Vermont's Long Trail and the Green Mountain Boys

On this section hike of the LT, we completed Divisions 12 and 11: Canada Border to VT 15.

We used an old guide book from 2009

Cooper's special edition Trekking Pack for the LT

The large back porch of the Green Mountain Club

The Long Trail is America's oldest long distance hiking trail. It was the vision and dream of James P. Taylor in the early 1900s. He created the Green Mountain Club in 1910 and the first section of trail was cut in 1912. The final section of trail was cut in 1930. We visited the Club headquarters in Waterbury: it is very nice! Stop in when you visit VT!

Long before the creation of the Green Mountain Club, there were the Green Mountain Boys: a militia led by Ethan Allen. They, in a large part, are the reason Vermont is a state today and not part of NY. NY wanted those lush Green Mountains for themselves!

The GMBs' most famous feats include the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 from the British and they assisted in the Battle of Bennington which was also a victory over the Brits. Ironically, both locations are situated within the state of NY.

Flag of the Green Mountain Boys and Republic of Vermont

General John Stark memorial at the site of the Battle of Bennington. The Green Mountain Boys aided the efforts of other militia from MA and NH.

Green Mountain Boy Cooper trolling for Brits at the Battle of Bennington.

Battle of Bennington Monument in VT. Ironically, this is not the site of the battle and the battle took place within the borders of NY.

The monument is incredibly large!

Green Mountain Boy Cooper planning how to take Fort Ticonderoga from the British

Celebrating an easy victory at Fort Ticonderoga.

We were glad to visit all of these historical sites! We even made it up to Montreal for about 24 hours. The Green Mountain Boys also tried to take Montreal but failed. Our brief trip up there was also a bit of a failure as our Green Mountain Boy did not enjoy the busy streets!

Thank you for reading about our historical side trips and nerdom! We were pretty excited to meet some Vermonters who would recognize Cooper's special edition pack but only met 3 people who caught the pack's resemblance to the Green Mountain Boys' flag.

The Long Trail: Divisions 12 and 11: Canada Border to VT 15

Powder River and I planned to do a little more than one third of the Long Trail on this trip, from the border of Canada to Appalachian Gap, VT 17. We left our car at the Hyde Away Inn in Waitsfield (we highly recommend this Inn!) and paid for a shuttle to the Northern Terminus of the trail, about a 2 hour drive. Thank you Carlene for the great shuttle!

The Long Trail is 273 miles long from Canada to Massachusetts. It joins the Appalachian Trail at VT4 near Killington. It (as well as the AT) is marked with white blazes.

We arrived at the trailhead parking a couple hours before dark. The hike to the actual start of the LT to the Canadian border is 1.3 mile. We really enjoyed hanging out near the border! Our shuttle driver pointed out how the American border police SUV was parked nearby and we thought of what that job must be like. We camped about a half mile south of the terminus. 

So Day One was brief but lovely! Day Two we hiked 8 miles to Laura Woodward Shelter (at the northern base of Jay Mountain). It was very difficult, as we expected! We remembered what Maine and New Hampshire were like on our respective thru hikes of the AT and knew that the Northern section of the Long Trail would be similar. The unknown for us on this trip was how Cooper would do. He is prey driven and we kept him on leash always, with the occasional brief spurt of "catch and release" to let him climb up or down major rock scrambles. I would release him and he would run to Powder River. No treat can ever trump his love of chasing animals and our caution was not too extreme (last summer he chased some moose that we had not seen fast enough to prevent him from chasing). What was extreme was Powder River's experience of being constantly bound to our Tuxedo Mutt on this incredibly rugged trail!

On Day Three we sat down on the side of the trail and thought maybe Cooper is just not ready for this kind of rugged trail and he needs more leash training. We also admitted that we were not in our old thru-hiker shape and this trail is really tough! I am sad to admit that we tried to bail on our hike and hitched down to Montgomery Center on Rt 242. God was good to not let us give up so easily and after a couple aimless hours in that tiny town with no cell signal, we hitched back to the trail and decided to hike to the road crossing for Eden. Good thing because our hike became much more enjoyable over the next several days! 

The morning of Day three we had a great time on the fogged summit of Jay Peak. We hung out in the ski tram hut and ate amazing sandwiches from the cafe and drank Tram Ale, made especially for Jay Resort by Long Trail Brewing. Cooper was not a fan of the tram arriving and departing and kids coming and going. But he did receive some nice trail magic up there in the form of a bungee leash that was given to us by a day hiker!

Beautiful mist and ski run on our way up to Jay Peak

Bobwhite comforting anxious Cooper in the Tram hut outside of the cafe

Rock ledges on top of Jay

We found a bit of sun as we descended Jay Peak

When our hitch delivered us back to the trail, we hiked north of the road to camp and Jay Camp. 
Day Four: We started working with Cooper to stay leashed and behind Powder on descents. It wasn't always perfect, and Powder had an active time preventing Cooper from passing him by planting his trekking poles in just the right spots so that Cooper could not squeeze through. It was possible though due to just how narrow the trail is and how incredibly dense the woods are! I'm actually amazed moose can travel through this mess of pines trees, each one tangled in it's neighbor. We saw moose tracks and fresh poop but never heard or saw one, probably for the better. (For those unfamiliar with moose: they are not to be taken lightly! They are very territorial and WILL chase you down to get you off their spot, as Powder can attest!)

The elevation profile is exaggerated on the map, but yes, it at times does feel this steep!

You can probably guess by now that we were not on track to do our planned 100 mile section in our allotted 10 days. Possibly Powder and I could have done it without Cooper, but it still would have been very difficult and I know my legs would have been shot after the third 11 mile day and I'd be back on my ibuprofen regiment. We chose the pace we could handle comfortably which turned out to be about 8 miles a day. Day Four we did 7 miles and camped just before Rt 58 and the major climb up Haystack Mountain.

