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Finishing The Job
Sep. 1st, 2008 06:17 pmI just got home from another backcountry hike. I decided to have Carole drop me back on Bolton Notch Road where I'd 'bailed out' yesterday (not where she actually encountered me, but back at the spot where the Long Trail crossed the road and where I called her to inform her of the change of plans). Then I 'finished' yesterday's hike.
Oh, am I glad I didn't try to do that stretch last night. The hike was 5.8 miles, which I did in 2.5 hours, but boy, were those tough miles. A lot of it was UP and then DOWN and then UP and then DOWN along the side of a ridge, often with steep drop-offs. In the gloom of the woods as evening fell, that'd have been tricky hiking, and very tiring hiking too.
At one point I encountered a beaver pond that wasn't on the maps and found that the trail was half washed out below the pond, requiring a bit of balancing on some fallen trees.
After the pond, it was one long trudge after another, up and down. I didn't even get cool views out of it until I finally came to a big rock at the end of one of the ridges.
Finally I got to the last shelter on my route from Stevensville: Duck Brook Shelter. Someone encountering it for the first time might have thought that the composting privy was the shelter, since the privy was visible from the trail and the shelter wasn't.
The shelter itself falls under the heading of, er, "well-loved". Check out all the carved initials and stuff from various hikers who've passed through in the 52 years since it was built:
From the shelter, it was 'only' 1.7 miles to the Jonesville bridge, the lowest spot on the Long Trail. Unfortunately, the 'ledges' that the Long Trail Guide warned me about were no laughing matter. At one point, not photographed, I looked up and said 'You've got to be kidding." Okay, so I was a bit tired and foot-sore. Eventually, though, I came to the part of the Long Trail people don't like to talk about: the part where the trail runs under high-tension power lines, then onto a road, then down the road to the Jonesville bridge. The Green Mountain Club would dearly love to get rid of the lengthy (5 miles?) road hike and have some alternate way of staying in the woods and, who knows, crossing the interstate and route 2 and the river on some sort of bridge or something. But right now the high-voltage lines and the road are what they've got.
(They have to be a little creative about blazing a trail that coincides with power lines and a well-traveled road and actually goes under Interstate 89.)
Finally I came to the Jonesville Bridge, and left the Long Trail for a quick mile walk to my house.
I was glad to be home. Those 5.8 miles were hard miles and I was sorry to find that I'd raised a blister where my right big toe meets the foot. I thought I was sufficiently tough and calloused that I wouldn't be blistering any more, but I guess I was wrong. Surprising that I hadn't felt it forming and didn't notice it until I took my boots off at the house.
Anyway, here's the route and the elevation profile:
Oh, am I glad I didn't try to do that stretch last night. The hike was 5.8 miles, which I did in 2.5 hours, but boy, were those tough miles. A lot of it was UP and then DOWN and then UP and then DOWN along the side of a ridge, often with steep drop-offs. In the gloom of the woods as evening fell, that'd have been tricky hiking, and very tiring hiking too.
At one point I encountered a beaver pond that wasn't on the maps and found that the trail was half washed out below the pond, requiring a bit of balancing on some fallen trees.
After the pond, it was one long trudge after another, up and down. I didn't even get cool views out of it until I finally came to a big rock at the end of one of the ridges.
Finally I got to the last shelter on my route from Stevensville: Duck Brook Shelter. Someone encountering it for the first time might have thought that the composting privy was the shelter, since the privy was visible from the trail and the shelter wasn't.
The shelter itself falls under the heading of, er, "well-loved". Check out all the carved initials and stuff from various hikers who've passed through in the 52 years since it was built:
From the shelter, it was 'only' 1.7 miles to the Jonesville bridge, the lowest spot on the Long Trail. Unfortunately, the 'ledges' that the Long Trail Guide warned me about were no laughing matter. At one point, not photographed, I looked up and said 'You've got to be kidding." Okay, so I was a bit tired and foot-sore. Eventually, though, I came to the part of the Long Trail people don't like to talk about: the part where the trail runs under high-tension power lines, then onto a road, then down the road to the Jonesville bridge. The Green Mountain Club would dearly love to get rid of the lengthy (5 miles?) road hike and have some alternate way of staying in the woods and, who knows, crossing the interstate and route 2 and the river on some sort of bridge or something. But right now the high-voltage lines and the road are what they've got.
(They have to be a little creative about blazing a trail that coincides with power lines and a well-traveled road and actually goes under Interstate 89.)
Finally I came to the Jonesville Bridge, and left the Long Trail for a quick mile walk to my house.
I was glad to be home. Those 5.8 miles were hard miles and I was sorry to find that I'd raised a blister where my right big toe meets the foot. I thought I was sufficiently tough and calloused that I wouldn't be blistering any more, but I guess I was wrong. Surprising that I hadn't felt it forming and didn't notice it until I took my boots off at the house.
Anyway, here's the route and the elevation profile:
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