Day 112: Vermont and the Long Trail!

June 27: I woke up and started hiking by 6:00. Jiggs was still fast asleep when I left, but I figured he'd be catching up soon with his big mile days.

It wasn't much more than an hour later when I arrived at the summit of Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts. The observation tower at the top was closed due to renovations. I've been here three times now, and not once has that observation tower been open. I was starting to have my doubts it if was ever really open!

I did, however, walk into Bascom Lodge. Mostly, I wanted to look through the gift shop for postcards, but when I arrived, I saw no gift shop. I asked a guy who was working there about it and he said it hadn't opened yet and opened this closet thing which had everything stuffed into it. I guess they pull it out for display in the lobby when the "gift shop" opens. So then I asked if there were postcards anywhere on the premises that I could buy, and he said he could do that, pulling out the postcard rack from the closet. I picked a few, paid for them and was on my way. Nice of him to "open" the gift shop for me. =)

I continued down Mount Greylock, and another hour or two later, I crossed a dayhiker who was hiking southbound who'd just seen three (THREE!) bears! He "warned" me about the bears and to be safe. Why? Were they aggressive? No. In fact, they ran away from his as soon as he showed you. "You mean you scared the bears off?!" I shook my head sadly. "It would have been nice to see them myself." =)

I was a little amused at his apparent fear of bears and wondered where he was from. Did they not have bears there? So I asked him, where you from?

"California."

I happen to be quite familiar with California having spent the first 20-odd years of my life there. It's also a very big state!

"What part of California?" I asked.

"Fresno," he answered.

"I'm so sorry to hear that," I told him.

"Ah, you're familiar with it, then?"

I laughed. Not super familiar (thank goodness!), but I'd driven through a few times on my way to Yosemite and told him as such, explaining that I grew up in California. His fear of bears surprised me even more--he had a whole bunch of them in his proverbial backyard!

"Where in California?" he asked me.

"San Luis Obispo." I answered.

"You bastard!" he exclaimed, clearly in envy. I laughed. That was funny. =)

So we talked about California for awhile and eventually went on in our separate directions, although I kept my eyes open for three bears that I knew were in the area. I never saw any of the bears, though.

As the trail approaches Highway 2 between Willamstown and North Adams, it passes a water treatment plant and I started hearing enormous bang-like explosions. I don't have a clue what they were, but it was an odd thing to be hearing and continued to increase in volume the closer I got to the water treatment plant. After passing it, the sound started decreasing. BOOM! Boom! boom! What the heck is going on over there? I once heard that some farmers will generate large booming sounds at randomly-set times to scare off birds and such and I wondered if something similar was happening here. To scare off birds from a landfill I couldn't see? To scare off a problematic bear in the area? I don't know, and I never did find out what those booming sounds were for.

Where the trail crosses Highway 2, a police car had stopped in the intersection and was directing traffic off of Highway 2. I couldn't figure out why. Was there a wreck further up Highway 2 I couldn't see? Some sort of construction project temporarily close the road? No idea! Never did find out either. This area seems to be full of mysterious sounds and activities!

Upon reaching Highway 2, I took a detour off trail into North Adams to resupply. Along the way, I passed the entrance for the airport which was packed with people and planes flying around all over the place. It looked like there was some sort of event happening at the airport, but once again, I had no idea what. Seemed to be the story of my life today!

I resupplied at the Shop and Save. I spent a couple of hours there resupplying, repacking the week of food into my pack (enough to get me to Rutland a little over a hundred miles away) and eating lunch. I remembered shopping here two years earlier when I started hiking the Long Trail. Amanda and I had driving here for me to supply myself, then I walked back to the hotel. And from the hotel, I walked to the start of the Long Trail. Essentially, my Long Trail hike had started at this supermarket. On Walking 4 Fun, however, I started it at the hotel, but the truth was, I started walking from here.

The memorial at the top of Mount Greylock--the highest point in Massachusetts.

After resupplying and eating lunch, I walked back to the trail. The policeman who'd been directing traffic off of Highway 2 was no longer there and traffic was flowing smoothly again in both directions. Back on the trail, I followed it through a small neighborhood before it ducked back into the trees again and steadily climbed to the Vermont border.

Weather forecasts had called for rain starting at around 4:00 so I'd been hoping to finish my day's hiking by then, but I was running late and the weather was turning decidedly uglier.  It hadn't started raining yet, but it would and I was in a race to beat it to the shelter!

