journey's end

to fill in the final details:

the evening in johnson was filled with an open mic concert out in the town park, complete with a town drunkard's rendition of "rockin' robin" and highschool death metal garage band.

we hitched in the dark back out to the trail, and walked up a road about a mile to prospect rock, which apparently was a cool spot to the locals, since there were "no camping" and "no partying" signs up everywhere, tho honestly i was nonplussed. we camped there, because it was late and it was going to rain.

eventually we made it to the road crossing for eden, vt, which is a town made of a general store and a highway. there is an rv campground not far up the road, that let us set up a tent, take showers, and do laundry all for a total of $20, which is pretty good. the owner was a very nice woman who just happened to be a little crazy, also. she gave us a ride back to the trail the next morning, and was very firm in letting us know that we were about to hike the MOST difficult part of the entire long trail (the 10 miles between eden and hazen's notch, over belvidere mtn), and that we should be aware that it would take us no less than 2 full days, and that should we find it too hard we could take this or this blue blaze to a road with people where we could call her and she would come pick us up. oh, and also, if it rained she wouldn't let us leave her campground.

so we crossed our fingers that it wouldn't rain, since obviously we didnt want to have that argument, and made it to hazen's notch by 1pm the next day (after about 4 hrs of hiking). perhaps because of her goading, or perhaps because we were just ready for real showers and cotton clothes, we decided the last 30 miles, which we planned to hike in 3 days, were definitely going to be a 2 day hike.

and so on saturday we embarked on an 18 mile sprint to the finish, up and over jay peak (which may have actually been the hardest climb on the whole long trail), where we unexpectedly encountered bathrooms with running water and had a washing and drying party of unsurpassed awesomeness. and after hauling through several 3+mph miles, at less than 1/4 mile from the finish, on a slab of algae coverered wet rock, in downpouring rain, my feet decided they didn't want to be under me anymore and the next thing i knew my head had collided with something that was decidedly not air. john was terrified, i didn't really know what had happened, but apparently i was bleeding from my head (just above my left eye) and my hip was pretty messed up as well.

so after getting cleaned up, i hobbled to the finish, we took some mediocre 'summit' photos, and then limped the last .6mi to journey's end camp, where we cooked dinner and went to bed.

then what should have been an epic hitch-hiking journey began, but instead, we got a first car hitch with another hiker back to his car (about 20 miles south on the trail in hazen's notch), and he drove us nearly the entire length of the state of vermont back south to bennington.

and then we got a 3rd car hitch to my parent's house and now i'm getting kicked off the computer.

but we're home and neither of us are dead! hurrah!

johnson, vt

two town days in a row. awesome.

so we managed to delay hiking until about 530 last night, and then walked 3.4 miles to a pond on top of the smuggler's notch ski mountain...which was awesome. then we explored the warming hut .1mi away, to find it filled with garbage and totally disgusting (although someone did bring a large amount of rope and hang a couch from the ceiling...that was interesting). so we decided to cowboy out on the top of the ski hill, and had only been settled in for, maybe, 10 minutes, when i thought i saw lightening out of the corner of my eye...we all know how i feel about that.

so i stared at the horizon for 15 minutes or so, and saw nothing, gave up and decided to get back to getting to sleep, when john thought HE saw lightning. so then we BOTH stared at the horizon until we were able to confirm that neither of us was crazy, and we both saw lighening at the same time. and then we packed up our stuff and night hiked to the .3 miles to the nearest shelter, which was a fee site ($5 each). sort of a bummer, especially considering it didn't rain at all overnight, and we had to shell out $10 to sleep on the floor of a pretty crummy shelter, listen to mice eat the caretaker's food, and the section hiker's snoring.

oh, but then the caretaker said he would make us pancakes for breakfast as a special thru-hiker trail magic treat...which he did, but we had to wait around for nearly an hour for him to wake up (which was a bummer, given our desire to start hiking early and beat the heat), and then add to that, they were probably the grossest pancakes ever created and consumed by a human being (i venture to guess...i imagine if ever worse pancakes were created, they were most certainly not consumed but rather turned into trash or compost as they rightfully deserved to be).

in any event, we managed to climb the two small mountains in our way and make it down to johnson, vt, where we have so far spent about 2 hrs trying desperately to avoid the heat and eat food. guess how hot!? keep in mind, this is vermont, and practically canada:

94

yup. that's only 4 degrees colder than blue ridge parkway death heat.

on the plus side, tuesday is apparently the coolest day ever to be in johnson, because there is a farmer's market at 4, then a free open mic concert at 630, then bluegrass at the local pub/pizzeria in the evening.

oh, and we're only 50 miles from canada.

stowe, vt

it's been hot. not quite death heat hot, but hot, none-the-less.

we walked for a couple days over the tallest mountain in vermont, also known as mt. mansfield, and the home of stowe ski resort. pretty awesome day for it, sunny, clear, warm, etc, but the haze was so bad we couldn't even see back the 30 miles or whatever it was to camels hump, where we had been only a couple days earlier. supposedly we should have been able to see all the way to canada from there.

so last night we slept at the picnic area just down the hill from smuggler's notch, and are now spending the day in stowe, vt, where everything is overpriced and touristy. things are so overpriced, in fact, that we're NOT going to ride the alpine slides. at $20 each a ride, it stops being awesome and starts being a total rip-off.

i bought a sweet pair of socks to put on my pack shoulder straps to protect my bare shoulders from the abrasive heat induced pain they've been suffering. that's a picture of them there, with the bear. and i think our plan is to hike out of town tonight after dark, to avoid the heat of the day. something like 3ish miles up to sterling pond shelter. maybe spend the rest of the day today avoiding the heat in a movie theater...we already had thai food, which was my main town objective.

