VT Appalachian Trail - Section 9 - VT 9 to Beaver Pond

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
05/27/2018	8.5 miles

Map: New Hampshire-Vermont Appalachian Trail Guide
Parking: Parked car at VT Route 9, and got a shuttle to Massachusetts Ave.
Directions: Hike northbound

I didn't sleep well at night. I've heard from other backpackers that it can take a while to get used to sleeping outdoors. The crickets were soooo loud. When I was a kid I used to sleep with the windows open and would listen to the crickets. Now, we always sleep with the windows closed and I have a noise machine going to help me sleep better. I also was too hot, then got sweaty and was chilled. We got lucky and there were no thunderstorms at night. We did get a ton of wind though. I woke up in the middle of the night to the rain fly flapping, and had to go outside & re-stake it. We didn't have much in the way of tree protection where we were, so the wind was just whipping our tent sideways. I guess this is a good way to learn about site selection :)

We woke up at 5:30 am. Then tried to sleep more. We had a cold rainy day today. It was really hard to get myself out of my sleeping bag. I adore my sleeping bag. It took me a long time to get moving. We heard some hikers pass by our tent before we got up. We had to figure out how to pack up our wet tent for the first time. It's a good thing to learn how to deal with backpacking in the rain - definitely a skill we need if we are to hike longer sections. We've done plenty of hiking in the rain, but backpacking just adds additional challenges that we needed to figure out. However, we were stoked that we were sleeping in a hotel tonight. That would give us a chance to dry everything out.

So, Glen typically hangs the bear bag for us. He throws better than me, so he does it. He is much taller than me, so that makes it much harder for me to pull the bear bag down. I tried for a while and just couldn't do it. I could reach the stick, but not undo the rope from the stick (I couldn't get the rope above the stick slack enough). I tried breaking the stick, but it didn't break near the knot. Ugh. I had to wait for Glen to bring it down for me. Ugh again. Glen had no problem getting the rope slack, but couldn't release the knot on the stick - the rope had dug deep into the stick. In the end he had to cut the rope to get the bag down. Ugh again. Luckily we carry two ropes. And luckily we didn't hang the knife in the bear bag! I think in the future, I need to hang the bear bag, or at least attach the rope around the stick, to make sure its something I can un-do. I think someone should invent a contraption to replace the stick. Some synthetic stick with a quick release mechanism. We worked on trying to figure out some mechanism as we hiked down the trail.

We saw plenty of moose poop on the trail today! No moose sightings though. We hiked on to the Congdon shelter, where we took a lunch break. We talked to a couple of hikers there - Boom box & Buckle. We continued on to Route 9 where there was a steep descent down rocks. I think I fall way less in Vermont, but I did manage to fall in this section. I descended so slowly. I wanted to make sure I didn't injure myself. Oh yeah - we both forgot to bring hiking poles! We normally keep them in one of our cars - but we took our other car up to Vermont & forgot to transfer them. Bummer!

We went to the Manchester View Hotel. We tracked twigs and dirt into the hotel room. I tried cleaning up before we checked out the next day. We also needed to dry out our tent - so did our best to do that on our porch. It was a nice hotel, quiet and reasonably priced. The hotel has fabulous mountain views as well (better views than we saw on our hike!).

Foggy beaver pond

Another beaver pond

A blurry photo of a red eft - which is pretty humorous, since they move really slowly and should be easy to get in focus

There's supposed to be a good view here, but it was too foggy & cloudy so we skipped it. Only 557 miles to Maine! Well....we still need to do NC, TN, and VA as well!

Vermont has so many varieties of ferns! Glen loves ferns & thinks of Vermont whenever he sees them.