A few more miles, and I arrived at the Vermont border which also marks the beginning of the Long Trail. I could follow that trail and finish at the Canadian border less than 300 miles away! But no, I'd be hiking to Maine nearly 600 miles away. I started joking with other thru-hikers along this stretch that they should just go to Canada. Then they could tell people that they hiked from Georgia to CANADA which sounds a lot more impressive than saying you walked from Georgia to Maine.

And for the next hundred or so miles, I'd be hiking this trail for the third time! The first was during my 2003 thru-hike of the AT, then in 2013 during my thru-hike of the Long Trail. And now in 2015 for another AT thru-hike. I kind of liked the idea of just skipping ahead. I didn't need to do it a third time. I was hiking this trail for photos to use on Walking 4 Fun, but I have photos for this hundred miles of trail which I took in 2013!

But I didn't really want to use duplicate photos for a hundred miles of trail either. No, I'd hike it again. One last time. (Pray, God, let it be the last time!)

View from Mount Greylock

At the border I met a family of three who had just completed the Long Trail and were clearly in good spirits over their success. I took a group photo for them posing with the sign that marks the start/end of the trail and chatted for a few minutes and congratulated them on their success. I knew what it felt like--I'd done it before just a couple of years earlier, after all, and it's no easy feat! =)

A short while later, I pulled into the Seth Warner Shelter which I was disappointed to see absolutely packed with people. It looked like a girl scout troop had invaded. (They weren't girl scouts, though--that was just my first impression since there were so many young girls there.) I was a little annoyed too. Large groups like that aren't supposed to fill up the shelters. Outside of the shelter, it looked like a troop of boy scouts had invaded. The area was crawling with probably 30+ people between those two groups!

However! It had not yet started to rain! I was still dry! For the time being! =) It was close to 5:00 now and the rain had held off long enough to get me to the shelter, but it wouldn't hold off much longer.

The group in the shelter was quite friendly and asked if I wanted to squeeze in. There were already NINE people in the eight-person shelter, and they were offering to make room for me?! I was astounded! Granted, four of them were cute little kids and didn't take up as much floor space to lay down, but it was still a very crowded shelter. I wasn't sure I even wanted to be in such a crowded shelter. Well, I didn't want to be in such a crowded shelter, but it turns out I didn't want to set up my tarp and sleep in the rain overnight even more. =)

I hadn't realized it until one of the moms in the group pointed out that I was the only guy in the shelter. Oh my goodness! She's right! I'm sharing a shelter with nine girls! That'll make a good story! =) I'm totally going to brag about that to every thru-hiker I meet. I won't tell them that four of them were kids, four more were their moms, and one Long Trail thru-hiker who had just started her hike today.

I squeezed into the shelter between Erika (the Long Trail thru-hiker who had just started her hike) and one of the parents. One of the kids was shifted to sleep along the open edge of the shelter rather than lengthwise with the rest of us.

The parents had started cooking dinner and were complaining that they had brought too much food and asked if I'd like any. Well sure! I didn't even have to cook dinner now?! I'm loving this group! =) And I got to eat quesadillas for dinner. I hadn't had quesadillas in a long time! Although admittedly, in the back of my head, a voice was chastising me for not eating the food in my own pack. My pack was super heavy having just left town with a week of food, and it wasn't getting any lighter by not eating the food in it!

The shelter had a bear box for hikers to store their food, but there was a lock on it and nobody knew the combination. We couldn't use the bear box. I wasn't going to lose any sleep over the matter, but the lock was one of those with four digits. You line up the correct four numbers and it'll pop right open. So the kids wanted to figure out the combination. They were pretty clever too! They started with "obviously" guesses like 1111, 1234 and other common patterns. When those didn't work, they tried some other clever guesses like 2243 (the elevation above sea level of the shelter) and 1599 (our official distance from Springer Mountain). They searched the register for hints or clues--maybe someone wrote the combination down--but they struck out there too.

As clever as they were, however, none of it worked. The bear box was locked closed. The only solution left at this point was a brute-force attack: try every combination possible until you hit the right one. It has to be one of 10,000 combinations (0000 to 9999) so it is a limited number and quite possible to break into with such a brute-force attack, but it would likely take time. A couple of the kids started working on that, but they were free to quit at any time and eventually they did. We never did get the bear box open. What sort of surprises would have been it? We'll never know....

