Date: 2003-07-31
From: Cooper Lodge

To: near Kent Pond
Miles today: 10.9

Started off a little late because Carsten, as usual, was the last to wake up. As yesterday, Ned took Team Go-Heavy¢s tent on his back, and we set off down Mt. Killington toward Pico Peak. Around Pico Peak to the right goes the Sherburne Pass Trail, which was the AT until recently, when the AT was diverted to the left of Pico on a 4-mile detour. On this detour, we dropped the Long Trail, and we also modified our plans because Carsten¢s right Achilles just wasn¢t doing its job. We decided to settle down at our planned lunch spot, Kent Pond at Killington. Somewhere along the way we caught a glimpse of Mt. Pico behind us, and the peak of Mt. Killington off in the distance. That put our day¢s hike into a satisfying perspective.         Our hitch into Killington was a young hippie just on his way to Nork- at the lodge on top of Mt. Killington! (That put our hike into a wholly different perspective) We feasted at the deli. Carsten and Lyd shared a 22-oz Newcastle, while Ned fulfilled his earlier promise that the most frequent word in his order would be ¢and¢.        Finally, while Ned shopped for breakfast (and at his coercion), Lyd made some phone calls to replace her worn our water Platypus and a slipping pole. While Lyd was making great headway getting a new pole, Ned returned with a borrowed screwdriver and fixed the problem. Though REI was quite ready to send the prestigious thru-hikers a new pole, everyone was happy that their services weren¢t needed.         Our ride back to the trail came unsolicited in the form of the radiant young woman driving a rickety old Honda. According to her, she likes to pick up hikers because she hiked parts of the AT once and needed a lot of ¢that kind of help¢. She warned of a loose muffler; sure enough, the combined weight of the two teams caused that muffler to spend most of the ride on the ground.         Only a few footsteps along the trail carried us to Kent Pond. As we hiked around the pond, we quickly came upon a property with a huge lawn dominated by a boat landing and a fireplace filled with wood ready to burn. We decided that either the proprietor really liked hikers, or we were going to be shooed off very quickly. We spied a couple loading a pickup truck in the driveway and approached them across the expansive lawn. The conversation was looking to be short, and the shooing certain, when Lyd noticed the man¢s UVA t-shirt and correctly identified him as Dean Miksad of the E-school!        The place Miksad was staying ended up being the infamous Lodge that charges hikers $85 a night, and Miksad couldn¢t convince them otherwise. But we did spend some time sitting together in the grass, where Team Go-Lite gave Miksad some pointers for his own thru-hike project and let him know that they would soon be back for grad school.        Miksad was there for his second daughter¢s wedding, a wilderness- oriented affair which was supposed to process in canoes from the end of the lake we had seen earlier to the boat landing at the Lodge. The fire has been prepared for a marshmallow roast that evening, to which the Dean invited us, but which passed up for the chance to go to bed early. We didn¢t leave the Lodge, however, until we had met another family of guests this one from Boulder, CO, who treated us to three bottles of Long Trail Beer. Appropriately, Team Go-Heavy retained its bottle for a keepsake.        We finally settled down not far from the Lodge, at which point a reexamination of the map showed Lyd had miscalculated the remaining distance to Hanover by 10 miles- not in our favor! Because of this, and the free food, at the Killington deli, we met two south-bounders, a couple from NC by the names of Rooster and Breeze. During our feast, Breeze approached us with a cardboard bow full of unneeded food supplies, from which we took some green tea and some noodles with homemade, dried tomato sauce, some of which found its way into tonight¢s dinner.        In addition, some hikers who were finishing up this morning left us with a few odds and ends. We now have enough to eat, but the matching of ingredients has gotten more creative. Our trip plan has been thrown into sudden flux. In addition, Ned is a little sore, doubtless because he exchanged his poles for the Author¢s tent. The Author, meanwhile, is lying in that tent, listening to the creaking of his Achilles tendons, and preparing for some much-needed rest.                        Carsten (Team Go-Heavy)