Date: 2003-07-22
From: Governor Clement Shelter

To: US4/Rutland, VT
Miles today: 10.6

Today was an interesting day. Josh (the son of a friend of mine from work) lives in Rutland, VT, and passes by the AT on US4 on the way to and from work. His father had told him about my journal and in May, Josh had offered a shower, laundry, phone use, and a shuttle for groceries when I passed over US4 near Rutland. Last Saturday night I called him to see if he was still interested and if it fit in his schedule. He said yes, so he agreed to meet me between 1:00 & 2:00 today at the US4 AT parking lot. I set my watch alarm for 5:30 am last night before I went to bed. It rained all night, sometimes hard. I slept through the watch alarm and woke and got up at 6:15. It was raining hard. I packed up as quickly as I could and was hiking at 7:07. That would give me almost 7 hours to do the 10.6 miles to US4 ¢ but I had to go up and over Killington Mountain ¢ 2000 ft up and 2000 ft down. The trail up was treacherous in places with ugly slippery rocks and roots, requiring great care. It was very slow going. It continued to rain. There were large puddles in places and the trail became a stream in other places. I reached the Cooper Lodge (the highest point in the climb) at 10:00. It had taken 3 hours to go 4.4 miles. At this rate, I would not get to US4 by 2:00 ¢ so I decided to phone Josh to let him know. This required a very steep climb of 0.2 miles to the summit and another 0.2 miles to the summit restaurant where there is supposed to be a phone. It was a very tough (2-handed at times) climb for me and I considered turning around several times, but continued on. I reached the restaurant and found it closed, but the gondola was running. I asked the operator about a phone; he said there were phones at the base lodge and that the ride was free for thru-hikers. What the heck! I had come this far to make the phone call already and had never ridden in a gondola, so I went for it and rode down to the base lodge. I had no reason to fear the heights because it was quite foggy and it was still raining. It is too bad I could not see anything. I reached the Killington base lodge, found the phone, and made my call. There was no answer, and there was no answering machine. That was disappointing, to say the least. I hopped back in the gondola, rode to the summit, and described my experience to the gondola operator. He offered me a cup of his hot coffee to go with my Snickers bar and my PowerBar as I contemplated my hike back down from the summit to the AT on the steep trail over wet rocks. Thank you, Mr. Gondola Operator for the hot coffee ¢ it hit the spot. I hiked back to the AT without slipping and met a SOBO (South Bounder), explaining to him how I had just blown over an hour to let someone know I would probably be late. He said the trail going down was much more hiker-friendly and it was downhill, and that I had a shot of making the 6.4 miles in 3 hours¢¦ so I decided to try. I left at 11:00 and reached the US4 parking lot at 1:59 pm. In addition, I had hiked to the Killington summit and had ridden the gondola from summit to base camp and back. I felt in better hiking shape over the previous week than any prior time in this hike. Josh was waiting with a big TROG sign on his windshield. We shook hands and Josh took me to his apartment to do laundry and take a shower. He also let me use his phone. Before closing, I want to thank Josh for helping me out today. It was very timely and much appreciated. It is 8:30 and time to close.