Day 120: Vermont!

Hiked 20.4 miles, tenting at Congdon shelter.

I got a really late start today as the lodge doesn't serve breakfast until 8.  The listed continental breakfast turned out to only be muffins and coffee and while the muffins were good I'm not sure it was worth hanging around for.  On the plus side the thick fog that was out when I woke up cleared up and I got one last nice view from the top before leaving.

The lobby of Bascom Lodge

There is a really neat topo map at the top of Greylock of the surrounding area

The best part of my morning?  I was actually slightly chilly when I started hiking.  Granted this was in the wind on the top of a mountain but man did it feel great to be slightly chilled instead of melting from the heat.  The temperature was in the 60s all day.  It was almost perfect hiking temperature.  As I descended down from Greylock I passed over two other peaks: Mt Williams and Prospect Mountain.  From the latter I got a nice view of North Adams and Williamstown below. 

Morning view of the tower on Greylock

Starting my descent of Greylock

9 AM photo

My plan was to pass right by without stopping at these towns but when I got to the bottom someone had left a note indicating a house near the trail with bikes available for use by the hikers.  It was almost lunch and it was a cool opportunity that was hard to pass up, so I borrowed one of the bikes and headed towards North Adams to eat at Friendly's.

View from Mt. Williams

View from Prospect Mountain

Walking down the trail in the residential area between North Adams and Williamstown

After returning the bike I set back out on the trail.  It was a steep climb out of town but I was rewarded shortly after the top.  I had arrived at the Vermont border, my twelfth state!  For the next 105 miles the AT is concurrent with the Long Trail, which goes north-south through the state of Vermont.  So part of the border sign also welcomed us to that, and now the registers have hikers from both trails signing in which is fun.

For the next 105 miles the AT and LT follow the same trail

I'm in Vermont!

It was another ten miles from the border to the shelter but overall they weren't very tough.  The thing that made them a little more interesting was the mud.  Vermont is famous for having the muddiest state on the trail, to the point that it is nicknamed Ver-mud by many hikers.  There certainly were a bunch of muddy areas to slog through today.  I hiked for most of the afternoon with Big Red, Yooper, Pacemaker and Runner-up.

View while crossing a power line road

We arrived at the shelter pretty late.  Coyote was there along with two other hikers, my first Long Trail hikers!  We all hung out at the shelter to eat dinner.  One of the Long Trail hikers gave neck massages to Coyote and I and then played us a song on her ukulele.  Now that is some on-trail trail magic!  We officially gave her a trail name: Magic Fingers.