This morning I woke up in the shelter just after 4 AM. I was hoping to have a slightly earlier start to the day. That way I can get into Manchester as early as possible. After seeing the trail conditions last night and all of the snow, I figured it wouldn’t be the fastest day. Kid gore shelter is about 8 miles from the base of Stratton Mountain. That mountain actually is even slightly higher than the one I climbed last night. So it seems like it’s given that it will once again be a snow covered nightmare.
I was hoping to read some comments on FarOut about the conditions. But at this point there are no hikers up ahead. Other than the Punisher, who is maybe 10 miles ahead of me at this point. There is an alternate route which avoids the climb up Stratton Mountain. But right now I’m 3/4 of the way through the Appalachian Trail and I’ve red lined the entire time. Sure, taking a blue blaze would probably be a lot faster and safer. But I really don’t know if I could live with myself honestly. I think if you’re going to do the calendar year triple crown then it’s important to at least stick to the red line on trails like the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. As long as time and weather allows. Taking a blue blaze just to make my life easier just doesn’t feel right.
I caught an incredible sunrise from the shelter before leaving. The shelter faces east and the sun rose right in front of the opening. Then I started walking right around 5:30 AM. The first few hours of the day were definitely slow going. But there was way less snow than yesterday. More than anything, it was the downed trees that were making me slow my pace. There were a lot of patches of snow, but they were all much smaller than last night.
The sunrise in front of Kid Gore Shelter.
After a couple hours, I checked FarOut and realized just how slow I was going. Originally I had expected that I would already have been about 5 or 6 miles in for the day. But I was only about 4 miles into the day, which was crazy. It didn’t feel like the terrain was slowing me down that bad. But the trail was a river covered in roots, rocks, snow, and downed trees.
In 2023 when I was in this section, it was pouring rain. And little did I know at the time, but there was about to be major flash flooding across Vermont. We just happened to get picked up at Kelley Stand Road by Sweet Pea‘s dad. But if we hadn’t, it could’ve been a pretty dangerous situation. We wound up road walking a lot of Vermont because the Appalachian Trail Conservancy closed the trail. One guy actually drowned in one of the river crossings because they had all swelled so high.
Even with all of the obstacles lately, it was still going to be a great day.
I was definitely disappointed by how long it was taking to get out to Kelley Stand Road. I was also going back-and-forth in my head about whether or not I should take the upcoming blue blaze around Stratton Mountain. Even these small patches of snow have been slowing me down so much. I’m supposed to be meeting Jennifer, a Trail Angel who reads my blog, at a road crossing 26 miles into the day. At this rate, I will definitely not make it there around the time we had planned.
I walked past this pond over the first few miles of the day.
After it took so long to get out to Kelley Stand Road I was pretty seriously considering taking the blue alternate trail. At one point I was almost entirely certain I was going to take it. But for some reason while I was walking, I had a change of heart. Even if Stratton Mountain added an hour or so to my day, that wouldn’t be the end of the world. And that’s just about how much time the snow added to my day yesterday evening. Maybe even a little bit less.
I remember sitting under this shelter in 2023, hiding from some crazy rain.
I was shocked when I got out to the dirt road to see Iceman there! We hadn’t made any plans yesterday for him to come out this morning. I wondered if he had gotten in touch with Fresh Ground and heard about what happened yesterday. Or if he just decided to come and meet me here. Either way that was an amazing surprise. And it would be great to get fueled up a bit before the climb up Stratton Mountain!
It turned out that Iceman had met Punisher at this trailhead last night. That’s where he camped. And I guess Punisher had heard about my incident through Fresh Ground. I didn’t even realize he knew, because he never reached out or anything about it. Since Iceman was already there, he decided to stick around to meet me. And I felt really good knowing that he actually said I made better time than he expected. He had clocked Punishers time yesterday making his way through the snow to the road. And said that I actually made a really good time and got to the road sooner than he’d expected. That made me feel good at least!
Making my way out to Kelley Stand Road.
