One Year in Vermont: Hiking the Long Trail- "One Piece At a Time"

The middle chunk was last week's hike.
(Also from GMC's maps, Copyright 2010)

So one of the challenges with sectioning the Long Trail is that you have a car you have to come back to, which means that hiking tends to start and end in parking lots, and creativity is required in figuring out how much to hike. Hiking it piecemeal lets you try some different things, too. My beloved Vasques are kind of falling apart, so I brought along my runners and tried to up the pace a little bit.

One does not simply run through Vermont

The first section, a 1 mile scramble up to the Clarendon Shelter, was what we meant to do last week, and was not really suitable for running. It was fun, though, and the weather was a perfect 75 degrees, so I had no complaints.

Typical Lowland Maple/Beech/Birch Forest

The next section was a 3.3 mile hike over Bear Mountain (one of 11 Bear mtns in the state, and one of about 50 on the A.T.) and to the shelter my girlfriend and I stopped at going south last week. I got a little bit of running in here, but probably just 2 miles. The uphill was a lot of slick stone steps (it poured down rain the night before), the flat spots were similarly muddy, and the downhill consisted of switchbacks cut into the mountain (running down which would be like gunning a truck down Lombard street). Still a great time to clear my mind and enjoy the fleeting weather. I did not follow through with my plan to jump in a nearby river to cool off afterwards, however.