I was leaving work around midnight in Brooklyn, the borough drifting in its Sunday blues. I looked up at a tall residential building with blue neon lighting at the top, and it was shrouded by fog.
It took me back to my time on the Long Trail: I was finishing mile thirty for the day, and it’d been raining and foggy for fourteen of the sixteen hours of hiking when I’d left the shelter around 5am that morning. 9pm, well after dark and just wrapping up the last climb of the day with the mud grinding my feet raw around the ankles, I arrived at the top of Bromley Mountain. It was a big, open grassy field, and I had thirty feet of vision in any direction. I didn’t know where the ski hut open to hikers was up there, but I was ready to find it. I brought up the compass on my watch, set the timer to lap, and walked south from the trail. I ended up walking to the ski lift, but not the hut. I turned around and followed the time back to the place I started. I turned west and began walking downhill, so I turned around. East didn’t seem right, so I directed myself southwest, and there it was, a large, open hut with no other visitors for the night. Pegs on the wall to hang my wet gear, a big table to set up my food, and a floor to lay out my sleep system. This was the second hut that I’d found empty during foul weather.
How Far Can My Rookie Legs Go?
Surprising to me, I finished the Pacific Crest Trail at the end of August with some energy left in the tank. That, or I really missed the lush forests of the Northeast. Before setting out on the PCT, I had tentative plans to follow my hike by south bounding the Appalachian Trail, depending on my finish date of the PCT. It was my first thru-hike, after all, and I didn’t know what sort of pace I was capable of. Upon finishing the PCT, I wanted to keep hiking, but maybe not another 2,000+ miles just yet. So I settled on going southbound on the Long Trail, a 273 mile not too unlike the northern sections of the AT, albeit, I think harder at times, terrain wise.
I arrived at the northern Terminus at 5:00pm on 9/17/18 on an unseasonably warm evening with the sky turning pink and red. “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight.”
Weather
The weather floated through moody and sometimes windy, temperamental, with fog and the onset of changing leaves. I started north of the tourist towns, and felt a tinge of what it had been like at Rainy Pass when I ended my PCT hike three weeks before. This continued for two days, and the rain moved in. Unlike Washington, the trail was cleared, and there wasn’t a lot of overgrowth to deal with, but the uneven trail and mudfest compensated. There were times when I stopped hiking early, or went into town just because I felt miserable, and not that into hiking that day. Perhaps if I had not already been deep into my hiking season, my attitude would have been different.
Logistics, Amenities, and Trail Culture
Simple and as comfortable as you want it. There are shelters every ~5 miles, and there are often other hikers there. That said, I had a total of five shelters, including two, luxurious, fully enclosed ski huts (thanks GMC) to myself. I think 3 out out of the 5 times were during severe rain, which can push hikers off trail, understandably.
Gear
List – https://lighterpack.com/r/gcidoh
Montbell Tachyon Anorak (L) (Discontinued edition)
I would ditch the wind shell for this one. I brought this originally as a last resort to wear to bed rolling into camp with every piece of clothing soaked. It isn’t the most comfortable, but it works for the night. There’s too much scrambling and overhead branches for an umbrella, I think. They were low enough that my trekking pole stowed away in my pack constantly caught branches, blow downs, and the like. A fleece was plenty.
Somewhat of an equivalent, but not.
REI Quarter Zip (M) (Discontinued)
REI stopped making this fleece, and it’s a shame. It’s streamlined, a quarter zip, was affordable, and is 7.6oz for a medium. I hope it lasts me many more hiking seasons. That said, I rarely carry fleece. I carried it on this trip because I expected cool temperatures and lots of rain, which ended up being the case. The fleece helps keep me warm under my rain shell, my shell inevitably leaving me soaked within an hour of rain due to sweat or simply wetting out and through. A fleece might also work in dry climates with little rain but consistent daily temps in the low 40’s or below, where you’ll be wearing layers all day. Otherwise, I usually stick to a windshell for the weight and packability. I slept in my hiking shirt and shorts only every night. Night time temps never dipped below freezing for me, despite what others will tell you. They were probably sleeping out in the open. Maybe I was lucky.
A decent alternative to the REI Quarter zip
Showa 282 Gloves (L)
Hands don’t need the breathability of something like a rain jacket, and I prefer something truly waterproof. I learned about these through Andrew Skurka’s site. These are the only gloves I carried on the LT. They were great at first, but the integrated liner began to pill, and when they eventually got wet from me removing my hands and replacing them inside, the gloves never dried. They did continue to insulate my hands, but they never dried out, even with a night spent in town out of the weather. I’ll be trying the Showa 281’s, which do not have the liner, paired with a separate liner next time.
REI Merino Liner Socks
I was annoyed at the lack of durability of my DT Ultralight No Cushion socks from the PCT, so I tried something different on the LT, and having some more the length was preferable for the conditions. It may have been an issue with fit for me, but they bunched up after they got wet, and they developed holes before I finished my hike. The trail is only 273 miles, and I carried two pairs. I trashed one pair in MA after I completed my hike. The search continues.
