Day 22: The White's Part 2

Sorry for the delay in these posts folks.  Data has been hard to come by...  But wow am I glad I zeroed yesterday that was a heck of a storm.  After a big breakfast this morning at the hostel (8/14/14) I got shuttled back to Pinkham Notch to hit the trail.  The day began with a long climb up Mt. Madison with nice sunny weather.  I ran into another SOBO named hydro on the way up.  He moves fast also so we hiked together today.  1.5 miles before the summit you get above treeline and can see forever.  That didn't last long as the wind changed direction, it clouded up, and started lightly raining.  Everything was already soaking wet from the monsoon yesterday but now it was really wet.  Lets just say over the next few miles to Madison springs hut it was on/off snow flurries and rain.  It took forever to cross the super slippery rocks but we got to the hut and warmed up inside.  They had free leftover oatmeal with peaches from breakfast we scarfed down.  I also bought a cup of coffee.  While sitting there the cook for the day asked if we wanted cake in exchange for dishes so we did 15 mins of dishes and we both got 2 pieces of cake!  The bad weather stopped but it was still windy, cold, and cloudy.  We moved on to Mt. Washington which is a long climb over a ton more rocks.  On the way up the cog train that goes up Washington passed and you could see all the people stick there cameras out the windows taking pictures of us while saying, "look, thru hikers!"  It was like hydro and I were animals at a zoo or something it was funny.  At the summit of Washington you couldn't see squat but we took our pics with the sign at the summit.  Wow it was cold!  I then went to the visitors center and saw a digital display that said it was 40 degrees currently with wind chill at 29 degrees.  I bought another coffee to warm up then we moved on to Lake of the clouds hut.  We didn't get there until 5:45 pm and we had only done 14.8 miles.  Work for stay was full but they told us we could stay in the dungeon for 10 bucks and still get leftovers if there were any.  The dungeon is sweet and is basically a 8ft x 10ft stone emergency shelter underneath the hut with a tiny window for light and a heavy duty steel door that belongs on a bank vault.  It has two wooden bunks that are 3 tall so it holds 6 people.  It filled up and with the 4 work for stays that means there were 10 of us to fight over the paying guests leftovers.  Well boy did we feast.  We had a dadgum thru hiker thanksgiving!  They brought out tons of strip steak, salad with dressing, lentil soup, fresh baked bread, a tofu dish, green beans, coos coos, chocolate cake and more that I cannot remember.  Us 10 starving bottomless pits of human beings were about to throw up we were so full.  All that was left was a tiny bit of lentil soup.  The 6 of us in the dungeon hit the sack while the work for stays went to work.  I think we had the better end of the deal because i am too full to move.  I am gonna sleep like a rock tonight.