Date: 2017-05-17
From: Catamount Motel, Bennington, VT

To: Little Rock Pond Shelter
Miles today: 19.8
Weather: clear sky

After having dinner at Ramunto's Pizza, I had a good night's sleep at the Catamount Motel in Bennington, VT. It was lights out by 10 o'clock and up at 5:15 am, packed and ready to go at 6:30. Alan drove over to the Enterprise Rent-a-Car office with me and I dropped off my vehicle. Then Alan drove me from Bennington to the trailhead in Manchester. During the ride he reminded me that he remembered a General O'Neill had stayed at the Catamount a few years ago. With a little research, I was able to narrow down a list of possible candidates to one person and via email I was able to confirm that it was Brigadier General (retired) Mark O'Neill who had through hiked in 2014. His trail name was Opus, like the penguin character in the comic strip Bloom County.After triple checking my gear, I was on the trail by 7:30. At 8:15 I reached the Bromley shelter and stopped in for a break where I removed the lower part of my hiking pants to convert to shorts. I also added, for the first time, ankle gaiters I got from the Mountain Goat Outfitter in Manchester when I got off the trail last week. Lastly, I applied insect repellent. I should also note here that yesterday, before leaving Chazy, I treated my hiking clothes with the Permethrin treatment I picked up at the Sam's Outdoor Outfitters in Brattleboro last week. Hopefully this will mitigate the risk of disease from ticks or mosquitoes or other insects.I continued to climb and reached the summit of Bromley around 9:30. I spent some time there taking pictures of the surrounding terrain and the ski slopes. I can't remember if I have skied here, but if so, it was a long time ago. I got underway again around 10 o'clock.I climbed down the north side of Bromley Mountain and onto the Ridgeline running north into the Peru Peak Wilderness Area. I noticed that the trail smelled of pine again, but different from what I had noted in Massachusetts. Here there was an abundance of short evergreens with short green leafs - more like spruce or hemlock than the longer leaf pine I had seen in Massachusetts. None-the-less, there were a number of branches from these evergreens broken and arrayed on the trail and the pine needles are mixed in with years of fallen oak leaves to help build up a soil on the trail. This seems to have made the trail relatively soft, which is not a bad thing. The trail was also still wet from last week's rain, but not nearly as flooded as it had been. Also on this part of the trail I noted that maintainers had done a good job of diverting downward run off from the mainline of the trail, and that seems to have erosion somewhat under control.Around noon I arrived at the top of Styles Peak where there is a beautiful view to the east and some open rocks from which to see it. I took a break and sat on these for while. I drank some water and ate a Clif bar for lunch. I still felt relatively full from yesterday's dinner and a week's worth of eating like a hiker but not hiking.At about 12:30 I got back on the trail and continued North. Between 2 and 2:30 I stopped to get some water and then shortly afterwards arrived at the Peru Peak shelter. I had some beef jerky for a snack and signed the shelter's register logbook. I noticed that Doctor John had been here this morning at 8:30 and Foxtrot, presumably of the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot trio, had stopped here for lunch probably 2 hours earlier. I consumed the remainder of my pint bottle of water and filled it at the nearby stream using aquamira to treat it as I had done with my liter bottle earlier.Shortly after leaving the Peru Peak shelter I came to a very pretty pond. I could see from my map that this is actually called Griffith Lake. There is also indication on the map that there may have been a Griffith shelter here at one time. There is still a tenting area about 100 yards from the lakeshore and signs at the lake shore prohibiting tenting there. (Pictures).About 4:30 p.m. I came to the Lost pond shelter and I stopped only long enough to sign the book and top off my water at nearby stream before continuing to hike the 2.9 miles remaining to the Big Branch shelter.That was my destination for the day. (I had some words in here about being stiff and sore and the deconditioning from a week of relaxation and little exercise having a bigger impact than I anticipated, but I took them out to leave just this. No whining!) I greatly enjoyed being outdoors, especially on a nice sunny day and I enjoyed seeing some terrific views from positions of relative wilderness.I actually got to the roaring branch shelter about 5:30 p.m. For a half an hour I considered staying there but I noticed a lot of downed trees on the hillside near the shelter and big root balls with the trees overturned. And directly above the shelter was a large tree leaning down the hill directly over the shelter. I assessed the construction of the shelter. It was basically sided with two by fours above the foundation. It would not stand up to a tree landing on it. And given all the rain recently and the loosening of the soil on the hillside, I decided not to stay here. The fact that there was no phone signal here was additional motivation to try to climb to another location where I could at least get a message out letting loved ones know that I might not be reachable later tonight. So I treated the water I had from the Big Branch River just before arriving at the shelter, and I took some Motrin to quiet my complaining feet. And I moved on.Just as I was getting underway, two hikers approached from behind, going the same way as I was. They seemed tired and short on words, but I learned that they were though hikers headed for the next shelter. I fell in behind them and tried to "draft" on their energy. We got to the Little Rock Pond shelter about 6:45 pm. As did the others, I washed in the pond briefly, dried off, reapplied insect repellent, and changed into dry clothes. Then I cooked a meal of potato with pepperoni, Vienna sausage, and bouillon. During dinner, I learned that the other two hikers were Eric (Air Hockey) and Evan (Highlighter). The former was so named for what he had done to some mice with a puck. The latter, because all his gear is fluorescent green. They had hiked 30 miles today. They hope to finish sometime in June. There were also a couple of short distance hikers (out for the week) at the shelter. They were pretty quiet and kept to themselves. I then got ready for bed. Long day. Sore feet. Tired. It doesn't get any better than this!