The Steep Gets Steeper, Long Trail Part 2

 We left Rutland last Monday after spending the morning resupplying, blogging and packing our bags.  Samson figured out that we could take the public bus back to the trail saving us a complicated hitch.  While on that public bus, sunny skies turned into a thunderstorm.  With freshly dried shoes and clean clothes we were a little more wimpy than usual to start the hike into the muddy, drippy woods.  So, instead, we had a giant plate of nachos at the Inn at Long Trail.  It was still raining when we finished our nachos.  After feeling sorry for ourselves under the inn's porch for a few minutes, we hiked out.

We got about 3 miles into the hike when Garrett's ankles (which had been sore for several days) began really causing him problems.  We decided to turn around and go back to the inn to figure out next steps.  Unfortunately, Samson was too far ahead of us on the trail for me to catch him to tell him our plans.  With very swollen ankles, we ended up taking a zero day on Tuesday at the Inn for Garrett to ice.  We found this book in the inn and read the whole thing out loud to pass the time. 

A thriller about a former FBI agent hiking the PCT where he stops an epic terrorist plot to smuggle dirty bombs over the Canadian border on the trail......  oh yeah.

 With the swelling down on Wednesday we hit the trail bright and early.  We lightened our loads a little to make the going easier.  I think we had over packed on the food our first time out making our bags packed for 6 days very heavy.  This time around we figured we could get by with only 5 days of food.

Speaking of food, here we show off our different tastes in wraps.  Anna has cheddar and salami and Garrett has his special Nutella Peanut Butter spread.

Here we passed the Middlebury ski area.

Beautiful Bunchberries in bloom.  These tiny flowers are related to the Dogwood tree and grow abundantly in Vermont's alpine zone.  Can you see the resemblance?

These days were filled with hard hiking on trail that was steep, rooty and PUDy (pointless ups and downs).  Getting to this shelter at the end of a long day was perfect.

View from the Skyline Lodge shelter.

Skyline Lodge

We slept in the top shelf of the shelter.  Here's Roxie, the dog of another hiker out on the deck.

Steep trail!

Camping on Mt. Abe at Battell Shelter with some other Long Trailers, Simple Victories and Food Dude.

At the top of Mt. Abraham at 6 am.  Normally this mountain has 360 views.  Not this day.

Mad River Glen's iconic single seat chair lift.

Steep trail that necessitated iron hand holds.  Apparently the Green Mountain Club isn't a big fan of switchbacks.

Neat cave!

Appalachian Gap crossing.  Here we hitched a ride a few miles down to the Mad River Glen ski pub where we ate a DELICIOUS hamburger and then hitched back up to the trail.  You've probably seen Mad River Glen skiing bumper stickers.   They're every where with the iconic "Ski it if you can" logo.  It was neat to see that actual place.  Here was a variation on the bumper sticker on the sign at the trail crossing.   We care.

After a day and night of heavy rain, the rocks became very slippery.  Here was a neat cove surrounded by cold, damp boulders.

An obvious place to take the trail.

As promised, Garrett's multi-purpose mouth tool.  He was also using the brush to clean our pot after meals, which I thought was just a little weird. 

Steep, rocky, slippery "trail"

Climbing Camel's Hump.  Notice the encroaching cloud?  We got .2 from the top of this iconic 4,000 footer when rumbling started.  We opted to take the bad weather route, which was also very exposed and crossed the granite treeline around the base of the hump. 

Needless to say, we got drenched and came a little close for comfort to some thunder and lightning.  Eventually we found a low spot to hide under our ponchos.  We'd hiked without our ponchos during the storm because they made it hard to climb over the boulders.

Drying out our wet clothes at the Bamforth Ridge Shelter.

At the Route 2 crossing, we hitched into Richmond, Vermont.

We ended this section at mile 180.  We'll pick up the last (and hardest) section of the trail in July.  We had to come back home for a couple weeks to take care of some details related to our move.  Stay tuned !