Date: 2017-07-27
From: Manchester

To: Story Spring lean to
Miles today: 21.1
Weather: overcast clouds

"Vermud" is the AT hikers' nickname for Vermont, we were told by nobos again and again and again. And again. And again and again. Mostly we've been ignoring nobos' prognostications about the trail since their dire warnings have usually proved to be dramatically over-hyped, particularly when set against our experiences in Maine and New Hampshire.But for the final three or four miles into Story Spring lean to, it seemed that maybe there was some veracity to their claims. There was deep mud that required some low-level quagmire gymnastics to bypass.One nobo I'd spoken to earlier had talked with genuine outrage about how with one misstep "the mud came over the top of my shoe". It was hard to take seriously -- particularly when one of those he was telling this to was Littlefoot, who'd gone up to her waist in a bog in Maine -- but based on this his complaint might have had some basis of truth.The main difficulty of the mud was that it destroyed the ability to set a walking rhythm, a bit like the way post holing does on snow. But unlike on snow, where the use of snowshoes or crampons can allow normal rhythms to return, they was no such panacea available to us.We'd been told that the last 50 miles of Vermont had mud like this, which was not a cheerful prospect.*The mud might also have been made a little worse by the light drizzle that set in sometime around lunchtime. This had been well forecast and was only supposed to last one day, which helped explain why I was the only person who left the Green Mountain Lodge that morning, with all the others opting for a zero.I was hiking by 8am and was quickly passed by the four sobos -- three young women with long blonde hair and classic Nordic looks, together with a bearded guy from Texas -- I'd met in Killington a few days before, who'd shocked me by saying they'd started on June 20. Two of the women were wearing sandals, so I'd started referring to them as the Scandinavian Sandal Sisters but I learned later they had a far better tramily name: Three Goldilocks and the Bear.I was moving a little slowly, with my pulled back muscle better but still not back to 100 per cent, and I'd somehow also managed to acquire a sore left hip and some kind of a strain in my right foot. This is not a kind trail to old bodies.All these ailments improved through the day, although part of that was my decision to return to using Vitamin I. It also helped that the first 10 miles were fast, easy and mostly flat, with just the occasional hint of mud. This took me to Stratton Pond Shelter, another superior GMC lean to which was staffed and featured a $5 fee.This was apparently one of the first shelters nobos encountered that charged money, which was the cause of some outrage among a few of those we met. They talked of stealth camping options to avoid paying this paltry sum, probably as a matter of pride and/or principle.The rain had mostly stopped by now, although that was of fairly technical benefit since every time the wind blew through the trees, I'd get just as wet from the water dropping from the leaves.They was a low-level short cut that avoided the 1500ft ascent of Stratton Mountain, which seemed like an entirely pointless exercise with the mountain socked in with cloud.But staying on the AT was rewarded, not with any views on the top but from finally finding other kiwis on the trail. Of heard of a group of nobo kiwis on trail and had been asking random hikers where they were from. That tactic finally paid off when I met Bear Bag and then Cropduster.They were traveling in a 10-person tramily and clearly we're enjoying themselves. It was nice to be able to talk about familiar topics with someone who understood.I was still mulling over this when I saw what looked like a group of car campers at a campsite just before a road. It was indeed Squeaky, Pouffey, Poppins, Rare etc.As expected they'd opted for a hotel when I'd last seen them but, thanks to my unplanned zero yesterday, they'd managed to get ahead of me again.They invited me to camp with them but I said I wanted to do a few more miles, even though the next shelter had had a series of bear encounters on recent days. I did take up Squeaky's offer of grabbing a cold beer from the cooler in the back of his truck on the way through though. Thanks, Squeaky!So I pushed on, and into the mud that seemingly justified the nobos' reports of "Vermud".The shelter was really busy -- we're firmly in the midst of a big nobo bubble, although we keep getting reports of an even bigger one making its way through New York state -- but I found a campsite nearby and was glad that newly installed bear boxes meant my food was safe. Hopefully I would be too!Life is good.AT fact of the day: The top of Stratton Mountain was clearly a place for visionaries. It was from the top of this peak that the idea for The Long Trail, running the length of Vermont, was conceived. That in turn led directly to the bolder plan for the AT, running all the way down to Georgia. It was still a place for visionaries when I was there -- you needed a sense of vision to imagine the view, since the cloud meant I could barely see to the top of the fire tower.* Spoiler alert, since I'm writing this a couple of days later: these few miles proved to be the worst we encountered, and the next two days of the hike featured mostly dry fast trail, but all the time I was thinking that we must be about to encounter something terrible. It never happened. The best sobo response came in a hut register entry from Spiffy and Littlefoot in one of the last lean tos: "Vermont is muddy, but it's never been so muddy that you fear crossing into another dimension ruled by bog people. Thanks for that, southern Maine."