Date: 2022-07-13
From: Lost Pond Shelter mile 1670

To: Clarendon Shelter Mile 1688.6
Miles today: 18.6
Weather: moderate rain

For whatever reason I ended up not sleeping well last night, waking up about every hour to flip over to the other side. It also appears that I now have a slow leak in the sleeping pad as I had to blow it back up in the middle of the night. Fortunately for me, only my hip was on the ground after most of a night sleeping on it. Most of my clothes are only a little bit damp from last night, but they certainly didn¢t dry any more overnight. Pilgrim and Crush still have very wet clothes.We continued hiking in the morning in the Big Branch wilderness area and we walked along the Big Branch and Homer Stone Brook for much of the first part of the day. We were serenaded with the sound of water overnight and for the first couple of hours today. This makes for a very pleasant walk in the woods.We came up to Little Rock Pond, which is a very nice pond with swimming opportunities and a campsite with caretaker nearby. Although it looks very inviting to go for a swim¢¦ I was still catching up to Pilgrim and Orchid and decided against the swim. However I was on the lookout for moose as it seems like it has the potential to be a moose habitat. From a mileage standpoint staying here didn¢t really fit in the plans, but after looking at it, I wish we had known how nice the pond was ahead of time and maybe tried to make that work. That¢s one of those things where there¢s very nice places that are close together and we feel like it¢s too short of a day to do both. Or they¢re far enough apart that it would make for way too long a day or a very odd normal then short to make them happen.After climbing out of Little Rock Pond we had large sections of pine forests. Not all of them are the ¢Alpine area¢ at the top of the mountain. Most of those that weren¢t tended to be the dense ones with no understory plants.After climbing up one of the peaks, we got to the White Rocks overlook, and headed down the long steep .2 mile trail to the overlook. We were rewarded with great views of the valley all the way out to Rutland Vermont, Where we will be staying tomorrow night. What goes up must come down and we descended down to Bully Brook and had a break for lunch and a foot soak. After lunch we had a 1000 foot climb followed by a long decent into Clarendon Gorge. The gorge is crossed by a very bouncy suspension bridge. We saw Scavenger Princess and 3DM playing in the water but at point we were ready to be done for the day and so we pressed on. It was one more short but very steep climb to get up to the shelter and it definitely was a bit of a struggle at the end of the day. Fortunately there was a stream at the shelter that was nice and cold. We had a long foot soak before dinner to cool off and recover our feet. Original plan was work on the schedule for next week heading into the whites in New Hampshire, but we ended up chatting several long trail thru hiker¢s who had built a fire. By the time we finished eating and getting ready for bed it was almost time to go to sleep. We¢re waking up earlier tomorrow to get a head start on the Killington Peak climb and to try to beat any thunderstorms. We¢re also trying to make sure we don¢t miss the last bus down into Rutland.Certainly was not one of our longest or hottest days, but it did have a good amount of elevation change.  It¢s the tail end of a push into Rutland and my tail was definitely dragging as I got into camp last night.  I think both Orchid and Pilgrim echo my sentiments.Steps 38300Weather Forecast: 80/61 and mostly sunny