Miles: 12; Elevation gained: 2,000 ft

Overcast the entire day but somehow did not rain. “Just” 12 miles but we were not on the trail till 11:00, so had to push to darkness again anyway. The first task was to summit Mt Abraham, one of 3 peaks on the LT that goes above tree line and sports alpine vegetation (and the only 4,000+ footer that is undeveloped – ie., no ski area). It also has 360 deg views, not that this played into the hike as all we saw were clouds and floating vapor. Coming off the summit, a sobo hiker told us there was a plane crash site a bit down the trail. Sure enough – you can see the pics below. I looked it up – it was flown by a guy trying to get to Newburgh, NY from somewhere in VT thru thick clouds in 1973, and… oops, but he apparently survived.

Pity the weather wasn’t better – we hiked across the tops of several chairlifts at Sugarbush and Mad River Glen (“ski it if you can” is the slogan – and no boards!). There were a lot of rock ledges that would have sported nice views of the valley but we couldn’t see dingus.

There is a warming hut at the top of the single chair at MRG that serves as an unofficial shelter called Stark’s Nest, which is very reasonable of the resort and very much in the spirit of the skier-owned MRG. We would have happily stayed there except that we had a reservation at the Hyde Away Inn on Route 17 about 4 miles from App Gap.

We had started the day in wet boots, which meant 2 consecutive days walking in that deplorable condition. About 2 miles from the end of the hike Cliff started complaining of soreness – not muscular but something going on with the soles of his feet. Exacerbating his condition was the descent into App Gap – particularly gnarly with ladders and iron rungs made more treacherous by water, water every-friggin-where. When we finally emerged on the road, my poor boy was in a lot of pain, suffering from a condition I’ll cover in the next post and which, as it turned out, was Cliff’s version of my ankle sprain in terms of denting the progress of our quest. We thumbed a ride to the Inn – first vehicle we saw – super nice guy with a pickup towing a fishing boat who owns The Smokehouse- a BBQ bar in Waitsfield. Cliff could barely walk in his Crocs from our room to the restaurant, but I’m happy to report no injury to his appetite. We destroyed that menu, thru hiker style.