Saturday, August 25, 2018
Start: Journey’s End Camp
End: Jay’s Camp
Mileage: 11.8 LT, 2.0 RT bushwhack to Big Jay (+0.2 to shelter)
Elevation gain/loss: ~4,916’/~4,000′, including bushwhack
Towanda (AT NOBO ’15) and I started out from Journey’s End Camp around 7am. We traveled up the side trail to the Canadian border, took pictures, and started hiking south by 7:30am.
We hiked over Carleton Mountain and down to VT 105, where we saw a US Border Patrol guy on the trail right before the road. He asked us a number of questions, but didn’t seem at all used to long-distance hikers. He couldn’t tell us anything about water sources coming up. He kinda creeped us out.
We then crossed the road and headed up Burnt Mountain. We descended to Shooting Star shelter, where we took our first break of the day, though they didn’t have any water available. From there, we climbed up to Doll Peak, with the elevation gain nearly doing us in. We then descended to Laura Woodward shelter, where we refilled on water and had a nice long lunch break. We then did the long ascent up to Jay Mountain, stopping to bushwhack over to Big Jay for one of my New England 100 Highest.
At the summit, Towanda struck up a conversation with a local VT couple. After chatting for a bit, they offered us a beer to celebrate our summit of Jay. From Jay, we descended down to Jay Camp.
There are 4 other people here, all of them tenting. We’ve already seen mice, so we’ll see how it goes tonight. But I’m also super tired, so I’ll sleep like a rock.