Later in the evening, Jiggs showed up. Which surprised me--I had assumed that he passed me when I spent two hours in town resupplying and eating lunch and was 10 miles ahead of me by now. Jiggs, of course, was immensely disappointed to find the 8-person shelter already packed with 10 people, but the large group with kids welcome him in too! Nooo! Now I can't say that I spent in a shelter full of JUST women anyhow! It'll ruin my story! On the other hand, squeeze 11 people into an 8-person shelter is quite an accomplishment in its own right. =)

The only floor space at all that was left was along the open edge of the shelter, and that's where Jiggs set up for the night. I didn't realize it then, but he didn't carry a tent or a tarp so was completely dependent on shelters to stay dry in inclement weather and had we not made space for him, he'd have hiked on to the next shelter seven miles away. "And what would you do if that shelter was full?" I later asked him. He shrugged his shoulders.

I suspect very much that the shelter would have been full as well. It was a Saturday when a lot more people are out and about and ever since we merged with the Long Trail, there's been a lot more hikers in general. The trail was bursting at the seams full of hikers.

Hear the BOOM?!

Crosswalk near a school. How cute! =)

Interesting potting plants at the Shop and Save! You gotta be careful that these pots just don't run off with your plants!

In the register at the MA/VT border, I taped this photo into the back calling it "trail porn." =)

We've reached the Massachusetts/Vermont border! Woo-who! Eleven states done and just THREE to go!

The Vermont border also marks the beginning of the Long Trail.

Me with my girls. *nodding* (That's me, the second from the right resting my head on my hands.) Jiggs would be in that sleeping bag in front of me if he hadn't gotten up to take this photo. There are two more people on the left that didn't quite make it into the photo!

Day 28: Journeys End

October 1: I had already finished thru-hiking the Long Trail, but I still had 0.8 miles to hike to actually reach the trailhead and get off the trail. My shortest day yet! If you don’t count that zero day in Rutland. =) With less than a mile to hike, I wasn’t in any particular rush, but for all I knew, Amanda might already be at the trailhead waiting for me so I didn’t have any reason to linger late either. Ultimately, I wound up leaving at around 8:00 in the morning, and was at the trailhead at Journeys End Road about 20 minutes later.

Amanda, however, was nowhere to be seen. No big deal, though. I did need to pick up my maildrop in the town of North Troy, which included my laptop and a couple of bags of powdered milk, so I started following the dirt road east.

North Troy was about four miles away, mostly following old gravel roads that didn’t appear to get much action. The closer I got to the city, though, the more houses showed up and the more well-traveled the gravel roads looked. I had told Amanda that if I made it out before she could pick me up, I’d walk out to North Troy to pick up my mail drop and meet her there at the post office or the small market in town. I figured when she did get into town, she’d start in North Troy then drive west until finding me walking along the road or she reached the trailhead—whichever came first. We weren’t sure how suitable the gravel road would be for a rental car ahead of time, so it seemed like a good way to handle things.

The walk was largely uneventful. As I got closer to North Troy, a couple of border patrol vehicles passed by. The walking was easy—wide, flat roads to follow. Not even muddy ones. Nope, they were good, solid gravel roads.

I reached town and quickly found the post office where I picked up my maildrop. And now… I had nothing to do but wait for Amanda. I didn’t see anywhere that was particularly convenient to wait, I just sat down by the post office and started reading my Kindle.

A couple of hours went by and I lost the shade I was sitting in, but I started wondering what happened to Amanda. Did her flight not get in? I wandered over to the small grocery store in town and bought a cold drink and asked if there was somewhere in town where I could make a phone call. The woman at the desk said the last pay phone had been removed years before, but asked if it was a local call. I said that no, it wasn’t, but that I did have a phone card I could use and she let me use the phone at the store.

I got Amanda’s voicemail. I left a message saying that I was in North Troy at the market and hoped she’d get there soon. I was still left in the dark about where she was or how much longer I’d have to wait, though.

I didn’t have to wait long, though. Not ten minutes later, Amanda pulled up in a small minivan. I didn’t recognize her at first because I was expecting the usual small rental car, but she drove up in a minivan instead! It was time to get off the trail for good!