one week left til canada.

waterbury, vt

back on the trail again. we hiked over camels hump yesterday, which was a pretty awesome climb to an amazing 360 degree view of the green mountains. the hike down was LOOOOONG (we just passed the lowest point on the entire LT at 36o ish ft at the winooski river). tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, we pass the highest point on the entire trail, mt mansfield, which apparently is shaped like a face, and the peaks of it are so named (the forehead, the chin, the nose, the adams apple).

today we are in waterbury, where we will eat thai food, resupply, do laundry, and look like bums. we officially have less than 100 miles to go, and current plans put us in canada around the 23rd or 24th of this month. that's 10 days from now, and an average of 10mpd. awesome.

saranac lake, ny

detour!!

so long trail fest was pretty awesome, complete with homemade oversized slip'n'slide and gelatin off ramp, and some psycho threatening to kill everyone with a pick ax and burn down all our tents...

so this guy's a total creep, camping right next to us, giving everybody scary looks and not capable of normal conversation, yet wearing a gmc polo with gmc patches and at patches etc, supposedly a ridge runner somewhere, and right outside his tent is parked a giant pick ax. and then later that night this thru-hiker from french canadia named julien decided in his drunken state that it would be a good idea to jump over this guy's tent. ok so he does successfully jump the tent, but not without knocking the cross pole with his foot and clearly distrubing the crazy dude resting inside. so the crazy dude climbs out of his tent, grabs his pick ax, wields it like a weapon, and says, 'who f*cked with my tent?!' serveral times in a row, then threatens to kill whoever f*cked with his tent, then threatens to burn down all our tents if we don't tell him who f*cked with his tent. so lumpy gets up and trys to mellow the guy down, and then a crowd of guys get up and sort of surround him and try to talk him down, then john trys to lead him over to the check point where the event organizer is hanging out, and as soon as he turns his back on the dude he raises his ax again like he's about to swing it into john's back. so needless to say the crowd of guys around him quickly (and quite impressively i might add) remove the ax from him and pin him on the ground.

long story short, he was eventually escorted to the twelve tribes for the night, not allowed back to the party the next day, but instead layed down outside the entrance ALL day 'waiting for his boss' to show up, who apparently fired him, and then somehow got a ride back to some place in connecticut. apparently also, he's some kind of witch and none of this would have happened if he'd 'had his crystals with him' (this is rumor coming from when he stayed at 12 tribes).

but slip'n'slide was awesome, and so was the rest of the festival, and then neon and cc showed up and we chilled, and then they drove us to the adirondacks where we spent a zero hiking 15 miles over the tallest mtn in new york (mt. marcey) and along avalanche lake through avalanche pass, which was totally amazing (the peak sucked, but only bc we were stuck in a cloud).

important info: slip'n'slide is a serious ab work out (who knew?) and all of our abs are incredibly sore, which is trouble when you're hanging out with three of your best friends, because you can't actually laugh without discomfort.

tonight i believe the plan is to head back to vermont, camp by clarendon gorge, (which we bypassed on our hike this year due to laziness and convenience) and then go to some apparently amazing pancake place, where i will be dearly tempted from my veganism with 'the best pancakes on earth.'

and then, swear to god. i'm actually gonna start hiking towards canada again.

waitsfield, vt

so a lot's happened:

we went to the bromely thrill zone, where i totally crushed the alpine slides. we only rode once, due to cost, but also due to impending thunderstorms for which they kept shutting down the lift. then we walked up the ski trail to the top of bromley and played around on the ski lifts, ate some left-overs from the green mountain house and then watched the sunset from the lookout tower.

we walked from there to big branch shelter the next day, which is the same hike i did a year prior, only this time without the rain and impending death and doom. no trudging through ankle deep standing water, or walking over a ridge with lightening crashing all around. needless to say, this time was much nicer. on the way, at peru peak shelter, we ran into sam and darcey, aka swami and duckfeet, with whom john hiked last year, who are now working for the GMC leading trail maintenance crews.

we camped right by the river that night, and here's the crazy story from that: so chance apparently has been practicing swinging some stress balls around on string with he intention of 'eventually lighting them on fire.' so obviously we just convinced him that that night was the eventually he had been waiting for (even though he'd only been working on it for 3 days and still frequently hit himself wih them). so we soaked the balls in white gas and waited for darkness, then had him swing them around while standing on a rock in the river. that was fun, but ended pretty quick, after the strings got tangled and one of them was burned through. the fireball flung straight up, and landed on the rock and rolled into the river, so luckily there were no casualties.

eventually we landed in rutland, and stayed at the twelve tribes hostel, which was fun, but only for a night. i got a creepy 'women are slaves' vibe from them, and also, they actually make you work for your work for stay, which is not so great for the relaxation part of a zero. the highlights of the rutland series of zeroes include: long trail brewery, thai star, pico peak alpine slides, meeting a thru-hiker's town girl who drove up from palmerton and turns out went to the same college and graduated the same class as john.

and then we were no longer on the AT.

and to make a long story short: we accidentally took a blue blaze off of breadloaf mountain, and didn't realize it til we'd already walked nearly 2 miles down, when we were supposed to be up on the ridge. needless to say we had to truncate that day, which ended in us staying with bobcat (AT '07) here in waitsfield. she put up last night and now tonight, and today slacked us between lincoln gap and appalachian gap, only 11 miles, but not a very easy walk. the stretch goes over sugarbush and mad river glen ski resorts, which are the 5 or so peaks of lincoln mtn, and gen. stark mtn., respectively.

tomorrow will see us to burlington for a day, and then down to rutland (again) for the start of the long trail festival. secret surprise in store for those making the trek!! can't wait!!