On the Trail Again

I'm back again, like a bad penny.

John and I had enough of civilization by Tuesday afternoon and had Lisa drop us off, back where we left off on the Long Trail. Things went considerably better this time.

First afternoon, we made it up Stratton Mountain and down a few feet before running out of daylight. You can't camp on the summit (though it would've been sweet), so we set up the tent about 200 feet below. I listened to airplanes go over for an hour or so before realizing I was listening to ... nothing.

Nice.

The next day was a bit of a haul. We made it down Stratton Mountain just fine, tooled along past Stratton Pond (biggest body of water on the Long Trail) and sat down for a rest. An older man came puttering along, and we got to chatting. He was old, had bad knees and was section-hiking, so we had that much in common.

"My 65th birthday was a dreary affair," he said. "So, my sons bet me $5,000 that I couldn't hike the Appalachian Trail. I'd get five years -- 182 days -- to do it all."

I tried to be encouraging.

"You're only about 500 miles from Katahdin."

"Oh, no," he smiled. "I've done it in bits and pieces. I've just got to hike to New York, and I'm done."

Wish I'd gotten his name, because I want to be him when I grow up.

We scooted ahead to the Spruce Peak shelter and had lunch. I sent John out for water; he came back and reported that the piped spring was "thinner than moose piss." I filtered heavily, just in case. While we were sitting around eating, a couple of southbound AT'ers came through with ... a ferret. Had a little nylon playpen, water bottle, the whole nine yards. We said, um, let's go.

John was pretty revved to be back on the trail, so I let him go ahead most of the afternoon. Told him around 3p just to wait for me at the main road and he scooted off. I walked for an hour or so and started seeing more southbounders -- none of whom had seen him. Uh-oh. Picked up the pace and made it to the main road in short order. No John.

Shit.

I figured he'd gone down a side road to Manchester that we'd passed, so I dropped my pack in the parking lot and double-timed it to the other road. Again, no John.

Double shit.

Hustled back to the parking lot, picked up my pack and ran up the mountain to the Bromley shelter, where we'd decided to spend the night. There were about a dozen Harvard kids for orientation ... and John. He'd gone down the side road, figured out his mistake, and double-timed to the shelter, figuring I'd get there sooner or later.

Whew.

The kids were noisy until about 1030p, and a couple of park rangers showed up. Turned out John had been a bit hot and crabby when he got to the shelter (and worried about me), so the orientation leader had called her supervisor to report in, and told him that there was an overheated 15-year-old at the shelter ... the supervisor called the park ranger ... who sent two people up to check. They looked at John -- who was tired and trying to go to sleep -- rolled their eyes and left. Then, the kids disappeared, and we had something resembling a good night's sleep.

We'd done almost 20 miles on Wednesday, so we slept a bit late. Got moving around 1030a, and it felt hot. We dragged our butts up to the Bromley summit, about a half-mile, and took an hour break. Came across a northbound AT'er, who told us the Harvard kids had gotten to the summit around 1130p ... and partied until 2a. He wasn't very pleased.

Puttered down the mountain to Mad Tom Notch and had a nice, long lunch. There's a great water well there, and we hated to see it go to any kind of waste at all, so we sat around until 2p or so before scrambling up Styles Peak. It wasn't supposed to be that tough ... but for some reason, we really struggled. Then it was on to Baker Peak, which was supposed to be very tough -- a 150-yard scramble up a rocky ledge. For some reason, we didn't struggle that much.

We got to the top and enjoyed the view, but it was starting to thunder and rain a bit. John grumbled.

"As much as I've been outdoors," he said, "you'd think I'd be looking more like Flava Flav."

(I may have misspelled that name.)

So we clambered down and headed for Lost Pond shelter, which had burned down in November. Moved along in the dark to Big Branch shelter and fell asleep next to a beautiful roaring brook. Woke up around midnight to find that we hadn't hung all our food, and a mouse was finishing up the last of the cashews. I hung John's pack, and went back to sleep. Heard more mouse-like sounds. Bastard found one of my Power Bars in a pants pocket. I hung my pack, and finally got back to sleep around 2a.

Enjoyed the view from the suspension bridge over the brook the next morning, then headed off into the woods. It was one of those tough days where you feel like you're fighting the entire time-space continuum just to get a mile or two, but we walked through some beautiful fir forests. Made it the Hinchey shelter just as the lights went totally out and found (wonder of wonders!) we had a shelter to ourselves. John was starving, so I put together a big fire with every intention of eating Uncle Ben's Ready Rice for dinner, when three northbound AT'ers showed up. One was the guy we'd met at Bromley summit, and the other two were a brother and sister from South Carolina we'd run into a few times. They'd had to hustle to make it to a post office before it closed, so we figured they'd be behind us. But they'd gone into town and picked up their winter gear for the final run into Katahdin.

"You made it into town, and brought us pizza! You guys are the best!" I said.

And so they had, and so they were. They had carried pizza about five miles. And shared it. Talk about trail magic.

We chatted and enjoyed the fire ("cowboy TV") for an hour before getting to sleep. Woke up the next morning feeling pretty good and headed out over some beautiful country, including the Airport Overlook above Clarendon before getting to the gorge. It was a bit early, but we figured the Clarendon Gorge just looked like a damn fine place for a leisurely ramen lunch. We enjoyed the view and laughed at some of the tourists (think people who carry poodles in sweaters out to the Long Trail) before heading over the gorge bridge and up the road.

The scenery changed quite a bit that afternoon. Lots of apple trees and a few pastures. Looked something like this:
After a few days of Power Bars and raisins, I was ready for some wild apples. We plugged along, hoping to make Killington before night. Had to stop at one stream about midway between Clarendon and Clement shelters -- some incredibly thoughtful soul had put Dr Pepper and Mountain Dew cans in the stream. Even had a trash bag for the empties.

Talk about more trail magic. I was beginning to worry that we were using all ours up in a hurry.

We made it to the Clement shelter around 530p. It's a nice enough shelter -- stone, with a fireplace, in a clearing, but it's also off a dirt road. Given that it was a Saturday night on a holiday weekend, we decided we'd best push up the road three hours to the Cooper Lodge shelter on Killington. We double-timed it up an extremely eroding ridge, over the top of Little Killington, and made the shelter around 830p with no problems. Cold as hell. I'm guessing the wind chill was about 35. The stars made up for it, though.

Made it up at a reasonable hour the next morning and clambered to the top of Killington. John looked down at Rutland. "Rows and rows of people-boxes," he said. Scooted back down and picked up our packs. Headed down some really gentle grades, through a beautiful birch forest. Stopped for lunch and watched a hawk hunt for an hour or so. Had some good talks, and made it to the Inn at Long Trail in Killington around 2p. If you've never stayed there, you should. If you've never eaten there, you should. Hell, I think everyone should give them money just for existing. They'd held one of my boxes for nearly a month, so we were able to pig out and decided what to do next.




After an hour or so, we decided we were done for the week, but not with the trail. We'll pick it back up, hopefully sooner rather than later. For a 15-year-old, John can still come up with some pretty good observations.

"It's not the destination, it's the journey," I said.

"And the ramen," he agreed.

The hike got me into slightly better shape. I dropped three pounds, so I'm down to 149, and my body fat just plunged down to 14.5 percent. I've got to get the boys ready for school, which starts Wednesday. And finish the chicken barn. And do some cleaning. And get back into the day job groove. And get myself back on the road. And the bike. And the pool.

Which is, after all, why we're all here.