Miles: 17; Elevation gained: 4,000 ft

Taxi delivered us back to trail head by 7:00. I immediately slipped on a wet wood stairway over a fence and mashed up my elbow and forearm. I have the pic below.  Yes its gross, but hey – this is a blog about a hike and all that goes with it, so please just be glad i am not including blisters, bug bites and rashes in very inconvenient places!

The day started up Clarendon Gorge, a primeval jumble of moss-covered, dripping boulders, and after a a bunch of ups and downs we got to Clarendon Shelter at the foot of Beacon Hill. Privy stop – not primeval but medieval. After the steep Beacon, the 5 miles to Governor Clement Shelter was pretty mellow, but already on the approach to Killington, the sizable hunk of meat in our day’s trekking sandwich. 

(Water is life, but also the enemy: Just a brief interjection here on our biggest challenge. It’s not just the direct rain, but the constant humidity we’ve been having. Imagine if you’re out on a hot humid day, doing something active. So you get all sweaty and kind of grimy, but you go home to the A/C, shower, put on dry clothes, and throw the day’s clothes in the laundry. Now imagine you don’t go home and you stay outside, and that all your clothing is also outside in that humid air, so that even though you change, you are damp (and remember you didn’t shower).  You go to sleep like this in sleeping bag that is somehow also damp even though it’s been in a stuff sack deep in your pack. The next morning you put your feet in wet or at least moist boots and start hiking. If it sounds like I am complaining, ok, but I am just trying to describe a constant condition for us thus far. Wet feet soften up and create fertile soil for blisters, and those will stop your hike if they get bad enough.)

Killington was a proper climb, and doing it in the middle of 17 miles taught us this: we can do the miles, and we can do the elevation, but putting them together is probably not a super idea. I was getting light headed and nauseous at the summit, which we reached at 5:00, and we still had a 5 mile descent. But we did it, and made it to the Inn at Long Trail at 8:00 as it was getting dark. We paid the price however, and Thursday has become a zero day. Cliff has blisters on the balls of his feet, and those aren’t to be trifled with. We were right on our 28 day pace, but now a day off. However we’ve shown ourselves we can knock off big mileage worthy of thru hikers, so I am pretty confident that if we dry out and patch up adequately, we can get back on schedule.