Long Trail, day 7

Friday, August 31, 2018

Start: Puffer Shelter

End: Duxbury Rd/Black Barn Farm

Mileage: 14.7 on LT

Elevation gain/loss: 1412’/4154′

The sun starting to color the sky woke me up around 5:30am. I took a picture and continued to drowse until 6:15am, when I got up for good.

It was a somewhat cold night and early morning, probably around 50 degrees; but it continued to warm up with the sun until it was in the high 60s.

Right out of the shelter, we climbed for a while to summit Bolton Mountain, with a beautiful view of Camel’s Hump.

We then descended a little way to Harrington’s Lookout and took a quick break and some pictures.

We then hiked past Buchanan Lodge and continued downward towards US 2. The terrain of the day undulating up and down frequently, but as a whole was downhill. Eventually, we came out to Bolton Notch Rd and road walked underneath I-89 and past trailhead parking (where we found some old trail magic, which included a Builder bar [Towanda ate it immediately] and $2 in quarters which we took for laundry).

We crossed the road and went over some railroad tracks, then crossed the Winooski river bridge, our halfway point in terms of this trip’s mileage.

We took some pictures and chatted with three bike riders from NYC. Then we continued onward, with the LT going from being a road walk to a walk through some poultry farm fields and then back to a road walk before arriving at the Duxbury Road trailhead.

We finished our hike at Duxbury Rd by 1:30pm. We called for a ride, and we were at Black Barn Farm by 2:15pm. Curt showed us around and got us settled. The place is very bare bones and was more basic than we’d expected – but it is donation based and MUCH more affordable than Waterbury (3 places of lodging which range from $150-300/night on weekends). We put out our bedrolls on some foldable mattresses on shelving and then went down to the glacier potholes in the creek out back to wash off our trail stink with Castile soap. While the water was briskly cold, the pothole was deep enough to very comfortably swim and the water was clean. Overall, it was a refreshing experience (and was quite nice once I adjusted my expectations from ‘hot shower’). After our swim, Dee offered to take us to town for dinner and laundry. It was a lovely evening!