Amanda hadn’t followed the script we put together when I last talked with her—head to North Troy, and if it I wasn’t there, follow the road as far as she could to the Journeys End trailhead where I would come out. She went straight to the trailhead thinking she’d beat me there, and the trailhead did have a register that people could sign, but it was one of the registers that had space for your name, city, # of days out, etc. It wasn’t a register where you could ponder the meaning of life—it was just to track how many hikers used the trail or to help narrow down where someone might be if a search and rescue needed to happen. I didn’t bother to sign that register—I would sign them whenever I went into the woods. It didn’t seem necessary once I was already safely out of them.

Amanda, though, looked at this register and didn’t see my name, so she assumed I hadn’t gotten out yet and therefore just waited for me at the trailhead. It wasn’t until I called and left her that voicemail in North Troy that she realized I had already slipped past. I so should have signed that register! But Amanda was supposed to start looking for me in North Troy. We had no idea that there would be a register there ahead of time! What if it wasn’t there? How would she have known if I passed by or not?

Anyhow, it all ended well and we drove to Burlington where Amanda had gotten us a hotel. On the way, I asked her if there was any interesting news that happened while I was out in the woods and she told me that the government was closed down.

“Say what?” I had absolutely no idea.

“There’s a government shutdown.”

Hmm… isn’t that interesting! The whole government can close down and I’m completely oblivious! =)

I cleaned up and showered, putting on the clean clothes Amanda had brought with her, then we went into downtown Burlington to take a look around. I’d never been to Burlington before and I gotta say that I absolutely love the place! The closed down an entire big street to vehicles so it’s only open to pedestrian traffic now. A city after my own heart. =)

Later in the evening, we met with a couple of letterboxers for dinner: Lou and Cindy--the same Cindy from Stowe who asked me if I was missing anything.

"You have my buff!" The long lost buff had been found! But she had forgotten to bring it from home, so I didn't actually get it back (yet!), but at least I finally knew what happened to it. =)

The next morning, October 2nd, we went to the airport and I flew home. That was non-eventful, though, so I’m not going to write another blog entry about that. Just know that this blog has finally come to an end. At least for this hiking season. I’m sure there will be more adventures next year, though! =)
And, as you could probably already guess, I took about 3,000 photos along the Long Trail—and exactly 1,055 of them I uploaded to Walking 4 Fun for anyone who’d like to try a virtual walk of the Long Trail. Far more photos there than I used in this blog! =)

The Journeys End Shelter had this card. Being so close to the
border, it’s an area that the border patrol monitors.

A sign at the Journeys End trailhead. The Long Trail is
now 1.3 miles behind me, and North Troy is just 3.9 miles away!

Even the road walk into North Troy had blue blazes along the route.

What a great photo to mark the end of my Long Trail hike,
don’t you think? =) The name of the gravel road I walked
on was called Journeys End Rd, and this sign marked
the turn onto it.

Entering the bustling city of North Troy.

Mural in Burlington.

Day 27: The End of the Long Trail

September 30: I slept in late, in no particular rush. I had a measly 8.7 miles to the Canadian border, then a mere half-mile to the Journey End shelter for a short 9.2 miles of hiking. And, by all accounts, it wouldn’t even be a difficult 9.2 miles. So yeah, no reason to wake up at the crack of dawn and start hiking!

 

Eventually I got going, though, because I’d grow seriously bored if I didn’t! But I hiked a little over 3 miles before I reached the Shooting Star Shelter—the last shelter on the Long Trail—and I took an extended lunch break that lasted for more than two hours. Like I said, I was in no rush. Part of the time I used to write an epic 2-page letter in the register to southbounders on the trail fill with all my wit and wisdom. I wrote it upside-down so the southbounders could read it easier. (They were hiking backwards on the trail, after all.) Then I followed it up with another 2-page epic note for northbounders with nothing particularly important to say, but I didn’t want northbounders to feel cheated that they didn’t get a two-page note like the southbounders got. =)

 

Then I read my Kindle a lot. After filling four full pages of the shelter register, I didn’t have any other ideas for how to kill time. =)

 

About a half hour before I planned to started hiking again, a southbounder arrived. He was young, blonde, muscular, shirtless, and I had little doubt that women on the trail would swoon every time they passed him on the trail. Be that as it may, however, he seemed oddly out of his element. I’d seen other men hiking on the trail without a shirt. Even Decent, just the day before, I caught roaming around without his shirt, but hikers typically don’t have 6-pack abs nor do they need them, so it seemed strangely out of place.

