for man-made beauty if
he’d spent some time in Littleton.MAINE
We cross the state border and the first thing I see
is a moose. This is as it should be – Maine has about
70,000 of them, the largest moose population in
the US besides Alaska. It peers, bemused, at passing
cars on Highway 16, at the edge of the Umbagog
National Wildlife Refuge, a moose stronghold that
spans the states of New Hampshire and Maine.
It’s a fitting introduction to wild and woodsy Maine.
Appalachian hikers know this state for the trail section
called the Hundred Mile Wilderness: 100 miles of trail
with no access to food or medical help. We’re headed
instead to Carrabassett Valley at the foot of the Bigelow
Ranges, which thankfully has both.
We plan our approach over oysters and lobster
bisque at the Coplin Dinner House, in the village Clockwise
from top left:
Schilling Beer
Co cellarman
Jeremy Wolf;
hikers Tyler and
Ben at Lonesome
Lake; Omni Mount
Washington
Resort in Bretton
Woods; Flume
Gorge, Franconia
Notch State
Park; Littleton’s
Main Street.