VT Appalachian Trail - Section 2-3 - Pomfret Rd to Green Gate (Lookout) Road

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
05/30/2018	11 miles

Map: New Hampshire-Vermont Appalachian Trail Guide
Parking: Park first car at Pomfret Road, park second car at Green Gate Road
Directions: Take side trail from Green Gate Road to AT - about 1/2 mile. Hike northbound on the AT

Last night we stayed at the Manchester View Hotel for a second time. I recommend it - it's quiet, and we had a mountain view from our balcony. We woke up early and used our Jetboil on the balcony to cook our oatmeal. So convenient!

We decided to skip the 15 mile section that we were going to do as our third day backpacking. We'll come back to Vermont and to that as another trip - so we won't finish hiking the Vermont section of the AT this week. Instead we jumped ahead further north to fill in another section we still needed to do in Vermont.

We drove north to pick up a rental car in White River Junction. We didn't have a shuttle today, so we rented a second car for 3 days. We drove to Pomfret Road to drop off our car at our hike's end point. Pomfret Road is such a nice drive - classic New England scenery. We drove our second car to Green Gate Road - a dirt road but in good condition. On the way there, Glen stopped at a small general store and picked up bug spray with Deet. Repel isn't cutting it.

There is a short steep side trail from Greet Gate Road to the AT. If you head the other direction on the AT, you can visit the Lookout, which was the highlight of our Vermont trip last year. Once we got on the AT, hiking felt pretty easy. We were back to wearing daypacks instead of our heavier backpacks. I also noticed that I'm tripping less in Vermont due to the easier terrain - woohoo!

We saw a sign for a farm stand that sells food & is hiker friendly, but we decided to skip it. After that, we headed up Dana Hill. It looked so small and inconspicuous on the map, but it's 750' elevation gain kicked my butt. We had a second climb of around 500' and then a third climb of 250' - all were tough for us. Today was warm and sunny and we had way fewer bugs. It's our first day hike on this trip - so unfortunately Glen experienced much worse conditions on our backpacks. Too bad it wasn't reversed! We had much less mud today - probably related to fewer bugs. And we got to hike through some meadows - something I enjoy. Glen was really happy to be back day hiking instead of backpacking.

Tonight we are in Woodstock, VT and went to Angkar Wat for dinner. Food was good and they were vegan friendly. We didn't look up the exact name of our hotel ahead of time, and Glen guessed at which hotel we were at....not remembering the name exactly. We pulled into the very fancy Woodstock Inn. Glen gave me a look. Really? Ha! No, we weren't staying there. We stayed at the Woodstock Sleep Motel, a budget motel just outside of town. It didn't look like much from the outside, but the rooms were decent and updated on the inside.

Look at that great terrain!