 

He set down his pack and introduced himself as Erik, and was planning to thru-hike the Long Trail all the way to Massachusetts. He was planned with himself for arriving at the Shooting Star shelter as early in the day as he did since that was his goal for the day, and he started unpacking his pack.

 

I told him that I would be continuing on, but that I knew at least one person definitely planned to spend the night there (Purgy No More) and that there were about half a dozen other hikers headed northbound not far behind me that might wind up at the shelter too but I hadn’t seen them for two or three days now so I didn’t really know for certain what their plans were. Just letting him know, though, that there would definitely be more people arriving, and perhaps several, so not to spread out too much in the shelter.

 

He asked me about how far away the Canadian border was, which surprised me since I thought he had just come from there, but I looked it up in my guidebook and answered him a precise 4.4 miles away, but as it turned out, his friend dropped him off there the trail crossed Highway 105—2.6 miles away from the Canadian border.

 

“You missed Canada?” I asked, unable to hide my amusement.

 

And indeed, he had. He wasn’t sure where people started hiking from, and didn’t seem to know anything about the Journeys End Trail which leads 1.3 miles to the northern terminus of the Long Trail—the shortest, quickest way to the end of the trail. You could start from the road crossing where he did, but he would have had to hike north 2.6 miles, then turn around and hike back south 2.6 miles back to where he started from, then continue on to the shelter. But he didn’t do that and missed the first 2.6 miles of the trail. Oops!

 

As he unpacked his gear, I noticed a full-sized jar of jelly among his items. “A full sized jar of jelly?” I asked, surprised.

 

“To make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” he told me. I’m not really inclined to criticize his food choices, but glass jars don’t make good backpacking companions. Besides the fact that they’re so heavy, if they break, you wind up with a lot of broken glass shards to worry about and a mess of jelly with nothing to put it in, and I gently tried to warn him away from glass jars in the future. “If you slip—and you will slip!—it could crack right in your pack!”

 

He said he’d put in in the middle of his pack to protect it better. Well, at least he seemed to take my concerns to heart, but his solution seemed less than perfect. I wanted to tell him, “At least get the plastic, squeezable containers of jelly!” but I didn’t want to antagonize him any further and let it go.

 

He said he didn’t have much backpacking experience, but as he continued pulling gear out, I started thinking that he was exaggerating—I was pretty sure the boy had never spent a single night out in the woods.

 

The thing that really got me, that I couldn’t hide my shock over, was when he pulled out a 6-pack of Red Bull. I buried my hands in my face, sure I had to be hallucinating, but I wasn’t. He said it wasn’t that big of deal, though, because it was heavy now, but he’d drink two cans per day so it would get lighter with each passing day. But… but… I was in shock. Seriously? Full-sized cans of Red Bull?

 

“How much do each of those things weigh?” I asked him. Just eyeballing it, I guessed they were 8 ounce cans—that’s half a pound per can!

 

He looked at the can but couldn’t find any label, and I encouraged him. “It’s usually located near the bottom of the can, probably says something like 8 fluid ounces or something.”

 

Then he found it, and confirmed that they were indeed 8 ounce cans.

 

Then he pulled out cans of food. I didn’t look at the labels so I’m not sure what all he had, but there were a lot of cans. I had no doubt he also had the needed can opener somewhere in his pack as well. I hope he never loses it, though, because if he did, he’d starve to death quickly.

 

I shook my head and thought to myself, This boy is gonna die. He’s gonna die on the Long Trail. I’m going to be watching the news, and they’re going to report finding the half-starved body of a shirtless hiker surrounded by cans of food he couldn’t get into, empty cans of Red Bull, and a broken jar of jelly.

 

Oh, but wait—that’s not all! Then he pulled out his Therm-a-rest, which was still in its original packaging. He slipped it out of a plastic bag—a bag I knew he’d never get it back into because that’s not what the plastic bag was for.

 

Then he said he needed to get water. I hadn’t been to the water source yet, but a note on the shelter said it could be found on a blue-blazed trail just south of the shelter, and that there was a pump, but it worked great.

 

I pointed out the sign to him saying that I hadn’t been to it yet, but the directions on the shelter wall seemed clear enough. He pulled out a water filter and tablets to treat the water, and I asked him why he had two different ways to treat water. Mostly out of curiosity, although I was a little amused that he hadn’t even bothered to remove the bottles with the tablets from its original packaging. He said that he didn’t know which method he would like better, so he was going to try them both and send one of them home at some point.