Black Diamond Carbon Cork Trekking Pole
I carried one. This thing’s tough. For some reason I decided I wanted to actually hike with the thing, and I bent the tip after about two hours of use. My fault. I should have sent the thing home and went without, but I’m a wuss and wanted one to help me set up my Grace Solo. I seriously caught it on a branch a few times an hour. I’ll be carrying one trekking pole on the CDT, too, but I’ve swapped to a lighter, though less stable, stripped Fizan Compact 3.
Pa’lante V2 w/hipbelt, no sternum
It’s pretty, the shoulder strap and fancy bottom pockets are nice. It was a little too big for this trip with the fairly short food carries. The pack fits me well, and the hipbelt is nice when my shoulders hurt. It doesn’t have drain holes in the pockets though, so, periodically during the rain, I had to remove it to dump the water from the side pockets. The pack isn’t seam sealed, but the fabric is waterproof, so water pools in the bottom of the pack. I had to keep my sleeping pad inside the liner, or else I was in for an uncomfortable night’s sleep.
MLD Grace Solo .74 DCF (9x7x5)
More than adequate for this trail. If things get too crazy, there is always a shelter. Finding a flat piece of ground is the hardest thing about setting up a nice place for rest on the LT. Flat space is rare.
MLD Superlight Silnylon full net (L)
It added warmth, and it kept the mouse off me when sleeping on the floor of a crowded shelter. I loved this thing on the PCT, and I felt the same way on this trail. No condensation problems, and it kept the creepy crawlies off me the two warm, dry nights I was able to cowboy camp. If it were much warmer on the LT, I’d ditch the bivy and take a tarp tent.
Katabatic Palisade 30 – 900fp Long / Reg
My true love.
Neo Air XLite
I would have been bummed sleeping in those wood-floored shelters on a foamie.
Borah Jacket (M)
I spent a lot of time stationary in the dark. This one’s light and worth the carry, but not critical for the trip. Makes a great pillow when paired with a rain jacket, too. If I was hiking later in the year on the LT and expected cooler daytime temps, I would probably carry a synthetic jacket like the Nunatak JMT or PCT jacket.
OR Helium II (M)
I sweat out this puppy fast, and it no longer beads water. I’m not ready to pay for a Shakedry jacket, so I’m experimenting with the new Lightheart Gear sil-poly with huge pit zips. Hand pockets would have been great.
Zpacks Rain Skirt
One late morning on trail, I’d been listening to a podcast about coincidence, and by some chance, I ran into two old friends from a former job on the trail one day during a drizzle. One of them said that just prior to seeing me, that they thought that I was somewhere on the LT, and “what a coincidence” that it was that we met there out of all places. I was wearing my red rain jacket, my bright blue Showa gloves, and my Zpacks rain skirt. I looked like a total goofball I’m sure, but my shorts were dry thanks to this bad boy. I love the thing. It’s a nice length, you can adjust it to meet your stride by zipping the back down or upward, and it has a functional, non-irritating shock cord to synch it tight. I usually tuck my shirt in and lay my rain jacket over it. It doesn’t have to be made of DCF, but skirts rule. I also used it at night to lay out my gear to keep things off the wet ground.
Black Diamond Spot
I did a lot of night hiking, and I had to change the batteries in this thing twice, maybe three times. I can’t remember, but I remember stressing about the light dimming. It had some good power, but I was doing a lot of night and pre-dawn hiking. I was carrying a 10,000mah battery, and a Nitecore NU25 would have probably been more efficient. I use one now. The Spot model I used was probably from 2015/6ish.
Closing Thoughts
There was plenty of type 2 fun on this trip. It rained 10 out of the 17 days I spent on trail, and it was moody probably 4 or 5 of those other days at some point. Yet I look back on the trail fondly. I met few southbound hikers, the towns were really special, and I found a lot of tasty and safe gluten free food (I have celiac). I stayed at a B&B (not Air) in the town of Stowe, where my host prepared me some tea with Vermont maple syrup upon arrival, sat down to talk with me about my travels, about her business, and Stowe. She advised me where to eat, I ate there, and the people and food were warm. I sat around a bar for dinner, didn’t drink, wasn’t dressed up like everyone else, but people talked to me anyway. There was a lot of foliage the whole trip, the best of it developing during the final third of my hike.
Despite the constant mud and rain, I never developed a blister, but the dirt and and my ill-fitting socks overtime rubbed the skin around my ankles and toes pretty raw. I used balm, washed and dried regularly, but they continued to worsen until the end of the hike. I saw a moose for the first time, no bears, one deer, some cows, a few birds, and that’s about it. One of the night’s I cowboy camped, some coyotes were howling really, really close by. I thought once or twice about calling it good for the season at the beginning of the hike, but I’m glad I didn’t. It isn’t the PCT, and they shouldn’t be compared. The Long Trail is exactly the kind of hike I needed to close out the year, and I’ll be heading west again in no time.
Drop a comment below or reach out to me at treyfrench9@gmail.com to talk about the trail. Anything that I didn’t discuss here, and the like. For an excellent Long Trail planning starting point, see Swami’s write up here.
Trey French 