Miles: 12; Elevation gained: 2,800 ft

We tried hitchhiking in front of the motel for about 15 mins and I got paranoid that we’d have a repeat of the previous night which was not gonna fly as we were playing catch up and needed to get some miles and climbing in. So I paid the owner $20 for the 8 minute drive to the trailhead. One might argue that if you’re gonna display a Green Mountain Club Business Member decal on your front door, you might be satisfied with our $120 room rate and comp us that ride, but I digress. If we had had more time to book ahead, we might have tried Nye’s Green Valley Farm in Jeffersonville, which includes breakfast, transportation, and laundry(!) for LT hikers. I went to junior High school at Lamoille Union with a Nye, but I digress again…

Our starting point, at Rt 15 alongside the Lamoille (forget your French – it’s “Lamoyl,” but for that matter the state itself and its capital are French in name but not pronunciation so no need to quibble here) River is at an elevation of 500 feet, which is the next to lowest point on the LT, second only to the Winooski River and Route 2, between Camel’s Hump and Bolton Mtn, so we knew we had some climbing to do. The trail cuts through a field and over a knoll to the river itself, which you cross via a hiker-dedicated suspension bridge similar to the one over the Winooski but not nearly as long. After crossing the Hogback Road (great cycling route on the Stowe to Stowe loop thru the Notch), we had a fairly sharp climb up to Prospect Rock. The trail gets rerouted often thru here due to peregrine nesting on the cliffs, but we were lucky to find Prospect Rock open, which has a lovely Vermont-y view of the river valley we climbed out of. Another gradual 650 feet up got us to Roundtop Shelter at about 10:30 AM.

A school group from the Vermont Academy in Saxton’s River was just heading out – a bunch of spunky-funny kids and their teachers. They had trail magic – cookies, Skittles, etc – always appreciated. Asked if we had trail names, and we said nope – despite 225 miles and meeting lots of hikers, we’d not been blessed with mountain monikers. One of the kids said to me: “I’m getting Ed vibes from you,” to which Cliff helpfully retorted “all 50-somethings in baseball caps look like Ed.” Anyway, I thought “Ed” alone was not a trail name but rather a guy named Ed’s name, but I thought maybe “Ed Vibes,” or “Eddvibes” might be good, if still a bit humbling. They asked Cliff, and he said we had considered “Bite Me.” I know that goes against the positivity grain of the trail ethos, but let’s face it there are a lot of “bite me” moments on the trail (weather, lack of water, another friggin’ hill, a blowdown, no shelter space, crotch rot…) and anyway it might be funny (if not endlessly so) to answer “what’s your trail name” with “Bite Me.” And it fits a teen better than me, even if I might in fact want to say it at times and even if my wife says whaddya mean you’re the permanent teen. I can’t say we have trail names now, but it was a good trail moment, especially as this stretch of the LT is almost devoid of hikers – I mean, there is no one on these stretches that don’t contain popular day hikes.

After a bit of a descent and some logging road surfing, we hit Laraway Mtn, a decent climb of about 1,500 feet. Near the top, the trail hugs the base of really cool cliffs before emerging onto Laraway Lookout, one of the better vistas we had the whole week and a great payoff for the climb on a trail that sometimes makes you suffer and sweat only to reach a wooded summit with no view at all. I’l try to attach a video below that hopefully gives some idea as to scope.

We arrived at Corliss Camp at about 6:30, completing a 10+ hour day with decent elevation. A “camp” on the LT, we learned, means a cabin with 4 walls as opposed to a three sided shelter which is the prevalent lodging for the first 2/3 of the trail. There were only 4 people overnighting, and we took the big loft over the cabin proper. These structures tend to sport a healthy mouse population, but the pluses are they’re a bit warmer than the shelters, and you can bring your food inside as opposed to hanging it in the woods to keep it away from Smokey.