 

He’s so going to die out here, I thought. But at least it won’t be from giardia! Which is more than I can say for myself since I hadn’t treated any water at all. =)

 

He headed down the trail in search of water, and I wondered if he’d have trouble with the pump. I assumed it needed priming, but if it was like the other shelter with a pump as a water source, there would be directions posted about how to prime the pump. Surely he’d be able to figure it out.

 

I finished the chapter I was reading on my Kindle about 10 minutes later then started packing up for the last 4.4 miles to the Canadian border. Next stop, Canada!

 

Before I left the shelter, though, I needed to fill up with water. And, I figured, I should probably check up on Erik. For all I knew, he might still be trying to figure out how to prime the pump.

 

I was wrong, however. He was already passed the stage of trying to get the pump to work and was now working on filtering the water from the container used to prime the pump explaining to me that the pump wasn’t working and the only water available was the stuff from the container next to it.

 

The thought crossed my mind again: This boy is gonna die out here. Surrounded with his cans of food and two water treatment methods, he’ll die of thirst. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but love this kid. He seemed so earnest and excited about his hike, how could you not like him?

 

So I showed him that the container on the side filled with water wasn’t for drinking—it was for priming the pump. I poured water on the pump, pumped a few times, and beautiful clear water started coming out. Erik seemed curious how that worked—pouring water on it makes it work? And I couldn’t really answer why it worked because honestly, I didn’t know myself. I don’t really know the mechanics of how these pumps work, but I know you won’t get a drop of water out of them unless you pour water over it first.

 

There was a sign about priming the pump on a nearby tree, but in Erik’s defense, it was badly warn and difficult to read. Some of the words were completely illegible, so anyone who didn’t know to prime the pump or how to do it would have had a difficult time getting water—not just Erik!

 

I filled up my water bottles quickly—it goes quickly when you don’t treat your water. =) Erik was working on treating his water when I left, but at least he had water now. He told me I might see him again because he was thinking about hiking back to the Canadian border to cover the 2.6 miles he had missed earlier. I didn’t think that was a great idea with him clearly being so inexperienced. For him to hike back to the Canadian border then back to the shelter would have been 8.8 miles round trip for him. He wasn’t trail-hardened yet. He had a pack that had to weigh at least 50 pounds, but he could have left much of the weight in the shelter. And it was already getting well into the afternoon. It didn’t seem like a good idea to me for him to backtrack with all of his gear to the Canadian border, and it seemed like an even worse idea for him to backtrack without his gear in case he didn’t make it back to the shelter before dark.

 

So I was a little skeptical he’d hike all the way back to the border. His better strategy, I thought, because he didn’t live terribly far away, was to come back after reaching the Massachusetts border (if he reached it!) and do a day hike of the 2.6 miles he missed to complete that link. For him, that was totally an option.

 

So we parted ways, and I continued my trek to the Canadian border.

 

The rest of the hike was largely uneventful. I passed a sign marking the 45th parallel. That took me by surprise—I had no idea that I was anywhere near the 45th parallel, but I liked the fact that I started my hike closer to the equator than the North Pole, and I’d end the hike closer to the North Pole than to the equator. =)

 

Then I turned a corner and reached the sign marking the northern terminus of the Long Trail. It looked like the sign marked the southern terminus—large, wooden, and lots of text and not very interesting. Kind of boring, really. But I wasn’t fool either. I knew there was a Canadian border somewhere, and it would be a long, deforested line running out as far as the eye could see—and I didn’t see that line anywhere. Clearly, I had not yet reached Canada, despite the sign that claimed as much.

 

I took another 20 steps further along the trail, though, where it came out to a clearing which stretched out as far as the eye could see to the east and west. Now this is the Canadian border! That’s what I’m talking about!

 

A large boulder ahead mostly blocked my view, so I climbed up onto it where I got the view I was really looking for, the deforested line marking the US/Canada boundary stretching downhill to the west then up and over a ridge far in the distance. To the east, the view was less spectacular since I was just below the top of a ridge in that direction that largely blocked the view. If I bushwacked a tenth of a mile east, there might be a view, but I didn’t want to do that. I was perfectly happy with the view to the west which also included a monument marking the Vermont/Quebec border.

