Date: 2017-05-18
From: Little Rock Pond Shelter

To: Governor Clement Shelter
Miles today: 20.1
Weather: clear sky

I woke at about 5:15 to the sounds of the birds. It had been a relatively nice night, though I was thirsty from yesterday's hike and consumed two and a half liters of water overall yesterday evening. That's why I had to get up a couple of times. I also woke while hearing something crawling around in the overhang part of the shelter. In the morning, I could see that a mouse had partly consumed a chewy bar that some hiker had left on the edge of a 2 by 4. I packed up and had a Pop Tart for breakfast and then headed out about 6:45. A little more than one mile into today is High Point. I refilled 1 1/2 liters of water. I checked for cell coverage, but still no joy. I remembered that in a text yesterday my dad had forwarded a weather forecast for today of sunny with high in the 90's followed by thunderstorms. I'm not sure how far I will get today, but will likely have to make a decision at some point about shelter if there is bad weather coming in.At about 8:30, as I was reaching the High Point on the southwest corner of White Rocks Peak, I stopped for a brief break. I checked and found that I had one bar of 4G LTE service, so I uploaded yesterday's Trail Journal and the beginning of today's. I also called the Catamount Motel to let Pete know that I had discovered yesterday evening that I still have the key to Room 11 in my pocket. Oops. I told him I'd mail it back at the first opportunity. I also checked in with the family via text. Finally, I made an iced coffee with a Via packet that Teresa had given me. I consumed two-thirds of that in less than a second. After I finished my morning post to Trail journals, I moved on.I noticed today that the forest floor, which had been brown during the majority of my hike up to this point, had in this location become very green with a mixture of sprouting flowers, other plants, tiny evergreens and ferns. Underneath all of that, I could still see years of fallen oak leaves mixed with the residue of last year's crop of ferns and branches of small plants, as well as a multitude of mossy fallen trees. (Picture)At about 9 o'clock a couple of young, short distance hikers that had stayed at the same shelter with me last night passed me as I was messing with my phone. At about 9:15 I reached the Rock Garden and paused to take a picture of it and make a few contributions to the stacks of rocks that this place is noted for. Or so I thought. About 10 minutes later I caught up with the couple that had just passed me as they had stopped to have breakfast at what actually was the Rock Garden. I stayed and talked with them for maybe 30 minutes. They're both UVM students majoring in mechanical engineering. Max was a Senior and she (trail name Koala) was a Junior. They talked about a robot project they have been working on and I got to brag about my hobby robots for a couple minutes.  As we were talking, a day hiker emerged from a side trail and headed up the AT/LT northbound. As our conversation concluded, I suggested to Max that he might consider using the trail name Machine so they could be Koala and the Machine. I think he liked that, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he has adopted it.I continued up the trail northbound and caught up to the day hiker we had recently seen. I never got her name but she was taking the day off from work to celebrate her birthday by hiking. She was a superior conversationalist. She works as a barber with her mother and her sister and she said that being talkative goes with the job. We descended the trail from White Rocks Peak and she peeled off to the left to exit the trail via a local parking lot while I continued to the right northbound. I stopped shortly after that to refill my half liter bottle with water from the Bully Creek. I took a moment to consult my map and noted that while descending and talking I had evidently missed the turnoff for the Green Wall shelter. No big deal since I had not intended to stop there other than to potentially sign the book. I noted that I was about 5.6 miles into today's hike and a little less than four and a half miles from the Minerva Hinchey shelter, which would be roughly my 10 Mile point today. After treating the creek water I'd just collected, I continued northbound.Shortly before 11:30, I crossed a dirt roads marked on my map as Russell Road and as Sugar Hill Road. Then I crossed VT 140. After crossing the roads, the trail began to climb significantly. Shortly before noon I made a brief diversion from the trail to visit the Dome LED Vista which offered a nice view to the southwest (photo). The trail continued up and over 2 peaks east of Wallingford, VT marked on my map as Bear Mountain.I stopped at the Minerva Hinchey shelter just a few minutes after 1 pm. There I met sobo hiker "Swass". When I asked, he explained that the name his kids gave him starts with "sw" for sweaty, and the second part is not an acronym.  