I sat there with Iceman and had a soda and some chocolate milk. I even had a piece of Texas sheet cake, which was so good. Then set out to begin to climb up Stratton Mountain. Which I just hoped wasn’t too rough. Honestly, the best case scenario is that the snow doesn’t start until I’m closer to the top of the mountain. I know that coming down the north side the snow will probably be pretty bad. But hopefully I can make it pretty far up the mountain before it starts.
Heading up Stratton Mountain!
After my wonderful break with Iceman, I began the climb up Stratton. And just as I hoped it was really nice for the first couple of miles. There really isn’t any snow out here until you get around 3000 feet. So it was nice and easy for the majority of the way up. Then the patches of snow began. By the time I was a half mile or maybe a little further from the top there was a ton of snow. So the joyous post holing started up again.
I loved the root system of this tree.
My poor shins are covered in cuts and bruises. That’s probably the worst aspect of the snow. I wish it was just hard packed snow that I could walk on top of. Getting up to the top was definitely the easy part. But it seems like the trend these days is that the descent going northbound always has the most snow. Though it really just depends on the direction of the mountain and which side faces the sun primarily.
The snow wasn’t too bad as I made my way up to the top of Stratton Mountain.
The next couple of miles going downhill were pretty brutal. There was a ton of snow and at times I broke through and fell up to my knee on one of my two legs. It’s a little scary to think that you could fall down onto something and roll an ankle or worse. I just tried to use my trekking poles to stabilize and prevent that from happening. You better believe that all day long I was at least thinking about the concept of heading out to the west coast soon. Depending on the snow and how it continues, there’s a good chance that I might have to go out to California sooner than later.
No pain, no gain, no rain, no Maine!
I was hoping to do the entire East Coast portion of the trail in one push. But if the snow conditions are going to be brutal for the next 500 miles, then I might have no choice. It just wouldn’t make sense to slog through snow and make poor time. Especially if I’ll arrive in Maine before Katahdin even opens. The reasonable thing to do might be to go out to California and start in the desert soon. It’s definitely not my Plan A, but it might have to be my Plan B.
The fire tower on top of Stratton Mountain.
After descending almost 1000 feet the snow finally let up a bit. I was just exhausted from all of the walking through snow. My legs sunk in snow up to my knees multiple times. I was sore and cut up, but otherwise fine.
Breaking through the snow and falling up above my knee was definitely not a fun time.
It was a huge relief to eventually get out of the snow and onto some real trail. But I’d cost myself a lot of time under the slow conditions. Originally, I thought I might get out to Vermont route 11/30 by 3PM. But now it was looking like I would probably get there sometime after 4 PM. Which is totally ok! Just a bit of a bummer.
After descending Stratton for a while, I eventually got down to the junction for the pond and shelter. Then just continued along the trail from there. At that point I had about 8-10 miles to go for the day. I don’t know if it is from all of the hiking through snow, or just yesterday‘s exhausting ordeal, but I am spent. Even once the trail became easier I could just tell them my patience was low. The trail was pretty overgrown, and there were lots of blowdown. Branches overhanging the trail kept slapping into my shins which are covered in cuts. So every time I got hit with a stick it just burned my already cut up legs.
This section of trail should have been pretty easy. But there were a surprising number of downed trees and alot of roots and rocks.
It’s funny how the trail can seem so difficult at times even when conditions aren’t particularly “rough”. There wasn’t a ton of elevation gain for the rest of the day and the rocks and roots on trail weren’t so bad. They’re also isn’t very much mud this year in Vermont. Probably because it’s still so early and there hasn’t been a lot of rain or as much snow melt. So in that respect, I’m pretty lucky. Yet for some reason the second half of the day still felt like a major slog.
The Appalachian trail follows along the Long Trail for half of Vermont, if not more.
My feet were wet from all the snow and streams under the snow. But as I continued walking along dry trail, my feet dried out pretty quickly. When I had about 5 or so miles left for the day, I got a little bit of service and watched some videos while I walked. The time just felt like it was going by really slowly. But I think it was just me. I didn’t necessarily have a huge pep in my step and was dragging a bit. I wound up calling my dad and talking to him briefly. I feel so bad for how much I must’ve scared him yesterday. Understandably, the circumstances were very scary. But still!
The AT followed along a dirt road for a mile or so and had this sign up.