 

Woo-who! I shook my trekking pole in the air in triumph. I was officially a Long Trail thru-hiker. I took about a bazillion photos, did a little happy dance. And I decided that I didn’t want to leave. The view was awesome! If I had enough water, I would have been perfectly happy to camp for the night right there at the border. I didn’t have enough water, though. I did have enough to make dinner, however, so I could easily cook dinner while waiting for sunset, which is exactly what I did.

 

In all, I spent nearly three hours at the border. I did see Erik again—he did hike back from the shelter in order to do the 2.6 miles he had missed. He wisely didn’t stop to chat with me for very long since he came shirtless and without his pack and still had a 4.4 mile hike back to his gear that he left at the shelter.

 

Shortly before sunset, a gaggle of thru-hikers arrived: Superchunk, Top Shelf, Lucky, Cheesy, Hill, Fire-Eye and one woman I didn’t recognize. It was good to see them all again, although I was a little disappointed that they had all arrived as a single, large group. I like people, but I like them in moderation. I’d have enjoyed their company more if one or two of them showed up every half hour or so. =)

 

They intended to get off the trail that day, however, and only hung out by the end of the trail for all of about 15 minutes before they headed off on the Journeys End Trail to hike the 1.3 miles to the nearest trailhead. After they left, I was a little sad. Alone, watching my last sunset on the trail. It would have been nice to have had one or two people around to share the moment with.

 

After the sun set, I pulled out my headlamp, packed up my gear, and started off. There was a shelter a mere half-mile down the Journeys End Trail, appropriately named the Journeys End Shelter. I felt a little giddy at the thought that I’d be hiking after sunset. I hadn’t done that anywhere on the trail because I needed to take photos for http://www.walking4fun.com, but the trail was done now. I didn’t need photos anymore. I could hike in the dark!

 

I had my headlamp ready, but I preferred hiking in the dark without a light whenever I can. Under the light of a full moon without any tree cover is easiest, but there were plenty of trees here, and it wasn’t even a full moon so it grew quite dark fairly quickly after sunset. My night vision kicked in, and I started following a vague, undefined path through the woods. It wasn’t easy to follow, but I liked the challenge of navigating in the dark and was determined not to turn on my headlamp until I absolutely needed it—and crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t lose the trail completely in the darkness before I decided it was actually necessary after all!

 

I managed to make it to the shelter without using the headlamp, and even followed signs to a creek in the darkness where I filled up with water. The water was a lot further away from the shelter than I had expected, though, and I started growing concerned that I wouldn’t find my way back in the darkness. I left all my gear in the shelter—if I got lost now, I’d have nothing. No clothes for warmth, no sleeping bag, no food. (Plenty of water, though!) I started thinking that maybe I should have waited to get water in the morning, but it was too late for that now.

 

Fortunately, I did find my way back to the shelter without any mishaps. The shelter was empty, and considering that it was now about an hour after sunset, I was pretty certain that nobody else would be showing up tonight. I spread out all of my gear like I owned the place because tonight, I did. =)

 

This is Highway 105, where Erik started his hike from
and why he missed the first 2.6 miles of the Long Trail!

 

 

I had absolutely no idea that I was near the 45th parallel
until I reached this sign!

 

Can you smell it? Smells like Quebec is getting close!

 

Boring…

 

Here’s the deforested area that marks the
US/Canadian boundary. Except that
stupid boulder is in the way of a great view!

 

So naturally, I stood up on the boulder, and this was the view!
Excellent! Everything to the left (south) of the deforested line
is Vermont while everything to the right (north) of it is
Quebec. Bonjour, Quebec!

 

The monument marking the border.

 

A self portrait—just to prove that I really was here! =)
(I had to take about 20 of these photos before I got
one with both the monument and the border clearly
showing up in the photo.)

 

From left to right, Lucky, Cheesy, Fire-Eye, Superchunk, and Hill,
celebrating their completion of the Long Trail.

 

Sunset at the monument.

 

Just in case you wanted to know how many steps I took
from Williamstown, MA, to the Canadian border: Precisely
705,162 steps in 27 days. =)

 

I took this photo about 5 or 10 minutes after sunset, shortly
before I’d leave for the Journeys End Shelter.

 

There aren’t anymore photos after this today because… I was hiking in the dark!!!! =)