Date: 2017-05-08
From: Holiday Inn, North Adams, MA

To: Catamount Motel, Bennington, VT
Miles today: 18.4
Weather: scattered clouds

Staying at the Holiday Inn was quite the contrast to my situation a couple days ago after ¢running away¢ from bears south of I-90 and setting up camp my tarp at 2 am in a rain storm. As I said yesterday, it's more costly than the hostels I¢ve stayed in some on this journey, but I selected this one for the convenience of onsite restaurant and laundry facility. As an IHG member I got a 20% discount on everything including dinner. And for an additional $10 on the room charge, I enjoyed this morning's breakfast. As the photo here verifies, I got a lot for the money. I also took a moment to load all the ingredients into My Fitness Pal app to check what I was consuming, and it came out to 1878 calories. Surprised it wasn't more, but even bumping that figure up to 2000, I will likely burn up that much energy by noon. I haven't stepped on the scale, but I can tell from the way my clothes fit that I have been losing a lot of weight. Weeks ago Willie gave me a sleeping bag tie-down strap that I have been able to use as a belt for my hiking pants. I did not need one when I started. I also used a piece of parachute cord to fashion two holes in my rain pants to cinch them so they'd stay up. While using the hotel¢s wifi, I finished downloading the "bird packs" for the Merlin Bird ID app developed by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Teresa had posted to a facebook group, Capital Naturalist my description of a bird and its call to see if anyone there could help identify it. Members of the group suggested (correctly) what bird I¢d seen and also recommended I give this app a try.  I¢ve been able to use the app to identify two of the birds that I observed last week. One was a small, black and white bird that I'd been hearing since I started my hike, but only saw recently ¢ it¢s a Black-capped Chickadee. To me, its distinctive call sounds like "whweee, whwooo."  The other turned out to be a Red-tailed Hawk. I've uploaded screenshots of both birds. The app is neat ¢ to augment the photos, you can listen to the bird¢s call and song to help with identification.So after consuming what seemed like 2 meals worth of food, I checked out of the hotel about 7:45 and took a cab back to the trail. After crossing the Hoosick River via footbridge, I went up what looks like someone's driveway in order to get to the edge of the forest and start climbing up the western side of Williamstown. At first the trail was slippery wet like yesterday (photo), but thankfully later it dried out a little as it became steeper. Shortly after signing the logbook at yesterday¢s potential (but rejected) campsite, I came to a steep section that led to what the map calls Eph's Lookout. There was also a bad weather bypass trail available with blue blazes, but I chose not to go that way. I think that's really for more extreme winter-type weather. Proceeding, I came to an even steeper section of boulder scramble followed by a set of switchbacks that went up through the rock wall that the boulders must have fallen from. This was a little exciting, because the rocks were slippery and the trail was pretty steep. From the top I took in the view to the west (photo) where even at  10 o'clock in the morning frost remained on the top of a peak I¢d climbed yesterday, Prospect Mountain. Just a little further up the trail was the feature the guthook app calls The Rock Garden. That required a very short diversion on blue blazers to get to see it, but it was worth it. I posted a screenshot from my phone of what the Rock Garden looked like in the past - maybe last year. Some of the rocks apparently have come down since then. I tried to lift a big one up into a standing position by myself, but sensing a muscle pain, I decided risking a hernia was not worth it! I reached the Massachusetts - Vermont border at about 10:30. My hands were cold as I'd alternated wearing my one mitten on each of them  to keep one warm at a time. As I stood taking a photo of the Welcome to Vermont sign, I noticed that it had begun to snow lightly. I thought that would stop as I started to descend into the valley on the other side of the high point that was the border between the two states, but that wasn¢t so. On close observation, I can make out particles of what is obviously solid state H2O,  although I'm not sure it qualifies as snow per se. It looks like the small Styrofoam ball kind of stuff that might really be light hail.I think the highlight of my day came at about 11:15 when I hiked up on 3 weathered souls sitting on a log across the trail. There were two men and a woman - in their 50's or 60s. I stayed and enjoyed chatting with them for a while. I learned that their trail names where Whiskey, Tango and Foxtrot. They said some people don't know what that means. I told them I had been in the Army 31 years, so I knew exactly what it meant. Haha. The one who resembles Mark Twain (can¢t remember if that was Tango or Foxtrot) said that he had been in the Army 2 years, and the other man said he'd been in the National Guard. The woman said, jokingly that she had worked in a bar and that's how she got the name Whiskey. Haha. There were also thru hikers there from Tennessee, and I can't remember where they started their journey from, but they started in February and they had been going through cold weather ever since. They had also stayed in Williamstown last night. I started to pick up a chill from standing still, so we told each other good luck and be safe. As I continued hiking northbound, realized I'd forgotten to take a picture with them.I passed the sign for the Seth Warner shelter at just past noon, but I decided not to stop there because in that moment it seemed like the 2/10 of the mile off the trail was more than it was worth, so I kept going. I was surprised, but it kept snowing pretty much all afternoon until about 4 o'clock. It also did not melt where the elevation was above 2200 feet which was the case for most of today's hike.  Like yesterday, much of the trail was as wet as a stream and other areas were very muddy. While this meant the rocks were slippery and in some places even dangerous, it also made the non-rock trail ground significantly softer than it would have been if hard and dry. Therefore, waterlogged meant it was actually much easier on the feet than the same distance normally would have been. Where it was very slippery, I imagined that it was kind of like a cross between barefoot water skiing and downhill skiing. I say imagine, because I've never actually water skied barefoot. I got the image of skiing by considering my trekking poles, like ski poles, were coming in very handy navigating the trail¢s slippery slopes today!  I only experienced this sensation a couple of times, for distances of no more than about 2 feet.  As I arrived about three miles out from Bennington, I contacted the Catamount Motel and made arrangements to stay there and to get picked up at the trailhead about three and a half miles outside of the city limits.It's 7:21 and I'm warmed up from a hot shower and headed into town for dinner.