He had also stopped here for some lunch, water, and shade. Outside temp was nearing 90 in the sun. Much nicer in the shade. I had a tuna salad tortilla and a salami tortilla for lunch, along with another Via coffee packet. Then I got a fresh 1.5 liters of water from the nearby piped spring before continuing northbound. Less than a half-mile up the trail as I came across the top of a hill to the southwest of Spring Lake, the wind started to pick up significantly. It made a powerful sound as it rushed through the leaves of the trees overhead and it provided a welcomed cooling relief from the heat at the level of the trail itself.However, it appeared to be somewhat problematic for the flying insects in the area. As it goes for mosquitoes and black flies I was grateful for that. On the other hand, the bee that seemed to have helplessly tumbled into the outside left corner of my mouth was a different story. Suddenly I felt the frantic fluttering of its wings and I instinctively reached with my right hand to brush it away and felt it's hairy body. Apparently concerned that I might eat it, it stung me. Fortunately,  it tried to do so through the corner of my mustache and was therefore only minimally effective. I'm not sure if I ate it or if it survived being brushed away, but only a fraction of a second after it began, this event was over.Shortly before 3 o'clock I came to the Clarendon Gorge. Below me on the rocks along the side of the Mill River were a number of local sunbathers. And at my level there was a suspension bridge that I crossed. It was bouncy and exciting. (Pictures, video). I then crossed a road and hiked up along the rocks which were falling into a crack in the earth, sort of a splinter off the side of the Gorge - this was also exciting. It took about 30 minutes. I then came to the Clarendon Lookout which offered a view to the West of the Rutland Southern Vermont Regional Airport (photo).It was about this point that I also noticed an itching sensation in my nose. Signs of the onset of allergic symptoms. I also had to clean my glasses as they had a buildup of fine powder on them. Probably pollen.As I had started climbing the gorge, I passed an obvious day hiker who was carrying a pizza box and bag of snacks. We talked about the weather and he said he had heard that it would turn bad after 2:30 p.m. with exceptionally high winds. I got to the top of the gorge and shortly thereafter to the Clarendon shelter around 4 o'clock. There I paused for a snack of GORP and downed the remainder of the water I had on hand and refilled a liter and a half from a nearby stream. I signed the log book in the shelter and I moved on northbound.Next up was a short .3 mile, but rather steep climb to the top of Beacon Hill. I took a picture of the device mounted on a tower at the top of that Hill, which must be the Beacon. I imagine it services the nearby airport in some way.From there I hiked 6 more miles to the Governor Clement shelter. Counting side trail distance to a couple of the views that I had chosen to take in, I figured the total distance of today's hike was a little over 20 miles. On the way, I crossed several roads and up and down several slopes, and I saw several lovely rivers. I picked up water often. I drank a lot of it today, in an effort to replace what I was sweating out. When I arrived at the shelter, I was glad to see the familiar face of Jag Happy (met in Salisbury, CT). Jag Happy and I spent some time catching up. He told me that he had met a guy who said I had given him his Trail name. This was Jersey Joe, another Joe that I had met a couple weeks ago. I also met another couple of hikers from UVM. Alex and Marley are juniors. He is studying Civil Engineering, and she is studying International Business and Animal Science. Also at the shelter, I met Foxtrot. He is *not* of the trio, so my earlier presumption was wrong. He and his brother are thru-hiking, and they started at Springer on January 15th. His brother is way ahead somewhere. As I ate and got ready for bed, Alex played some quiet music on the baritone ukulele that he carries. I found it remarkable how much this created a quiet, relaxed and peaceful atmosphere. When I was done eating, Alex let me hang my food bag with his and Marley's, on their bear bag line.Moments later it began to rain, and we could hear the sound of powerful rolling thunder in the distance. I felt very fortunate about the timing of the storm relative to my hike today. I checked, but again had no cell service, so I finished drafting today's Trail Journal entry, but will have to wait until tomorrow to upload it.