Agile Trekker: VT Appalachian Trail - Sections 3-4 - Shelburne Trail (Inn at the Long Trail) to Cooper Lodge (Killington)

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
10/8/2017	9.6 miles	5 hours 30 minutes

Map: Appalachian Trail Guide, New Hampshire-Vermont, plus map that comes with it

Parking: Car 1: K1 Gondala, Killington. Car 2: Inn at the Long Trail, Route 4.

Directions: Take K1 Gondala up. Walk down "C" (Catwalk) trail to next chairlift. Turn left on unmarked trail. At the Cooper Lodge, head north on the AT to the Shelburne Pass trail. Turn right on the Shelburne Pass trail and arrive at Inn at the Long Trail.

Today was not a good day. We went to sleep early so should have gotten 10 hours of sleep, but I didn't sleep well at all. The AC at our hotel was noisy and would shut on and off. It woke me up a lot whenever it switched. The forecast was for the day was for rain. We dropped off one car across the street from the Inn at the Long Trail. We should have parked on the same side of the street as the Inn at the Long Trail. There is a small hiker parking lot just to the right of the Inn, which would have been perfect. The road has fast moving cars and limited visibility, so it would have prevented us from having to run across the street at the end of the hike.

We drove our second car to the Killington K1 gondola to start our hike. We were happy that we now knew how to get to the AT from the top of the gondola. We knew there was no reason to visit the Killington summit again, because we had another rainy day with no visibility. We bought our one way gondola ticket and were again surprised that there were other people going up. We knew there would be no views. The ticket salesperson still seemed surprised that we were going up, but we told her that yes we were expecting rain and no views. We got our tickets right before the 10am opening time for the gondola. We sat outside and waited. The gondola operators decided it was too windy to send people up. We went back inside and decided to wait. Other people got refunds for their tickets. After 45 minutes, they decided to let us up. We only saw 2 other people who decided to wait around to go up. The operators warned us that it was going to be crazy up there. At first I thought they just meant once we got off the gondola it would be windy, but then I realized they meant the gondola ride would be a bit crazy. Oops. So yeah, we were not so comfortable going up in the gondola. The high winds rocked it back and forth. We thought we might hit the center poles on the way up. Oh dear. Glen and I tried to distract each other from the stress we were both feeling. We tried looking the other way. Shutting our eyes. Ugh. We were very relieved to get to the top and oh so happy to get out of that gondola. Even before we took the gondola, Glen told me that he had hip pain. He's not supposed to have hip pain. I've been the one with hip pain for the last 1 1/2 years. But he was getting sharp pain twinges even before we started hiking. I found some Advil in my pack and gave it to him.

Once we got out, we headed directly to the AT. There was only one other couple that had gone up right before us. There were also a handful of people who had hiked up. We arrived at the AT, but I still couldn't relax. The wind was very, very strong and the trees were swaying a lot. I usually don't like to hike if wind speeds are higher than 20 mph, and I know they were much higher than that. The hiking itself was fine. But we saw a lot of blowdowns. A lot of the blowdowns were fresh. i.e. leaves still green on the trees. So, we knew a bunch of it had probably come down today. I usually find hiking very relaxing (even when its hard), but today I couldn't relax. Glen's hip was still hurting. I had muscle pain, but muscle pain is okay - much better than joint pain. My muscles were sore to the touch from yesterday's hike. It was painful, but not concerning.

We saw a handful of hikers on the trail. Most of them were backpackers. It was somewhat comforting to see that we weren't the only ones out there in this crazy wind. On the other hand, I wanted to tell them that they were crazy for being out there. But, I don't want to give my stress and fears to other people. Most of the others were hiking alone. How can you hike alone in this I wanted to ask them. I didn't even want to hike close to Glen in case a tree fell down on one of us. There were a lot of downed trees across the trail.

We passed a turnoff for the Pico shelter, but it wasn't close to the AT. I could have really used a mental/physical rest, but I didn't want to hike off trail to get it. I ended up just sitting down at the intersection, making sure I was hydrated and fueled. I know when I'm not feeling good, the first thing to check is one - am I drinking enough fluids, and two, am I eating enough food. We continued on after I had my mini-break. When we hit the turnoff for the Shelburne shelter, again, I wanted a break. We walked a little ways on the side trail to the shelter. When we didn't see it soon, we turned around. I sat down again and took another break to make sure I was hydrated and re-fueled.

Gradually near the end, the rain stopped and the wind calmed. Crossing Route 4 (the first time) was hard, due to the fast moving traffic. Glen was in a lot of pain. We had the option of a 1 mile road walk to our car, or continuing on the trail (for 2-3 miles). Glen wanted to walk the road. I wanted to hike (not wanting to do a road walk with all of the fast moving cars). We hiked. We reached the intersection of the AT and the Shelburne trail and stopped for another rest. At that point we started seeing a ton of day hikers. They were wearing jeans and short sleeve shirts and had no backpacks on. It was such a contrast to the earlier part of our day. They asked us how the view was. Ha! They were all taking a popular trail to the Deer Leap lookout, which we hadn't hiked. We got stopped multiple times by people asking us how much further it was, and if the view was good. We should have just said, it's not far and the view is great ;)

We still had to cross Route 4 again to our parking lot. This crossing was not as bad, but I still recommend parking on the same side as the Inn at the Long Trail in order to avoid having to run across the highway. This was a hard day of stressful hiking. During the hike, I felt bad that Glen was in pain and I had encouraged him to go further than he wanted to go. I did my best to distract him from his pain and talk about what an exciting dinner we would have. Glen and I do travel a lot for our hikes, and one of our mental rewards is that after the halfway point of our hike, we are allowed to talk about dinner. Sometimes hiking can be mentally challenging, even for adults. For us, talking about an exciting meal after our hike can be a rewarding motivator.

We ate at Roots. This is a vegetarian friendly restaurant. It's on the expensive side, but they knew what the words "vegan" and "vegetarian" meant, which is always a plus. Reservations are recommended on weekends - we ended up having to sit at the bar. The bartender who served us was a hoot! We both had really good meals. I wanted to try Vermont craft brews, so I had a Cone Head IPA. Both of us really liked it - we both thought it tasted a bit like grapefruit. For dessert, I had a cinnamon honey crème brule, certainly a treat after a mentally challenging day.