Originally, my plan had been to walk to Route 17 south of Camel's Hump (in the next few days), then get picked up for a laundry break at home before walking Route 17 to Massachusetts. It was already clear by Day 11, though, that I'd been wildly optimistic on the daily mileages I could cover, in daylight, with a rather heavy pack. The mid-hike laundry break plan was a concession to both the concert schedule as it panned out, and to my beloved -- neither of us wanted me to be away from home for a solid month.
By this point, it was clear that I couldn't cover the mileages I'd cribbed off this guy's southbound LT hike. Literally, in the last-minute rush of getting the grant and planning my own trip, I'd just pasted his mileages into a spreadsheet and arranged them around the concerts that were lining up. I knew it was unlikely I could match this guy's pace -- he was a 20-something, tallish veteran of the Appalachian Trail. I'm a stumpy 30-something backpacking novice, and for many reasons I was not willing to routinely hike at night (as Speedy McSpeedPants did -- he climbed Mount Mansfield in the dark).
So, excuses-excuses, I'd realised I was going to be left with a mid-hike gap to come back and fill in after the end of the tour. This was going to be a sectional hike rather than a true through-hike. That was totally fine with me -- one of the reasons I chose the Long Trail as my first long-distance trail to complete here is that it's local. If the weather or my physical condition got overly dangerous at any point, I could always skip part of the trail and come back later or next season. I will complete the trail; it doesn't all have to happen right now.
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| And you thought this blog would be meme-free. |
So, back to Taft Lodge. It was still raining, view was nil. I filled my water bottles after a slip-slide over boulders to the brook. All my hanging soggy clothes were still hanging and still soggy. In particular, my trusty M&S sports bra was completely saturated with just-above-freezing-temperature water. With my last dry T-shirt and a selection of sailing knots, I crafted a minimally-supportive boulder holder. I was pretty pleased with my craftiness, and told myself that the minimal support was fine. After all, I wouldn't be doing any running today (*note, I was wrong about this). I layered on the rest of my claggy spandex and waterproofs, jammed my feet into my sodden split-open boots, applied more duct tape, and started the climb up boulders, cliffs and ledges to the summit. Grey morning mist was swirling around, and the views were zero. Water rushed noisily in bursting brooks, and down the trail itself. I accepted wet-foot saturation, and walked on the flattest boulders in the stream. I tried to always have three points of contact with the trail, using fingers, elbows, knees and the toes of my boots where there was no duct tape on the sole. I felt like a tiny thing literally crawling up into the sky. Well, a tiny thing with a massive backpack. The trail looked like this (not my photo), but wetter and foggier:
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| from tripleblaze.com |
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| from redbubble.com: "turn left at the cliff". |
There was no blue sky, or view, for me. Just a blanket of thick grey fog that was blowing hard against me as I approached the cliff on the left. Down which, torrents of water were streaming -- a ledge about 15ft up made a little waterfall that landed on my face as I looked up the cliff and wondered if this was where going southbound became impossible. I collapsed my hiking poles, strapped them into my pack, and looked for handholds and footholds on the cliff. I took one shaky step, and the sidewind pushed me to my left, knocking my two-litre water bottle out of its bungee-cord nest. I stepped down, repacked the water bottle, put my wedding ring in my secret zipper pocket, and just barely talked myself out of totally losing my nerve. I talked, out loud, to myself as if I was an almost-panicking child, or a sheep that doesn't see the gap in the wall it's being driven toward. "It's OK, you can probably do this", I told myself. I reminded myself that I'm only the most recent nerd to be attempting this trail -- people do it all the time, and have been doing so for over a century. I'm not that special.
A friend whose opinion I value highly told me, the day before the trip, that the opposite of fear is faith. I'm going to say I got up the cliff on 51% faith, 49% fear. I had just enough faith -- or trust -- in my own muscles and the sturdiness of my pack to stay with me, and my plan to fall on the pack if I had to fall, and all the friends who believed I could do this mad hiking tour, and my really-not-wanting-to-go-back, to make it. My whole body was shaking, and not just with the cold. I had no other thoughts in my brain than getting up the cliff. I took off my hat and hood, because (as a small boy would tell me a few days later), it's hard to climb a tree -- or a cliff -- when your hat blocks the upward view. I turned my face into the waterfall that was still tumbling indifferently off the ledge, and clung to unlikely holds with fingernails, forearms, shins and curling toes. The wind caught my backpack's raincover like a sail, and I clung closer to the cliff against the sideways pull. My waterbottle blew free again, and swung like a pendulum in the bottom of my raincover. Instinctively, immediately, I threw a backwards punch at the waterbottle; it tumbled down to the ledge and I apologised to the principles of Leave No Trace as I kept inching up the cliff.
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| from meetup.com. I'm pretty sure this is the part of the trail I'm talking about. Imagine it with a honking great pack, angry fog and a hefty sidewind... |
And then, I'd made it. I heaved myself up onto the ridge, got my hiking poles down from the pack, and started picking my way along over boulders to the summit. Thick fog was still blowing, the whole scene was lonely and whistly and eerie and vaguely reminiscent of the "road to nowhere" in Crash Bandicoot:
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| The only video game I've ever spent significant time playing. |
Here's someone else's photo:
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| from trevstripreports.blogspot.com |
My plan had been to walk the Long Trail south as far as Butler Lodge, then head down the side trail to Underhill. I passed over Mansfield's summit -- Vermont's highest peak -- chilly and somewhat indifferent, and picked my way along the ridge to the summit station at the top of the toll road. A hearty GMC caretaker was on duty -- I asked how scrambly the trail to Butler Lodge was. He said it had as many cliffs as the trail I'd come up, and opined: "I wouldn't do that trail in the rain with a big backpack". Correctly estimating my technical-trail skill to be many levels below the caretaker's, I decided to go down the Toll Road itself -- 4-and-a-half miles of dirt road down into Stowe. I thanked the caretaker, handed in the gentleman's watch I'd found on the LT just below the last cliff section, and didn't mention my abandoned water-bottle. I walked a few yards down the toll road, out of site of the summit station and the car park. I ate my Kendal Mint Cake for Mansfield. It was amazing. I set off downhill, amazed at being able to walk normally on a steady surface without boulders, roots, running water, bogs or mud. I got excited and started to run, backpack and poles and all (*note: here's the bit where I was wrong about running and the viability of my homemade sports bra). I stopped that silliness when I came across a retired couple out walking the ski trails. They were clean and fit and well-equipped, not heading for the summit but just out walking around. I felt awkward in my soggy filth and my torn-up thrift-store waterproofs, but we chatted all the way down the Toll Road as their altimeter beeped every few seconds. They cut out on a ski trail and I raced to the toll gate, feeling mighty and powerful on my still-sodden, numb feet and pitiful boots. I was almost an hour early for my pick-up, but that was OK -- hiking is teaching me to be patient. The toughest part is in the bag .
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