Date: 2008-08-17
From: Little Rock Pond

To: Clarendon Shelter
Miles today: 13.6
Weather: overcast clouds

We rose early this morning to a crystal clear sky. It was nice and cool with the sun just coming up and reflecting off the rocky faces on the other side of the still pond. After a breakfast of oatmeal, pop tarts, and tea we packed up and began today's adventure. Destination...Clarendon Shelter, our last stop before we summit Killington tomorrow. As we started out walking next to Little Rock Pond, we heard a loon call. Looking through the undergrowth on the shoreline, we were able to watch the loon for about 5 minutes, diving down to search for food and then coming back up a minute or so later. I tried to get a picture of it but I gave up after he stayed underwater for too long. We had a long ways to go, so we continued on. The trail was much drier today and we were able to move along at a pretty good pace. We reached the trail junction to the White Rocks Cliff Vista within 1-1/2 hours. This is a really cool spot. Hikers have taken all of the small rocks that are in this area and created hundreds of interesting little rock sculptures. They were a lot of fun to look at and admire, and we added our own little touch to one of them as we passed through. Moving on, we made good progress, reaching the Clarendon Gorge suspension bridge at about 1:30. This is a really nice bridge which you have to walk single file over. It's quite a drop down into the Mill River below. On the other side of the bridge, we ran into a bunch of thru-hikers, some of whom we had met further down in Vermont. They were doing some volunteer trailwork on this section after having spent the last couple of days in Rutland at the Trail Days Festival. Arriving at the parking lot and Rt 103, we stopped for a break. We struck up a short conversation with a nice girl who was doing some of the trail work. It dawned on me later that she was Buttercup. She and her boyfriend, Duck, just got engaged a few days ago in Manchester and we had been reading about them in the shelter registers. Crossing Rt 103, we crossed a little field before starting a very steep climb up towards the shelter. It's only a mile from the road up to the shelter, but it's a very tough mile. Finally at about 3:00, we arrived at the shelter and found a nice soft spot under some pine trees to pitch our tent. Just as we got our tent set up, you guessed it...it started to rain again so we ducked into our tent and rested until it stopped, which was about a half hour later. We hung up some of our clothes, washed ourselves up, and then went over to the shelter to make dinner. A woman who called herself Mustang Sally was in the shelter - a very personable woman who could talk a blue streak. She was fun to listen to because she had a southern accent that embellished all of the stories that were pouring out of her. A short time later, Bogey & Slim showed up. They are an "older" couple like us and we really enjoyed talking to them. They were heading southbound and were going to finish their hike in Pennsylvania, which is where they live. I have been reading their journals over the past couple of years, so it was fun to get to know them a little. Too bad we couldn't have been going in the same direction. After dinner, we sat in the shelter for a while just talking and listening to the other hikers there before finally going back to our tent for the night. Today was another great day and we're really looking forward to climbing Killington tomorrow. Only 2 more days and we'll be able to pamper ourselves again at the Long Trail Inn. My God I'm loving this!