Yesterday‘s blog has blown up and there are hundreds of comments. I’m very appreciative of all of you kind souls who are understanding of the situation. When you’re hiking alone in the woods and something like that happens, you have no choice but to react quickly. It’s always easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, sitting behind your computer. But when you’re actually on the ground in the moment, things are very different. You can’t really fully represent someone’s body language, tone of voice, and every little detail over a blog. But those details are what help me to make decisions in the moment and on a case by case basis. I’m glad that I contacted the police. Even if that person wasn’t a threat, they might’ve needed help.
I’ve been hiking nonstop since then, so I haven’t had an opportunity to contact the forestry service again. But someone did reach out to me this morning and leave a message. They went out to the shelter and they were able to get in touch with the guy. So when I have a chance, I definitely will be calling to follow up and get more information. I have no regrets though about how things unfolded. And the man from the US forestry told me I did exactly the right thing regardless of whether or not the person was potentially violent. So for all of you saying that I shouldn’t have been concerned and shouldn’t have contacted anyone, the authorities beg to differ.
For those of you who think that calling the police was silly or unnecessary. The ATC puts this statement out to all thru hikers on Far Out. It’s never silly to report anything to the police if circumstances make you uncomfortable or fearful. Many people have been killed on the AT, and in a few of those cases the perpetrators were reported beforehand for their behavior.
Yesterday I hiked 33 miles and today I’m doing a marathon. So I don’t necessarily have the time to be making tons of phone calls and following up on these circumstances. The hiking must go on and walking 12 hours a day is basically a full-time job. At least for me at this point. You better believe that when I get in touch with them, I will be posting an update though. I’m just as curious as everyone else’s about who this person was and why they were acting the way they were. There is a man who apparently comes out on the Appalachian Trail and Long Trail almost every year and threatens women. People have commented his name and reached out to me about him. So there’s a chance that it was that individual. And even though he hasn’t harmed anyone in the past, he has been threatening women for years on these trails. So if it was him, then I think I did make the right decision. Though I feel right in my choices regardless. I would also like to note that I don’t hike with both headphones in! I only ever wear one headphone. That way I can still hear animals, people, etc. But it can still be difficult for me to hear what someone is specifically saying when they are a distance away and I have one headphone in.
By around 4 PM I was getting close to the road. So I reached out to Jennifer, who is going to be hosting me for the night. We’ve been messaging back and forth on Instagram for a while this year. She wound up coming out to the trailhead to pick me up. And I walked up to the trailhead just as she drove in. It was divine timing!
Jennifer is an absolute saint! She used to run a hiker hostel in Manchester and now she has a smaller home and hosts hikers from time to time. She’s been reading my blog and following my videos for a while and reached out ages ago. I’m so glad that the timing worked out to stay with her.
Once she picked me up, she drove me into Manchester. I was able to go to the gear shop and get a few things. I haven’t been able to find fuel in ages so I was glad to get some of that. I have a bunch of dinners that I really haven’t been able to eat. Then I grabbed a few things at the grocery store and we headed over to her house.
Jennifer, Bear, and myself!
Jennifer‘s house was absolutely adorable. And she had the sweetest dog named Bear. He didn’t like me at first and kept barking at me. But eventually, I sat down on the ground in front of him and got on his level. After that we were the best of friends. Jennifer had to go to a gig so I was alone at the house for a few hours. I showered, did laundry, then got some video work done. It just felt so good to lay down and relax after a very physically and mentally exhausting last couple of days.
At first Bear didn’t like me much. Then we became best friends.
The rest of the night was an absolute dream. I relaxed in bed and ate some delicious stirfry that Jennifer made for me. She also baked cookies! I charged all of my electronics and got my chores done. Then was able to catch up on some writing and video work that I’ve fallen behind on. I’ve just been too tired at the end of the day recently to get a lot of work done. I wound up staying up a little bit too late, per usual. But then eventually called it a night. It was so amazing to be comfortable and in bed for the night.
After 2 mentally and physically draining days, I really needed this.
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The best trail magic ever! I had mace up until recently. But never even thought about using it, so I got rid of it. Apparently just in time for a scary situation to arise.
