Miles: 16;  Elevation gained: 4,100

Health regained, your heroes banged out a long one, finally, again, and over the biggest elevation change on the LT – by the time you get down to Route 2, I-89, and the Winooski River, you’ve gone from the 4K summit of the Hump to just about 300 ft above sea level. Then you are smacked in the face by the LT guarantee: what goes down, must go up! So up and over Bolton Mtn and a steep, rooty descent down to the beautifully situated Puffer.  There’s your executive summary…

Out of the damp tent and on to soggy, rotting platform at 6:00. Hiking at 7:30 – early for us! We stopped about a half mile from the road to filter water and we each got 3 liters in the the pack. A lot of weight but its gets lighter as it goes from plastic to organic bladder and out the pores (like any endurance activity, taking in water doesn’t translate to a lot of pee stops. If it does, quit doggin’ it Holmes!). We passed the shelter-busting UVM crew on the road – they were done and waiting for transport.

Here the LT follows Duxbury Road west for a bit before ducking into woods and fields along the river bank. Back in ‘15 we section hiked this bit with the whole family (in hindsight i could have picked an easier slice to chew on, but oh well…) and the trail was still in the process of relocation, so this was pretty new terrain and was the only spot we’d come across that traversed working farms – in this case turkeys, some clearly destined for the November axe and Grandma’s cranberry preserves. Didn’t see any potatoes growing next door. The trail gets back on the road a few hundred yards from the $1.5mln hikers’ bridge – a very fine example of suspension construction. The GMC had been looking for a suitable crossing at this spot for 100 years, as previously it was necessary to go on the road for 3 miles and then up a power line on the other side.

We crossed thru the tunnel under the interstate and went up Bolton Notch Road until the trail dipped back in the woods and began a very long ascent towards Bolton. That said, there was very little mud and the ground surface was largely free of roots and rocks, so it was about the easiest 3,700 ft up we could have hoped for.  After passing over little Bolton, the trail dips back down before climbing a steep stream bed with moss covered cliffs towering up the left side. We both ran out of water here, and Cliff took the unfiltered plunge and drank directly from a spring. You are advised to always filter – every shelter has signs warning that the water is untested. I think, though, if you are at a high enough elevation and you know there are no population points or beavers above you, it’s a 99% bet you are ok. I don’t remember filtering so obsessively as a kid – we put iodine tablets in water that was not moving. Still, if i still had a lot of days on the trail, I’d filter every time. Hard to imagine anything less pleasant than getting the violent runs deep in the woods. I had Giardia (when you gotta go, you gotta, like GO!!!) in Russia, and the memory is more than enough make me filter in almost all cases.

I went ahead of Cliff on the last ascent to make sure we had spots at the shelter. We did, thank God, as it’s perched above the Nebraska Valley with an are-you-ready-for—me view of Mansfield to the left. There were three women there, 1 from Ohio and 2 from VT, who graciously slid over, and one guy whose trail name escapes but who was an encyclopedia of New England hiker info as well as various techniques and recipes. Cliff took one for “”mountain porridge,” which involves Muscle Milk, granola, dried fruit, and other goodies, that he continues to enjoy w/in the confines of 4 walls and a roof.

We had agreed a few days back, when Cliff’s feet were still ripped up, that we would make it up and over Mansfield and get picked up by Marcia in Smuggler’s Notch to end our quest. So it was our last night on the trail, which means, yes happy camp followers, you have just read the penultimate LT2018 entry. Say it ain’t so… 😦