Cooper in the lead, on leash. The trail looks unrecognizably easy here. This photo is from Day 1

This is how you hike the Long Trail!

I wish I was this agile!

He makes it look so easy!

Now he's just showing off!

Cooper's trail running skills are only matched by his trail-side napping skills! He would lay down at every possible opportunity :)

Day Five: We climbed for hours over several false summits of Haystack Mountain. We made it to Tillosten Shelter around 4pm and a nice Canadian family with two young kids came in for the night. We walked on, past the pond and another 2.5 miles to Belvidere peak. A Nobo had told us there was a nice fire tower up there and that he had camped up there. And it was lovely!!!

The bunks in Tillosten. Each platform sleeps 2 and they are bunked for a total of 8 people.

The beaver pond south of Tillosten shelter

Belvidere fire tower

Cooper was tied to a tree while we climbed the tower so that he would not follow us.

Sunset from Belvidere fire tower

Misty morning on Belvidere

Day Six we hiked out to VT 18 with a plan to hitch to Morristown, get a rental car and drive back to the Hyde Away Inn (reunite with our car and then return the rental car). We prayed for a hitch after trying to call around a get a shuttle but to no avail. Our prayer was answered in a big way: the second car that passed us picked us up and took us to Enterprise rental car! Our driver was really great and told us about his son who was "our age" and was a scientist but is currently a studio artist in Bennington. He gave us his son's business card and we were able to visit him at his studio at the end of our time in Vermont! What a pleasure to see your work in person, Aaron! Such an inspiration to see your work and know where it comes from! You can visit Aaron's studio in the 400 block of Pine St, Bennington, Vt behind Speedy and Earl's coffee.

Back on Trail and Finishing Divisions 12 and 11: 

We got back on the trail a after a couple of days off and started where we left off: VT 118. We were excited to scramble through "Devil's Gulch." A Nobo we met on day one told us that it reminded her of Mahoosuc Notch on the AT in Maine. We were excited for that and also remembered that it took us 2.5 hours to do the one mile Mahoocuc Notch. So we figured it might take us a while to go through the gulch as well- but we also had no idea that it was so short in length, maybe 0.2 mile... It was fun but only took about 10 minutes and we only had to pick Cooper up by his harness handles one time. 

Entry to Devil's Gulch for Southbounders

A rock slab tunnel in the gulch

We stayed at Spruce Ledge hut/camp directly after the gulch and met Anthony + Lisa; Kevin and dog Gibson: Sobo Long Trail thru-hikers. It was fun hiking with them for a day and they inspired us to do a big mileage day: 15 miles from Spruce Ledge to Roundtop Shelter. We had fun getting to know them and know that they must be having a great time journeying on the LT this month! Cooper enjoyed meeting Gibson! The next day we hiked out to the road where we completed this year's section hike, at VT15. We landed another God-sent hitch and made it all the way back to our car at the obscure trailhead parking of 118!

Anthony and Lisa, Kevin. Sobo LT thru-hikers headed to MA

Gibson the Wonder Dog!! (He is very small!)

Roundtop Shelter: in this photo filled with some college kids whom came in after dark and then for whatever reason decided to move into the shelter at 1am and again at 2am with headlights shinning and a fair bit of rustling...

What we learned from this trip and some detail about Cooper's booties

We re-learned that we struggle to press on when we know our car is in the area and we again discussed what an admirable feat it is to be a section hiker! Powder and I both have this wonderful memory of our thru-hikes and what it was like to hike through pain and all sorts of trail and weather conditions to meet the end goal. We are not great section hikers however, and it's good to just remember that even though at one time we did 15-20 mile days, day after day for 6 months during our thru-hikes, we maybe need to set out with more gracious expectations for ourselves when we plan section hikes. Also we love to go to historical sites and we didn't exactly make time for that in our original plan to hike 110 miles, but when we decided to trim our section, we had more time to go to Montreal, Fort Ticonderoga, The Ben and Jerry's Factory, The Green Mountain Club, visit with our new friend Caitlin and her dog Vaida, go the the home of Ethan Allen, etc etc. It was a great trip and I'm glad we got to explore the area with our car as well as our feet on trail. The weather was also much hotter than we expected and we were glad that as section hikers we could bail and not press on over those rugged mountains with 90 degree temps!

We learned our own limits and Cooper's limits on a section hike on difficult trail in high temperatures. Cooper had to wear his booties (made by dogbooties.com) the first several days to protect his pads from the onslaught of granite. He became very good about us putting them on! This amazed us that he some how knew and allowed us to take care of his feet for him. At the end of our trip, his pads were more rough than when we started and his declaws were a bit irritated, but he had no cuts on his feet. We have seen from some hikers in New England that dogs can lose a whole toe pad and we were glad to prevent that from occurring!!

We carried a waterbottle just for Cooper and needed to offer him water about as often as we ourselves would drink. It was really hot and just as we would stop on an ascent to drink a swig, he would also want a drink (and a mini nap!). Whatever water he did not finish in his bowl would be poured back into his bottle so that we'd have as much water as possible for him between stream crossings. When we'd get to a stream crossing we would tell him to drink (this is a command he knows) and often he wouldn't drink for long or at all, but he would drink from his bowl on the ascents. 

Before putting on the booties, we would coat his paws with Musher's Secret paw wax

Then we would wrap vet wrap around his declaws to protect them from getting rubbed by the boots. This also helped the boots stay on.

Thanks for reading about the first section of our Long Trail section hike! 
Most of the photos in this post were taken by Powder River. You can visit his professional photography page here: www.jeffsellenrick.com