Date: 2017-05-20
From: Killington Motel

To: Winturri Shelter
Miles today: 17.1
Weather: overcast clouds

I sorta slept in at the Killington motel until almost 6:30 a.m. I then took almost 45 minutes getting my stuff together and then went to the motel office to get some breakfast. And I turned in my key! Haha. During breakfast I chatted with a couple of gentlemen in their 60s who were brothers from somewhere in Florida just out on retirement vacation with their wives who were evidently still in their rooms. The motel owner Steve made me a complimentary ham and cheese English muffin. I also got to have several cups of his home roasted coffee. This is his hobby and he makes about 1500 pounds of coffee a year. Evidently he imports it by the truck load. I think I had both Honduran and Ethiopian coffee. It was good. After breakfast I left the motel and walked the roughly 1 mile back down Route 4 and Thundering Brook Road past the Mountain Meadows Lodge to the trailhead. All together it was about 8:30 a.m. when I finally got on the trail again northbound.About 9:30 I got to thundering Falls and took a short video clip there. Really pretty.Shortly before ten o'clock but still just north of Thundering Falls I ran into what appeared to be a family Trail maintenance activity. There was a thin bearded gentleman about 6 feet tall named Dick Andrews who is the president of the local troll maintenance club. Dick's trail name is pond bagger because he likes to bag ponds rather than Peaks. Haha. With him was Stephanie, a younger woman wearing a Park Service hat and t-shirt who is in fact part of the park service. And a young boy named Jasper with a blue hat. I thanked them for taking care of the trail and chatted with them for a moment and took a picture together with them on my camera and on Stephanie's.As I hiked I noted that today the trail and the forest in general was relatively dry. The leaves made a rustling crunching sound as I disturbed them with my feet while walking. There was also a new fragrance. I could still smell the faint scent of thyme in some places but dominating that were several mixed aromas. As I scanned for a source I could see an occasional Trillium plant, lots of fun bowling fern, some small wildflowers and so on, but nothing that was the obvious source of any of these scents. I also occasionally noticed that some of the bushes seemed to be starting to sprout leaves and that most of the trees were not green so I think this combination of smells was probably coming from all of the things that I just mentioned and just wasn't noticeable on the more humid days of this past week.Studying my map I learned that the trailhead climbed a terrain feature known as the round pinnacle. Then it stayed on relatively high ground about 2400 feet and went up Quimby Mountain. Its then descended the eastern side of that mountain through a Valley and toward Quimby Brooke and Notown Vermont. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. Not a cloud in the blue sky and while my thermometer read over 80 degrees, in the breezy shade of the trail it felt more like 70.At about noon I arrived at the Stony Brook shelter and I stopped for a short break to change out of hiking pants and into a pair of running shorts. Much cooler layer of attire. I was back on the trail about 1230 about 6 miles in as I had anticipated with an 8 o'clock start and about 1500 feet of climbing up and 800 down - this was right about on pace. But at that point I still had 10 miles to go for the day to make it to the Winturri shelter with not a whole lot of alternative options in between. I consulted my gut hook app to look at the elevation profile for the afternoon and found it it was another one of those 5 bump days. So just to mentally keep track of what was coming by referring to each of these bumps as a day of the week, I noted that Monday was a 800 foot climb, Tuesday was a 400 foot climb, Wednesday was a 600 foot climb, Thursday 200, and Friday 300. Of course each of these was followed by a descent. I was starting off at a 1400 foot elevation at some Road. And each subsequent descent would return me to roughly 2000 feet.This would take me over Bull Hill and to 2 separate lookouts above Lakota pond. The first of these, on top of Wednesday, would offer only a narrow view through the trees, and the second, on top of Thursday, featured a private cabin with a ladder to a lookout on top of the building, offering a complete panoramic view. I took several pictures up there. Following that would be the climb up Friday and the descent to the Wintturi shelter. I got to the shelter around 5:45 and I had it all to myself. I pulled two liters of water from a nearby stream that had a beautiful waterfall. I took a picture. Then I set up my stuff inside the shelter and prepared my dinner. I ate a tuna salad tortilla, a peanut butter and jelly tortilla, some beef jerky tender bites, and with boiling water I made a rice with vegetables and black bean and lime sort of stew. It was awesome. After dinner I cleaned up my trash and food and I hung up a bear bag. I had no cell phone service at my shelter itself but I found that if I stood on top of the big rock where I hung my bear bag I could get one bar of 4G LTE service. So I took a moment to stand there and update my trail Journal. Then I went to bed around 8 o'clock.